Write your way out

When I was in New York a few weeks ago, I saw Hamilton (the Musical). Although I bought the tickets months ago, I made it a point not to listen to it before I actually saw it in person. I'm not sure why - it wasn't exactly about "spoilers," because, well, I know what happens in that story. I think it was more wanting to try to see it without all the hype pushing in and, for the most part, I think it was a good decision. I enjoyed the show - it's smart, and impressive, and tear-jerking, and thought-provoking, and brave, and a little bit weird.

But, I think I'd like to see it again, somewhere in the distant future, when it feels less like an event and more like something I can relax and enjoy. For one thing, the audience seemed to be older and wealthier than most other shows I have seen. My impression is that Broadway audiences tend to skew a bit older in general, I imagine because of cost, distance, and other issues involving access. Given the intense popularity of Hamilton, all of these issues seemed to be exacerbated and the audience was definitely older, and whiter, than a lot of other shows I have seen. Those things aren't necessarily a problem, but they are particularly noticeably with a show like Hamilton, that itself is so diverse, and young, and "scrappy."It made it feel more like a see and be seen kind of thing, rather than an experience with an audience that was really loving it.

Also, it was hard to enjoy it outside the hype, despite my efforts to the contrary. I'd waited so long, and heard so much, and I was just trying to soak it in and experience it all. That type of pressure makes it difficult to be transported by the performances, no matter how great they were,  The immediacy, the music, the small audiences, the intense emotions - all of that is often conducive to the kind of rapture I want from musical theater. And some moments in Hamilton got me there, most noticeably in the songs from the Schuyler sisters. and in the whole Unimaginable sequence. Overall, the second half affected me a lot more than the first, though again, the whole thing is very impressive. I think it just got me more on a cerebral level, which I enjoyed, but which didn't transport me the way it has many other people.

That said, I've been listened to the music the last couple of days, now that it is available through Amazon Prime, which has only confirmed my initial impression that it is the most textual musical I can think of, especially in that second half. There are numerous references to both the prodigious amount of writing that Hamilton produced (the Federalist papers, the Reynolds pamphlet, his work as Secretary of the Treasury), Hamilton's compulsive need to write "as if he is running out of time," and Hamilton's fixation on his own legacy. As he puts it,

    I wrote my way out of hell
    I wrote my way to revolution
    I was louder than the crack in the bell
    I wrote Eliza love letters until she fell
    I wrote about the Constitution and defended it well
    And in the face of ignorance and resistance
    I wrote financial systems into existence
    And when my prayers to God were met with indifference
    I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance

Here, writing is both public and private, something that defines Hamilton in all the spheres of his life. In fact, the above song "Hurricane" is prompted by Hamilton's own impending personal scandal. His response? "I'll write my way out."

Most interesting to me, however, is his wife's response to this Reynolds Pamphlet. Eliza sings "Burn," where she too acknowledges both the seduction of writing -

    You and your words flooded my senses
    Your sentences left me defenseless
    You built me palaces out of paragraphs
    You built cathedrals

And it's potential for betrayal -

    You published the letters she wrote you
    You told the whole world how you brought
    This girl into out bed

Eliza's response? In contrast to her earlier plea "to be part of the narrative," she now refuses not only Hamilton, but future historians, access to her body, her feelings, her thoughts, by refusing them access to her own writing:

   I'm erasing myself from the narrative
   Let future historians wonder how Eliza
   Reacted when you broke her heart

She burns Hamilton's letters as a response to both his desire for a legacy and the present's prurient desire to know the most intimate details of the lives of public figures. In other words, she refuses writing, or more precisely, refuses to be written (even, of course, as we are enthralled by Miranda's writing here and throughout the musical).

What really got to me, however, was when writing went from something to be refused to something inadequate (even, again, as that inadequacy is evoked through song) in "It's Quiet Uptown." As that song starts,

   There are moments that the words don't reach
   There is suffering too terrible to name

And from there, concluding with the female survivors taking the reins of the narrative in which masculinity generally dominates the story. There, at the end, Eliza and Angelica write the story of Hamilton - here, Eliza says that she put herself "Back in the narrative" - even as the refrain of "who lives, who dies, who tells your story" echoes. It's an interesting irony, because even though the dominant theme seems to be asking us to think about who tells the story, the song itself starts off with reminding us that we have "no control" over that story-telling. So, we might wonder who tells "our story," but really, that narrative is beyond us; we'll all be written by someone else, regardless of whether, like Hamilton, we are writing like we're running out of time.