How do you write like you need it to survive?: A love letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda

"And when my prayers to God were met with indifference / I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance." -- Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hurricane

Disclaimer: This review is constructed upon my personal reaction to the musical. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I would also like to point out that this review is not historically informed. All opinions have been formed based on my interpretation of Miranda's Alexander Hamilton character. 

Unsurprisingly, the people to whom I most look up are writers. By extension, I love writing that is about writers. I love books about writers, movies about writers, TV shows about writers -- and, as of recently, musicals about writers. Because that's what Hamilton: An American Musical is all about: Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant, a Founding Father, and a political genius, but most importantly, a writer. When I first listened to Hamilton, I did it because I love history and I love musicals, yet it’s not this that now has me willing to commit unquestioned first-degree murder for Hamilton’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda: it’s the writing. Miranda’s lyrical genius, Hamilton’s legendary writing ability, the musical’s celebration of the power of words; I’m a sucker for it all.

Lin-Manuel Miranda became my favourite writer after his commencement speech at UPenn in May, in which he talks about stories and the choices we make while telling them. While I loved what he said, what really attracted me was the way in which he said it. Miranda has a stunning talent for choosing and putting words together “in a really specific order”, and Hamilton was a constant case of, “That’s such a great line -- I wish I’d been responsible for it”. You can tell how joyful Miranda is about writing, how eager he is to make wonderful things with words. How does he write like he’s running out of time? How does he write like he needs it to survive? How does he write every second he’s alive? His respect and care for the craft are truly something else.

What I find fascinating about Hamilton is that Miranda chose not to attack his Grammy, Tony Award, and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical as a simple showcase of historical events, but rather to present it as the story of a man who loved to write. Alexander Hamilton was a revolutionary in the obvious political sense, but he also revolutionised the way in which words could be used to make change. Even as a kid, Hamilton was using words to get places; Miranda explains, “after a hurricane destroys the island [Hamilton] was from, he wrote a poem about the wreckage; consequently, wealthy people on the island recognized how good the poem was and were like: let’s get this kid an education”. Writing became Hamilton’s weapon of choice, something the song Hurricane articulates best:

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…

I would give my right arm to have written that last couplet myself, but I digress. Hamilton emphasises Hamilton’s proficiency and prolificity, but it also pays homage to Hamilton’s depence on his abilities. Non-Stop chronicles Hamilton’s six-hour speech at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the 51 essays he contributed to the Federalist Papers; The Reynolds Pamphlet cuts Hamilton’s 90-page-essay defending his extramarital affair with Maria Reynolds down to a two-minute trap song; Burn describes how Hamilton initially seduced his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton:

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

But it’s this lyric from Hurricane that embodies how desperately Hamilton clung to his ability to write:

I’ll write my way out / Overwhelm them with honesty / This is the eye of the hurricane, this is the only / Way I can protect my legacy…

Writing was the only way he could protect his legacy, but writing destroyed it, too -- “this is a guy who wrote his way out of his circumstances, wrote his way into power, and also wrote his way to ruin”. Hamilton published the Reynolds Pamphlet hoping it would save his political career, but in clearing his name, Hamilton also ruined his life.¹ His greatest skill ended up being his greatest weakness, captured in this parallel lyric from Burn:

You and your words, obsessed with your legacy / Your sentences border on senseless / And you are paranoid in every paragraph / How they perceive you…

Finally, writing wasn’t enough. Hamilton’s follies, the pamphlets he published hoping to protect his legacy, instead erased it from history, reducing him to nothing but the man on the ten-dollar bill.

Hamilton: An American Musical is about writing, but it’s mostly about words. When we analyse the foundations of American constitutionalism, we can see Hamilton’s lasting influence on contemporary politics, yet we rarely acknowledge it, because even though he wrote himself into power, he also wrote himself out of it; he unintentionally erased himself from the narrative. His success can be attributed to his penmanship, but his fall from grace, and even his death, are also direct consequences of it.² When he used words wisely, the heights he could reach were limitless, but when he was reckless, when he expected words to fix everything just because he wrote them, the mark he had made on the world stayed, but his name in the credits disappeared.

