Without meaning disrespect to that teacher and her years of experience, I can cite no less than four times in the last few many weeks where I'd take it to court that I'd disproved that theory. Such has probably been the case for a while, but now especially I feel like we're all witnesses to a general world atmosphere of a powder keg ready to blow. I personally can't remember another stretch of time where every log-on to Twitter was greeted with news of yet another gun violence death or a prominent world power Brexiting stage left. These are textbook-fodder events we've been going through on a day to day basis recently, and even though I thank my stars to have been personally removed from all of it, today's age of social media saturation means the degrees of separation between primary and secondary experiences are being chipped away with every cell-phone cam recording.
Again, I can't stress enough how grateful and how aware I am that I'm safely on the periphery of all these events, but I'll admit without shame that I can only take so much "bigness" in the news before I need to balance it out with the small-scale, the personal, the day to day. I write. I run. I draw. I listen to music, often (very often) while doing any of those.
Last week, in the midst of an otherwise busy summer, the Cooks took a trip down to the Big Apple, where Mom and Dad had a joint birthday celebration and I checked off the bucket list item of seeing a live Broadway show. Disney aficionados that we are, we were over the moon to be amongst a sold-out performance of The Lion King (and for anyone wondering, it was phenomenal... something I can't recommend enough for your own bucket lists, if you're able).
Oddly, though, that once-in-a-lifetime experience wasn't my lasting Broadway takeaway from the trip. Nope. That honor goes to the production happening literally the next block over, which we weren't even able to get in and see for ourselves. We and millions of other Americans are alike in that regard, because the bespoken production is the most unprecedented theater phenomenon I've witnessed in my lifetime -- and I suspect quite a few people in the older generations can say the same. As you can tell from this trip being my only Broadway expedition to date, I'm far from the savviest person on the theater scene (I still to date haven't seen Phantom of the Opera OR Les Miserables in any form in their entirety, much to my sister's shame), so tolerate that I'm a late bloomer with these things, and appreciate how monumentally my small-scale, personal, day to day music life has been altered for the better:
Oddly, though, that once-in-a-lifetime experience wasn't my lasting Broadway takeaway from the trip. Nope. That honor goes to the production happening literally the next block over, which we weren't even able to get in and see for ourselves. We and millions of other Americans are alike in that regard, because the bespoken production is the most unprecedented theater phenomenon I've witnessed in my lifetime -- and I suspect quite a few people in the older generations can say the same. As you can tell from this trip being my only Broadway expedition to date, I'm far from the savviest person on the theater scene (I still to date haven't seen Phantom of the Opera OR Les Miserables in any form in their entirety, much to my sister's shame), so tolerate that I'm a late bloomer with these things, and appreciate how monumentally my small-scale, personal, day to day music life has been altered for the better:
While on Broadway, I discovered Hamilton.
Well, I guess not technically. Because I don't live in a vacuum, I of course had some general awareness of composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop musical about America's "ten-dollar founding father without a father." I'd seen snippets of a 60 Minutes feature about it, had seen Miranda carpool karaoke it with James Corden, and most impressively, had heard it discussed during the last twelve months or so in reverent tones, by some of the unlikeliest people I'd have ever imagined to care about such a thing. That these ripples existed, and were able to reach me way out on the far outskirts of theater "know," signaled to me that Hamilton was already something different entirely.
So when we drifted into a Broadway store in a Hakuna Matata daze and I happened to see the Hamilton cast album on a shelf , I figured that "when in Rome," I might as well see what all the uproar was about. I popped it into the CD player during the drive leaving NY, and suddenly I find myself here ten days later, attempting to flawlessly karaoke hip-hop lyrics about the Battle of Yorktown (or, more accurately, the lyrics of all three principal leads, simultaneously), without any explanation as to how. The CD being without a warning label, I was unaware and unprepared for the all-consuming effect it's had on my life in the time since the Broadway shop. I get that I'm far from the first to discover this, but with only the evidence of the cast recording to go on, I want to state for the record that this thing is, in a word, flawless.
