Hamilton Is the Power of Language

The lights, the sounds, the food and cultures, the wealth, the grit--New York is like no place on Earth. I haven't been everywhere, and likely never will of course, but I've traveled enough in and out of the country to know. I once wrote in a novel of mine that people always say big cities aren't friendly. I think the opposite is true. I think it's the friendliest place to be. Where can you find yourself eating the largest piece of five-layer chocolate cake at midnight, followed by the thickest slice of pizza right after and watch life as if it were midday? That's what New York is: Alive. Throw in seeing the hottest musical of our day, and you know you're alive. You know you're seeing history being made. You know you're a part of it. You know, unequivocally, that America is changing. That the face of America and what is means to be American is changing. Has changed. Will be changed forever. That I, too, am changed. That's what Hamilton made me feel. 

God damn! Where to begin. Let's just start with the music. The hip-hop story-telling of something we've only looked at through dry and boring textbooks suddenly became the most poignant story ever told. To remember what speech and writing could once REALLY do. How one person with so much passion and drive could do. What thinking could do. Follow-through. Persistence. Without such people, nothing changes. Without such people who knows what this country would have been, if anything. It's fascinating to think about that.

And it's also fascinating to think about the person who created it too, here and now, a story so long ago, filled with all the poignancy of today. Lin-Manuel Miranda's gift of writing! His gift of the written word! The blending of cultures and story-tellers, America has a new face. And it's both recognizable and unrecognizable at once. Oh! How exciting. This musical, then, to me, is all about writing, and the effect the power of words can have, then, now, always.

​What struck me most as a writer myself, and of course a romantic, watching Hamilton was Hamilton, himself, as a writer. He used words to incite change, every time. Essays, of course, speeches and discourse, of course, but the love letters. Damn. Those love letters to women. In a digital age world, we often hear people mourn the loss of letter writing, but we still have it. It's still so important. We write letters to one another every day in emails, texts, and messages. It's no different when someone writes us poetry or words or lines or paragraphs--they're letters. Isn't how we still fall in love with someone so often? Through their words? Love is attraction through language. It's cerebral. It's always been that way.   Eliza's song states:

I saved every letter you wrote me
From the moment I read them
I knew you were mine
You said you were mine
I thought you were mine

Do you know what Angelica said when we saw your first letter arrive?
She said:
"Be careful with that one, love
He will do what it takes to survive"

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

And there I sat, thinking about all the love "letters" I've gotten, have gotten, will get, and each time I want to give up writing, I realize, without writing, without the construct and beauty of words, we are nothing. Even when we fall. Even when we sin. Even when we love more than one person at the same time. Even when our hearts are broken.

We can use words in any way we choose, but when we use them for the ultimate, to love, when someone knows how to write, and write well, we are convinced they are special. We are convinced that we are special, because they've made us so through language. It's what Shakespeare meant when he wrote:  Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

Everything about Hamilton is about language and words and their power. And I'm powerless now but to be changed forever. ​​