"Hamilton" is useful if you're a writer, or an aspiring writer, and here are some things to notice:
(1) This is a show that makes use of shifting perspectives. When Aaron Burr describes the put-the-capital-in-DC compromise, he's not actually in "the room where it happens." Skepticism is written into the lyrics. "Thomas claims, Thomas claims..." There's tension between Thomas's version and Hamilton's version, and the idea of self-serving exaggeration becomes its own story; it's a story over and above the actual events narrated in the song. Very smart. The same thing happens with "Say No to This": We aren't actually getting a straightforward story, and LMM takes pains to have Burr loudly pass the narration to Hamilton. ("I'll let him tell it.") In both stories, we have someone on a doorstep, in distress and disarray. (Thus the narrators--Jefferson and Hamilton--seem to have *almost no choice* but to act in the way they act. They are presenting themselves as passive agents--rather than schemers.) The act of shifting perspectives makes us think of "Rashomon" or "Gone Girl"; it adds interest to an already interesting story. (And it builds on a theme. LMM continuously returns to the idea of narration. "You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story." "I'm erasing myself from the narrative." "Every other founding father gets to grow old; every other founding father's story is told." Fascinating. Also, I have to point out that there is hoodwinking in "Hamilton." Maria Reynolds arrives in "distress and disarray," but maybe there is more to her than meets the eye. And Hamilton visits Jefferson "in distress and disarray," but again we're talking about playacting. Hamilton, like Maria, has tricks up his sleeve.)
(2) Advocacy is a useful muse. Lorrie Moore observes this. She's talking about a memoirist--and that writer's account of a mother's death. She says real life is tricky; it doesn't conform to patterns, the way a novel can. She says one helpful guide for a writer of memoirs is: advocacy. Your mother died of cancer in New Jersey? Take time to describe the alarming cancer rates in Jersey, and maybe even suggest some possible solutions. I think this is wise. One of the things that is so moving to me about "Hamilton" is the advocacy written into, or under, the scenes. When LMM advises colonists to "rise up" ("When you're living on your knees"), he is addressing the colonists, yes, but he's also talking to kids who are listening to the soundtrack. "History is happening in Manhattan"--It's hard not to think about right now, about MeToo, about the gun-violence survivors in Florida, about new trends in Hollywood ("Black Panther," "Love, Simon"), when you hear these words. I'm not saying LMM saw the future, but one clear idea behind his work is: giving a voice to people who haven't always had a voice (thus: the unconventional casting). LMM tells a story about besieged folks discovering their own power, hundreds of years ago, but, at the same time, he urges his listeners to shake up the present-day world, here, in this moment. Very moving--and a useful tool, I imagine, for getting LMM's "juices flowing."
(3) To write is to turn on an old tap. The water is very rusty at first, but then it gets good. LMM didn't actually write that into "Hamilton," but it's an observation he has made elsewhere. Trenchant. Additionally, LMM found the germ of "Hamilton" by going back to his own adolescence, to a history report. This confirms for me something John McPhee has said: "All your lifelong obsessions will visit you before you finish adolescence." For example, there's a reason I--yours truly--get most overheated when I talk about "Silence of the Lambs," or "Frog and Toad," or "Beauty and the Beast."
(4) Life is both tragic and comic; sometimes, the shift is a matter of seconds. Chekhov knew this. We laugh loudly when King George giggles about John Adams; that's (partly) because he steps onstage right after George Washington's heart-wrenching resignation. The laughter is really (or partly) a release of George-Washington-induced tension: the definition of comic relief. (This is deliberate.) A less-flashy variant: After the heaviness of "It's Quiet Uptown," Daveed Diggs says, with his nasally, sarcastic, blunt-object voice: "Yo, can we get back to politics?" Startling, indicative of Jefferson's insensitivity, authoritative: Several things happening, together, in one line.