Besides chronicling the majority of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's remarkable adult life, rising and falling through his pivotal role in the tumult of the American Revolution and the subsequent implementation of the government system that's come down to us in the years since, the musical has some of the most ingenious and densely-packed writing I've ever come across in any form, and is actually in many senses a love letter to writing itself (you can understand my attraction). That it also accomplishes all these things through the use of race-blind casting and 21st century hip-hop sensibilities isn't just a novelty trick to put bodies in seats or gain a spot atop the charts -- it's integral to what Hamilton's all about. To paraphrase Lin-Manuel Miranda's own words, it's a perfect synergy of America NOW telling a story about America THEN.
Listening to Miranda and his castmates rap battle and freestyle in debates about government control, the United States' uncertain role in foreign affairs, and the devastating effects of gun violence in the form of both war and honor duels -- when a black actor portraying Vice President Aaron Burr drops a showstopper angrily bemoaning how he's left out of "The Room Where It Happens" as country-changing deals are cut inside without his inclusion -- it becomes harder and harder to delineate where that line between then/now even actually is.
Listening to Miranda and his castmates rap battle and freestyle in debates about government control, the United States' uncertain role in foreign affairs, and the devastating effects of gun violence in the form of both war and honor duels -- when a black actor portraying Vice President Aaron Burr drops a showstopper angrily bemoaning how he's left out of "The Room Where It Happens" as country-changing deals are cut inside without his inclusion -- it becomes harder and harder to delineate where that line between then/now even actually is.
Most haunting, both in my first listen and the near-incessant listenings that have come since, is General George Washington's warning to Hamilton that "I know that we can win/I know that greatness lies in you/But remember from here on in/History has its eyes on you." It's a reminder to his young right-hand-man that every subsequent decision he makes, public and private, big and small, historical and personal, will be remembered and scrutinized by the generations to come. How, then, should he act, given this warning?
How, then, should we?
When generations look back at us in their history-teacher-approved textbooks, how will what's printed remember what it is we've been seeing on our TV screens? What's going to be our legacy? It's a problem that vexed our founding men and women themselves as they navigated their own powder keg atmosphere, the ramifications of which changed the face of the earth in its burning, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that we continue their struggle with it.
Works of lightning-in-a-bottle, straight-up, flat-out (and any other way you want) sheer genius like Hamilton, while helpfully reminding us of this legacy, are therefore more important to me for another reason altogether. They are instances where art -- where creativity and passion and talent and even love -- fulfills its most inspirational role of uniting people... of taking human experiences (of which Alexander Hamilton's was unquestionably one), warts and all, and alchemizing them into something universal and remarkable. That is a legacy to be proud of.
Ironically, I'm jumping onto the Hamiltrain here right at a close of sorts: although the show goes on stronger than ever, it will do so without Lin-Manuel Miranda and a sizable part of the cast, who don their revolutionary gear for the final time tonight, actually, before leaving to pursue other projects for a stretch. Mr. Miranda et al, please allow this to be my Alexander Hamilton-length thank you letter for reminding us all how music, theater, words retain their most important power, even -- especially -- amidst historical happenings like ours. So go. Get out there. Come up with your own.
How, then, should we?
When generations look back at us in their history-teacher-approved textbooks, how will what's printed remember what it is we've been seeing on our TV screens? What's going to be our legacy? It's a problem that vexed our founding men and women themselves as they navigated their own powder keg atmosphere, the ramifications of which changed the face of the earth in its burning, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that we continue their struggle with it.
Works of lightning-in-a-bottle, straight-up, flat-out (and any other way you want) sheer genius like Hamilton, while helpfully reminding us of this legacy, are therefore more important to me for another reason altogether. They are instances where art -- where creativity and passion and talent and even love -- fulfills its most inspirational role of uniting people... of taking human experiences (of which Alexander Hamilton's was unquestionably one), warts and all, and alchemizing them into something universal and remarkable. That is a legacy to be proud of.
Ironically, I'm jumping onto the Hamiltrain here right at a close of sorts: although the show goes on stronger than ever, it will do so without Lin-Manuel Miranda and a sizable part of the cast, who don their revolutionary gear for the final time tonight, actually, before leaving to pursue other projects for a stretch. Mr. Miranda et al, please allow this to be my Alexander Hamilton-length thank you letter for reminding us all how music, theater, words retain their most important power, even -- especially -- amidst historical happenings like ours. So go. Get out there. Come up with your own.
Don't throw away your shot.
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