Now it's April.
I got my COVID19 vaccine a few days ago, my second dose is in four weeks. Moderna vaccine side effects have worn off. Camp NaNoWriMo just started. And I'm listening to the beautiful sounds of Zendaya on my newest playlist on my iTunes library. I just added it to my iPod.
And I woke up today thinking dad is home, and he's safe. Until after turning down my blanket, I realized dad's gone. Better not tell mom.
But it feels awkward.
But after playing the first half of the Hamilton playlist while working, I actually feel mellow. I feel numb. I feel pretty much human.
And when I see my @RachelBeth99 Twitter profile, I notice my pinned tweet.
But really, this is how it all started from the beginning, of why I put down the Hamilton soundtrack, then listened to it again straight through. Again. And again. Then made this playlist.
It started with this video.
It also reminded me of the Stephen Colbert interview on Late Show where he talked about Anthony Bourdain in his book about self affirmations, self care, and hope. That was G'morning, G'night, and it ended up being the book that saved my life too. But my search and journey of research brought me to this. The musical Hamilton is actually saving me grief, getting me to laugh again, and helping me get through my dad passing away from heart complications in his sleep while he was in surgery.
Like Alicia Keys helped Sampha with the loss of his mother with her story of the birth of her son, writing the song "3 Hour Drive" in the documentary episode of the Netflix series Song Exploder, I feel like this is going to help me with losing my dad. At the time Hamilton was on Broadway, Lin-Manuel Miranda's wife was pregnant, and she had her first son. It was Miranda's first time being a father, which might have become hard on him to perform as Founding Father Alexander Hamilton because of the emotional scenes in Act II. Such as, the scene where Hamilton's firstborn son, Philip, his favorite son, dies at 19 years old in a duel, and also the scene where Hamilton is contemplating "how to say goodbye" when he's faced with his own death at the hand of former Vice President Aaron Burr.
Even the song "One Last Time" kind of gets me because President George Washington was much like a second father to Alexander Hamilton, especially since Hamilton's mother was abandoned by his father when he was very little, and then orphaned at 14. In another interview, Lin-Manuel Miranda said, "They both got sick, he survived, she never got better. Hamilton was faced with death every day of his life."
This is all backed by biographers and historians. The musical is historical fiction, but it is a precursor to facts in our own American history. U.S. history and world history were two of my mom's favorite subjects, my boyfriend's too.
It kind of reminds me of the relationship between fathers and sons, or fathers and daughters, in my case. It gets pretty emotional for me, like the song I mentioned in my previous post, which goes, "Here's to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem, here's to the hearts that ache, here's to the mess we make..." It's from La La Land, my favorite song from that movie, of course. Also written like a Broadway musical, but still a normal Hollywood movie that has Ryan Gosling. But I do love Emma Stone.
But still, this interview left them all behind. In the video, the first thing he does when he sits down in front of Chris Jones, Miranda takes off his shoes because he says he's more "honest" and more likely "to tell the truth more" with his shoes off and sitting down in just jeans, t shirt, suit jacket, and socks. That's really what he does in an interview.
Hey! Make yourself at home! That's fine with me. Also, I always write with my shoes off when I'm home! I never wear shoes in my own house... or apartment... home, call it what you will, I'm running around in socks all the time when I'm writing on my bed, I have no real desk, I have a tiny fold out table. I want a real writing desk, dammit.
But instead, I was in the back of the choir. Same when I was in our senior year production, Bye Bye, Birdie. In an interview with the Rockefeller Foundation, Lin-Manuel Miranda played the role of Conrad Birdie in a gold jacket his grandma made for him in his high school play.
Anyway, here are the highlights that Miranda said that actually, dun dun dahhhhhh, PROVED my thoughts discussed in King of Broadway is Dead correct:
In the video above, he takes off his shoes at 8:55.
At 9:56, he says that the Broadway theatre was a madhouse the very last month of the Original Cast production before Miranda left the Richard Rodgers stage for the last time. He had to make an incognito escape through the adjacent theatre playing Shuffle Along on 45th Street, because of the barricade that he was afraid of: "It became very unsafe for me to leave through the stage door. I'd have little kids in the front, and even if I said, 'Please don't rush,' I'd see those kids get crushed." (Awwww, poor guy! I feel for you. Those poor children.)