(5) God is in the details. The more I listen to "Hamilton"--and I may be reaching my saturation point--the more I notice tiny things. I love that the young, impetuous Philip Hamilton interrupts George Eacker at the theater. ("Your father is a scoundrel, and so, it seems, are you.") You almost sympathize with Eacker--he has a self-assurance and concision that make a stark contrast with Philip's breathlessness--and you might smile when Eacker interrupts the duel preliminaries: "Let's drop the niceties." I can almost reach out and touch LMM's own delight as he composes Baby Philip's first poem: "My name is Philip. I am a poet. I wrote these lines just to show it. I'm eight but soon I will be nine. You can write rhymes but you can't write mine!" (The phallic strutting in the lines, the preference for a hypothetical brother over an actual sister, the foreshadow-ish boasting about Dad's political prowess: We get an entire three-dimensional character in just a few lines. This is the same hotheaded Philip who will bring about the end of his own life, in six or seven songs. LMM's mentor is Sondheim, who says, often: "Surprise them." Baby Philip's poem is a surprise in every way--and, to me, it's a highlight of the show.) I love, also, the tidbits in the final duel: If Hamilton didn't mean to kill, why was he adjusting his glasses? If Burr was a terrible shot, then maybe you can forgive--or half-forgive--his anxiety, his rash conclusion that this really would be a fight to the death? (It's also smart to narrate these moments from the villain's perspective--we're trained, elsewhere, to imagine, lazily, that Burr was simply an unthinking force of evil--and, whether or not you buy Burr's reasoning, you do get a potent reminder that *everyone* has a story. Everyone has his own version of events.) So--these are all things to consider when you're putting pen to paper. A gifted writer, LMM makes a point of having five or six things happening at once, over and over again. Try it. Push. "See what can be done."
P.S. Another thing that is moving about Baby Philip? Note that we see him doing what his father does; he writes. He is Alexander in miniature. This is a show about the act of writing. "Why do you write like it's going out of style?" So, of course, it's important that we see Baby Philip composing a poem--not building a tree house, not cooking a pizza. "The worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind." Like father, like son. Subtle and emotionally powerful.
P.P.S. Advocacy is a muse? Think of Laura I. Wilder. "Little House" is not set in the Great Depression, but it is very much a book "of" the Great Depression. Wilder was recalling her hardscrabble childhood *for* an audience of Depression-era readers. She was dragging us back to frontier life, as a way of saying: Buck up.
(1) This is a show that makes use of shifting perspectives. When Aaron Burr describes the put-the-capital-in-DC compromise, he's not actually in "the room where it happens." Skepticism is written into the lyrics. "Thomas claims, Thomas claims..." There's tension between Thomas's version and Hamilton's version, and the idea of self-serving exaggeration becomes its own story; it's a story over and above the actual events narrated in the song. Very smart. The same thing happens with "Say No to This": We aren't actually getting a straightforward story, and LMM takes pains to have Burr loudly pass the narration to Hamilton. ("I'll let him tell it.") In both stories, we have someone on a doorstep, in distress and disarray. (Thus the narrators--Jefferson and Hamilton--seem to have *almost no choice* but to act in the way they act. They are presenting themselves as passive agents--rather than schemers.) The act of shifting perspectives makes us think of "Rashomon" or "Gone Girl"; it adds interest to an already interesting story. (And it builds on a theme. LMM continuously returns to the idea of narration. "You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story." "I'm erasing myself from the narrative." "Every other founding father gets to grow old; every other founding father's story is told." Fascinating. Also, I have to point out that there is hoodwinking in "Hamilton." Maria Reynolds arrives in "distress and disarray," but maybe there is more to her than meets the eye. And Hamilton visits Jefferson "in distress and disarray," but again we're talking about playacting. Hamilton, like Maria, has tricks up his sleeve.)
(2) Advocacy is a useful muse. Lorrie Moore observes this. She's talking about a memoirist--and that writer's account of a mother's death. She says real life is tricky; it doesn't conform to patterns, the way a novel can. She says one helpful guide for a writer of memoirs is: advocacy. Your mother died of cancer in New Jersey? Take time to describe the alarming cancer rates in Jersey, and maybe even suggest some possible solutions. I think this is wise. One of the things that is so moving to me about "Hamilton" is the advocacy written into, or under, the scenes. When LMM advises colonists to "rise up" ("When you're living on your knees"), he is addressing the colonists, yes, but he's also talking to kids who are listening to the soundtrack. "History is happening in Manhattan"--It's hard not to think about right now, about MeToo, about the gun-violence survivors in Florida, about new trends in Hollywood ("Black Panther," "Love, Simon"), when you hear these words. I'm not saying LMM saw the future, but one clear idea behind his work is: giving a voice to people who haven't always had a voice (thus: the unconventional casting). LMM tells a story about besieged folks discovering their own power, hundreds of years ago, but, at the same time, he urges his listeners to shake up the present-day world, here, in this moment. Very moving--and a useful tool, I imagine, for getting LMM's "juices flowing."
