Sonny's Blues

I teach a class on the Literature of Alcoholism and we are reading “Sonny’s Blue’s” by James Baldwin. Sonny’s drink, scotch and milk--his cup of trembling--sits on the piano. It is milk as nurture and whiskey as destruction. Sonny sips from that cup all night as he plays. As an artist he embraces suffering—his own and others—hoping to transform it through and into art. Is he successful? He sips and plays. And suffers.