11:37- Here it is, guys: "I think the moment I realized this thing is a musical was towards the end of the second chapter (Ron Chernow's biography). Chernow posts one of the first writings of Hamilton, who's about 14 years old, all of what you listed has already happened, and he writes a letter to his good friend Ned Stevens. And he says... and I'm paraphrasing... 'I may be said to be building castles in the air, and I hope you won't think less of me. But we have seen such schemes successful when the projector is constant. I shall conclude by saying that I wish there was a war.' And that's the best musical character you can hope for!"
That's the rap music part, guys, the DMX, the Eminem, Skeelo's "I Wish", LLCoolJ, Jay-Z, all of it in one sentence: "...such schemes successful when the projector is constant... I wish there was a war."
Rise up. And his right hand man. Boom.
Uhhhhhhhh.....
12:41: "It's that drive, that irrepressible drive... That kind of idealism... 'I'm not gonna stop until I get the thing I'm imagining in my head.' And then, what undercuts it is that sentence, '...I wish there was a war," which is the most adolescent thing ever written. But it also speaks to his awareness of his situation. He's broke and he's from nowhere, and the only way to rise, when you're in that position, is military glory."
Hey, Ginger, sound familiar to you???
"Please, sir, I want some more..."
I was in that musical. Twice. When my dad played Mr. Bumble in community theatre, and the second time junior year of high school. I really wanted to play this character, though:
I was Nancy in "The Telephone Hour". I sang a solo in one song. And during "Sincere", I adlibbed only one line that was not in the script: "MARRY ME!" And in the Ed Sullivan Show scene, I used to have a Marry Me, Conrad poster I made out of pink construction paper and colored pencils, and it's now starting to fade.
I was the best actress in Perry Hall High School that nobody's heard of. There is no way in hell I'll ever live that down, for I was most well known as "Most Dramatic" because I was being called a flighty crazy bitch for threatening people if they bullied me and called me names like stupid bitch and Rolling Rachel or Pippi Longstocking because my bangs curled out like hangers, which is why I grew out my bangs a long time ago. Even though my dad loved my bangs.
So why did I have no date to prom? Why do you think my only option was to go with a group of friends who shoved me with someone who bullied me in 9th grade Spanish class, who I still hate to this day because he practically ruined prom for me with his stupid apology, "Sorry I didn't get you a corsage, Rachel, but I guess I'm your date," before I gave him a look that could kill?
Because they all hated me! I tried and tried to convince my dad to see my side, he didn't, because he kept saying, "They are teasing you because they LIKE you!"
Bull. Shit. They hated me! The only friends from high school I still have are Rose Davis, who's a year younger than me, and Josh Blaine, a year older, from middle school.
I guess that's why I say in my song: "Everyone is married, everyone is married, what do I do when all my friends wanna have babies... Everyone is married, what do I do when I'm the only single lady?" This is sung in a sing-song fashion, but kind of in the same style of Meghan Trainor. Think "Dear Future Husband" but in an angrier feminist way where the girl ends up being, "Leave me alone, Prince Charming, you lazy bum of an asshole, you're too late, I'm gonna be so much happier being single! I don't need a man! Being single's better than being married! HA HA! Down with men!"
But after my dad died, I took a very hard look at life, a look at COVID19, and I started thinking terrible thoughts, really bad ones that kept me up almost all night long.
I don't want to be alone. I want to wake up next to a cuddly someone. Someone full of light and love and sweetness. I want someone to hold me when I have a nightmare and tell me I'm going to be ok.
It also made me realize that millions all over the world died of Corona Virus, so many died of other problems too. And I never gave my dad a son-in-law. My dad would have been THE BEST GRANDPA IN THE WORLD. My dad is never going to see his grandchildren. I wish I still had grandparents.
So in a few years, I want to be married. And I want to get pregnant. I want to be a mom one day. I feel so cathartic with Eliza Hamilton right now.
