'Sinners,' Clarksdale, and the Spiritual Seam

There's something down there, man.

I haven’t seen “Sinners” yet (family), but when I read it was set in Clarksdale, Mississippi in the early 1930s, my psychic ears perked up. I spent some time in Clarksdale a long time ago, and I think its reputation as a spiritual seam—a place where the other is very close to the surface of reality—is well-earned.

I ended up in Mississippi because of a magazine assignment. The magazine’s chief photographer had arranged the logistics; he had two pages of printed directions to guide us from the airport in Memphis to the bar in Clarksdale where we planned to live for four days; he had the reservation for the SUV and three crates of equipment and a cheerful assistant to carry it all—and just as he was readying to board a plane, while I was already in the air somewhere over Virginia, a massive belt of thunderstorms grounded him unexpectedly, leaving me to handle the first night on my own.

This was the flip-phone era; it was only when I landed that I discovered that I would be alone for at le…