200 years after his death, Hamilton has finally reemerged into the cultural spotlight; because of Lin-Manuel Miranda, we have entered a long-overdue Alexander Hamilton renaissance. To a backdrop of contemporary music, Miranda has done exactly what Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton worked tirelessly to do for the rest of her life after her husband’s death: eloquently, exquisitely, inarguably, Lin has written Alexander Hamilton back into the narrative. In showcasing the mark Hamilton made on the world, Lin has left a mark on the world himself, and that is why Lin-Manuel Miranda is my favourite writer; that is why I can’t get all my favourite Hamilton songs out of my head. When we write, we have the power to change the world. I’m so glad Lin is out there, using words to make his mark just like Alex did.

WORKS CITED

ARTICLES/WEBPAGES

• “A letter from Alexander Hamilton Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams ESQ.” Conservapedia: The Trustworthy Encyclopedia. 12 July 2016. Web. 30 July 2016.
• Federici, Michael. "The Legacy of Alexander Hamilton." The Imaginative Conservative. N.p., 12 July 2012. Web. 30 July 2016.
• "“Jefferson Is in Every View Less Dangerous than Burr”: Hamilton on the Election of 1800." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 July 2016.
• Miranda, Lin-Manuel. "Lin-Manuel Miranda -- Hurricane Lyrics." Genius. N.p., 2 Nov. 2015. Web. 26 July 2016. Quote cited is from an annotation Miranda added to the lyric sheet.
• Prokop, Andrew. "The Reynolds Pamphlet, Explained: Why Alexander Hamilton Printed His Sex Scandal's Details." Vox. N.p., 28 Dec. 2015. Web. 30 July 2016.
• "The Life and Legacy of Alexander Hamilton." The Life and Legacy of Alexander Hamilton. Social Studies for Kids, n.d. Web. 30 July 2016.
• Sumarsono, Jacklyn. "The Legacy of Alexander Hamilton." Prezi. Prezi, 10 June 2016. Web. 30 July 2016.

SONGS

• Miranda, Lin-Manuel, Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Hurricane. Original Broadway Cast of Album. Alex Lacamoire, 2015. MP3.
• Miranda, Lin-Manuel., Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr., Anthony Ramos, Christopher Jackson, Okieriete Onaodowan, and Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton. Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Alex Lacamoire, 2015. MP3.
• Odom, Leslie, Jr., Lin-Manuel Miranda, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Christopher Jackson, and Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Non-Stop. Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Alex Lacamoire, 2015. MP3.
• Odom, Leslie, Jr., Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. A Winter’s Ball. Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Alex Lacamoire, 2015.
• Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story. Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Alex Lacamoire, 2015. MP3.
• Soo, Phillipa. Burn. Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. Alex Lacamoire, 2015. MP3.

WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES

• "Alexander Hamilton." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 August 2016. Web. 2 August 2016.
• “Constitutional Convention (United States).” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 July 2016. Web. 30 July 2016.
• “Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 July 2016. Web. 30 July 2016.
• “The Federalist Papers.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 25 July 2016. Web. 30 July 2016.
• “Hamilton-Reynolds sex scandal.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 28 July 2016. Web. 30 July 2016.

YOUTUBE VIDEOS

• Deena Wawer. “The Making of the Hamilton Cast Album.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 3 June 2016. Web. 23 July 2016.
• Totally Emma Watson. “Emma Watson interviews Lin-Manuel Miranda for HeForShe Arts Week.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 17 March 2016. Web. 23 July 2016.
• University of Pennsylvania. “Penn's 2016 Commencement Ceremony- Commencement Speaker Lin-Manuel Miranda.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 16 May 2016. Web. 22 July 2016.

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1 There is actually a slight chronological error in Hamilton; the document that really ruined Hamilton’s reputation was the Adams Pamphlet, in which Hamilton committed what is widely regarded by historians as political suicide by publicly criticising President John Adams, “the only other significant member” of the Federalist Party. Hamilton published the Adams Pamphlet after the Reynolds Pamphlet, but Miranda exercised his artistic license to flip the chronology. ^↩
2 Historically, in the presidential election of 1804, Hamilton had to chose between Thomas Jefferson, a direct rival whose principles directly opposed his own, and Aaron Burr, an estranged friend, but a man with, seemingly, no principles at all. In the end, Hamilton wrote a series of letters in which he endorsed Jefferson, enraging Burr. The final straw was Hamilton’s crusade against Burr’s campaign for governor of New York, as he claimed Burr to be unworthy of the position. Incensed, Burr challenged Hamilton to the duel that would end the latter’s life. Miranda chose to leave the spat over the governor position out of Hamilton, and have Burr challenge Hamilton to the duel after the snub in the 1801 election. ^↩