Hamilton: A Musical & My Inspiration

I recently confessed to planning an entire trip to New York City around a preschooler. Housing, excursions, food…It was all for her. With the exception of Tuesday night. Because while our daily itinerary was planned around her, she was not the reason for the trip. Hamilton was the reason for trip. Ok, fine. My obsession with Hamilton was the reason for the trip.

You can explain Hamilton in one sentence. Hamilton is a new musical on Broadway about one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. You can explain Hamilton in a thousand sentences. And even a thousand sentences, based on the endless articles, tv interviews, books, upcoming documentary, and record breaking ticket sales, isn’t enough to fully convey the extraordinary phenomenon that is Hamilton. It is the hottest ticket in New York City and my personal inspiration for over a year.

I first heard about Hamilton from my parents in Atlanta. During our weekly Facetime, they mentioned watching a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about a new musical off-Broadway that I’d probably like given my love of theater and American history. It was about a founding father and used rap and hip hop music. They couldn’t remember the creator’s name during the conversation, but they knew he’d written both the score and the lyrics. I knew immediately who they had to be talking about. Lin-Manuel Miranda. I had the soundtrack to his first musical In the Heights. I’d watched his improvised Tony acceptance rap on YouTube a few times. I’d loved his guest spot on House.

I went on YouTube and found the Sunday Morning segment.

This segment was posted on YouTube on March 8, 2015, so my obsession with Hamilton has lasted fifteen months and is still going strong.

After watching the CBS report, I began hunting the internet for articles, clips, interviews, anything related to Hamilton. I’d manage to go a few weeks without typing “Hamilton Musical” into the search box. Just long enough for there to be new hits when I inevitably sent Google scouring again.

I’ve never been one to fangirl. I have loved movies and cheered in the stands for a favorite team. But I’ve never painted my entire face and worn a giant foam hat chanting in unison in below freezing temperatures. I’ve never spent six months salary on replica Storm Troopers costume and blaster. I’ve never loved anything enough to wait in line for more than one hour.

Until Hamilton.

In late September my husband asked what I wanted for our anniversary. “There’s only one thing I want. To see Hamilton on Broadway.” I said this with zero expectation it would happen. I answered honestly to let him off the hook from having to shop for a present I’d certainly appreciate but wouldn’t have desperately wanted. I’d accepted my contact with Hamilton would be through the cast album and YouTube videos. Planning a trip from Brazil to New York City with a four-year old just to see a musical was totally ridiculous.

A week later my husband said “Let’s do it. Let’s go to New York.”

I immediately called my parents. If there was a chance for this to work we’d need babysitters. I love my kid, but if she threw a tantrum in the middle of Act I, it would be a life threatening situation for her. Fortunately, my parents are always up for a trip north of the Mason-Dixon line.

I bought our Hamilton tickets on October 20, 2015 for May 24, 2016. I’d have to wait seven months, but I was able to buy the tickets directly from the box office at face value. At the time, I had no idea what a huge deal that would turn out to be. I must have been the last average person to get seats at face value. By the time I posted pictures of the event on Facebook, the most common response was some version of “How the hell did you get tickets?!”

With everything booked and paid for, the only thing left to do was cross my fingers and hope that on Tuesday, May 24, 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda would be in excellent health and onstage. For as amazing as the musical seemed, seeing Miranda perform was equally important to me. He’d become an unwitting mentor to my fledgling writing career.

At the same time as Hamilton was debuting off-Broadway in early 2015, I quit my job as a teacher to devote myself to writing and publishing my first novel. I was anxious. I was antsy. I’d given myself two years to get an agent. I announced this to family and friends not realizing that two years is a laughably short time in the publishing world. Congressional cycles come faster than novel debuts. But I was ignorant of the alternate reality publishing exists in and worried that at 32 years old I was running out of time to build a career.

When I was at my highest levels of anxiety, I’d rewatch a segment on Hamilton done by MSNBC. (Seriously, I’ve watched hours of Hamilton content on YouTube.) Miranda is asked what advice he’d give his younger self, and he says “Life is long not short…To really get it right, you think ‘Oh my gosh, look at this amazing first draft’ then you realize what ten whacks at it can do to it.” In the same interview, Miranda reveals he spent one year writing “My Shot”. One year for one song.

This was a crucial lesson I hadn’t yet learned about creative genius. It doesn’t happen in the first draft. Oh, the foundation might be there. The roots of something amazing may have taken hold but what is considered great is never someone’s first draft. Great work requires patience. That was a revelation.

Suddenly all the advice about getting beta readers and critique partners and the moaning of authors on twitter about fourth and fifth drafts weren’t the words of struggling writers but the necessary practices of good writers. No book sitting on a shelf at a book store is a first draft.

Confession. I made it through high school with top grades and never wrote a second draft. I thought second drafts were for losers. Turns out I didn’t know everything at eighteen.

Because here’s Miranda, a Tony Award winner who can improvise a mind blowing acceptance speech in verse, saying it took him a year to write one song. Another article mentioned how he was tweaking lyrics right up until the recording of the cast album. The New York times talked about how he struggled to write the ending going through multiple versions. The book Hamilton: The Revolution is about the years of collaboration and work that went into Hamilton.

Those years paid off. Hamilton was the most amazing theater experience of my life. I was in tears before the opening number was over. It was epic because every detail was right. I remember the way the lights changed at a stomp of King George’s foot to fabulous comedic effect. I remember Jefferson’s truly spectacular purple ensemble for his grand entrance in Act II. The intensity with which Leslie Odom Jr. delivered every line. Miranda’s complete breakdown after Hamilton’s forgiven by his wife. The banjo in “Room Where it Happens”. God, I love that banjo. The ensemble member who traces the trajectory of that fatal bullet in slow motion. It was all perfect.

And that level of perfection takes patience. You can’t nail every detail at the same time. You have to tweak them one by one over the course of weeks, months, and years with constant feedback and help. I’m trying to keep that in mind when I grit my teeth at the prospect of reworking my first chapter for the tenth time. When I get feedback from an editor saying this is great just rework these parts, and I’m so very tempted to interpret this is “this is great” as “this is good enough” and be done with it. Patience is a challenge for me. Accepting that “life is long” and I do have years to get it right is very difficult for me.

Thankfully, I have Miranda and Hamilton for inspiration to remind me that good enough is not great. I can just listen to his words. Or read his book. Wear the t-shirt. Look at the poster. Drink from the mug. Or the water bottle…

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