Also, this speech in the same video kills me:
13:45- "Well, he's succeeded... The next four presidents do not have a ton of love for Alexander Hamilton. There's John Adams, who he wrote a screed against while he was in office. Then comes Thomas Jefferson, his best friend- said no one, ever. Then James Madison, his other 'best friend', who actually was friends with him for a time, but then fell into political disagreements with him... Then John Quincy Adams, the son of the guy he talked smack about! So that's four people in charge of the country who don't want to see this guy remembered well. So, it drives home the lesson, which is, it's not even about what you do in your life; it's about who survives you. And you could have done incredible things in your life and career, but if those in your life don't tell your story, it's like it never happened."
Chris Jones: "Can you not worry about it?"
Lin-Manuel Miranda: "You can't worry about it. I can't worry about it! I don't think you can either- you have your writings, you will have your incredible reviews... You know, the takeaway, we end Hamilton with Hamilton's extraordinary wife, Eliza, who lives another half-century, who does incredible things in her own right, and dedicates herself to his legacy. And it's even more tragic in real life, she's pushing her kids to write the definitive biography on her husband. She passes away before that project is done, so she never leaves to see that happen. One of her sons does eventually write the biography, but she doesn't live to see it. So, we also are survived by the people who love us. and tell stories about us, and keep our love alive. I think about it every time I see one of Roger Ebert's wife's tweets! (applause) I was a film nerd before I was a theatre nerd! And I would read the entire book of reviews every year when it was updated every year. I could recite his no-star review of North by Rob Reiner, which is one of the best written destructions of a movie I've ever read! And that's how we're survived, by the people who love us and tell our stories."
Holy shit. That's how Jane Austen got published! She never married, never had children, how did her stories get printed? How did they get into bookstores? Her brother Henry did that. And her sister Cassandra also helped her with writing the final words of Persuasion, Sanditon, and The Watsons, but the last two novels I mentioned were never finished because Jane Austen died too young of an illness that was most likely Addison's.
No. No. No. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
And finally, the mention of Aaron Burr and Mozart in Amadeus. Miranda is a film nerd, so of course he saw the Milos Forman movie about Mozart and Salieri, I KNEW IT!
16:43- "By the way, we all don't know when we're going to die. So, it becomes about, how do you respond to that news? How often are you aware of that fact? And I think Hamilton and Burr were both people who were acutely aware of it and responded to it in different ways. And so, in constructing their relationship, we look to models but there isn't really one... It's not a pursuant and pursued, it's not Salieri and Mozart, because they're both equally brilliant men. It's not one's edifice of the other's genius. (YES! That's what I said in the Mozart episode!) It's one's edifice of the other's temperament."
That's what led me to that tweet at the beginning of the post.
And then, my dear friend Grace, who writes historical fiction and is a humongous Hamilton nerd, said this on the Twitter:
What have I done! I hath created a monster!!! I'm doomed, I tell you, doomed.
The musical I thought I was going to hate actually turned around and said, "I can heal you of your wounds. Let me show you..."
Lesson learned. Sometimes musicals like this can help you heal from grief and bereavement. Because it's that level of catharsis, love, hope, and healing that can mend my soul after my dad passed away.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, I adore you. You made me fall in love with Broadway musicals all over again. You also turned me into a Hamilton fan by force, despite the fact that I resisted and resisted you over and over.
I owe you a huge debt. You saved my life. You are beautiful. Gracias por vida. Te quiero, siempre.
I'll see you when In the Heights comes out in theatres. I'm really excited, I'll be first in line to get a movie ticket.
G'night. Oiche mhaith. Slainte.
-The Lady in the Blue Box
P.S. If you want to read the actual letter that I sent by fan mail to THE Lin-Manuel Miranda himself, it's written in poetry format, and you can find it in this link >>>
Love you, Twittervale!
Playlist selection- This is probably my favorite recording of Common's style of rap, and I'm a big Ingrid Michaelson fan, she's friends with Sara Bareilles and they both got their big break in the music industry at the same time, almost.
This is also on the All Things Considered Hamilton playlist, and on my iPod that has even more songs contributing to the "Lin-Manuel Miranda 2020 Tribute" playlist, which also includes music from In the Heights, Jimmy Fallon and The Roots, Pharrell, Daft Punk, Justin Timberlake, Karmin, and more.
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