Years ago, before it became a cultural colossus and while it was still playing at the Public Theater, my family and I saw the musical Hamilton. We got there by chance, really. My father had given us theater tickets for Christmas and asked me to pick a show. I didn’t know much about Hamilton at the time, but it seemed to check enough boxes that each Pearson would find at least something that would make the experience enjoyable.
Of course, our minds were blown. And, also quite by accident, we happened to attend on an evening where there was a “talk back” after the performance. As you probably know, most of the music in the show is rap and hip hop—and the first question asked of Lin Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton was this: why did he choose that style of music to tell the story of the founders of the nation?
Miranda’s response was beautiful. He said that he had grown up listening to that style of music, and he asserted that we all especially love the music we listen to as young adults because we have so many intense feelings when we’re that age. And he said that the paradigm he used to structure the show was a mix tape (on a Maxell cassette!); a mix tape for someone with whom he had fallen in love. So all the yearning and desire of young love was poured into the score: a soul number here, rap there, a ballad to slow things down. All compiled and created to say, “I love you so much!”
The music of youth is an appropriate vehicle for the lives of young audacious patriots in a young audacious country. But it was the emphasis on love in his answer that reminded me of the energy that is the genesis of all creation. A piece of theater, a musical composition, a new relationship or a new democracy; love is the force that pulls something new out of what once was.
With gratitude for the Love that creates us and the love we create,