(3) To write is to turn on an old tap. The water is very rusty at first, but then it gets good. LMM didn't actually write that into "Hamilton," but it's an observation he has made elsewhere. Trenchant. Additionally, LMM found the germ of "Hamilton" by going back to his own adolescence, to a history report. This confirms for me something John McPhee has said: "All your lifelong obsessions will visit you before you finish adolescence." For example, there's a reason I--yours truly--get most overheated when I talk about "Silence of the Lambs," or "Frog and Toad," or "Beauty and the Beast."
(4) Life is both tragic and comic; sometimes, the shift is a matter of seconds. Chekhov knew this. We laugh loudly when King George giggles about John Adams; that's (partly) because he steps onstage right after George Washington's heart-wrenching resignation. The laughter is really (or partly) a release of George-Washington-induced tension: the definition of comic relief. (This is deliberate.) A less-flashy variant: After the heaviness of "It's Quiet Uptown," Daveed Diggs says, with his nasally, sarcastic, blunt-object voice: "Yo, can we get back to politics?" Startling, indicative of Jefferson's insensitivity, authoritative: Several things happening, together, in one line.
(5) God is in the details. The more I listen to "Hamilton"--and I may be reaching my saturation point--the more I notice tiny things. I love that the young, impetuous Philip Hamilton interrupts George Eacker at the theater. ("Your father is a scoundrel, and so, it seems, are you.") You almost sympathize with Eacker--he has a self-assurance and concision that make a stark contrast with Philip's breathlessness--and you might smile when Eacker interrupts the duel preliminaries: "Let's drop the niceties." I can almost reach out and touch LMM's own delight as he composes Baby Philip's first poem: "My name is Philip. I am a poet. I wrote these lines just to show it. I'm eight but soon I will be nine. You can write rhymes but you can't write mine!" (The phallic strutting in the lines, the preference for a hypothetical brother over an actual sister, the foreshadow-ish boasting about Dad's political prowess: We get an entire three-dimensional character in just a few lines. This is the same hotheaded Philip who will bring about the end of his own life, in six or seven songs. LMM's mentor is Sondheim, who says, often: "Surprise them." Baby Philip's poem is a surprise in every way--and, to me, it's a highlight of the show.) I love, also, the tidbits in the final duel: If Hamilton didn't mean to kill, why was he adjusting his glasses? If Burr was a terrible shot, then maybe you can forgive--or half-forgive--his anxiety, his rash conclusion that this really would be a fight to the death? (It's also smart to narrate these moments from the villain's perspective--we're trained, elsewhere, to imagine, lazily, that Burr was simply an unthinking force of evil--and, whether or not you buy Burr's reasoning, you do get a potent reminder that *everyone* has a story. Everyone has his own version of events.) So--these are all things to consider when you're putting pen to paper. A gifted writer, LMM makes a point of having five or six things happening at once, over and over again. Try it. Push. "See what can be done."
P.S. Another thing that is moving about Baby Philip? Note that we see him doing what his father does; he writes. He is Alexander in miniature. This is a show about the act of writing. "Why do you write like it's going out of style?" So, of course, it's important that we see Baby Philip composing a poem--not building a tree house, not cooking a pizza. "The worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind." Like father, like son. Subtle and emotionally powerful.
P.P.S. Advocacy is a muse? Think of Laura I. Wilder. "Little House" is not set in the Great Depression, but it is very much a book "of" the Great Depression. Wilder was recalling her hardscrabble childhood *for* an audience of Depression-era readers. She was dragging us back to frontier life, as a way of saying: Buck up.
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