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I really think this song works best if you hear it the first time not knowing it's coming. So I'm spoiler-cutting the entire entry. Once again, "Hamilton" refers to the character in the play, not the historical person, unless I say otherwise.
The song I wrote about in the previous post as writing my soul into a song was “Hurricane.” In the context of the play, it’s about an impending scandal. But it’s also the song that’s most directly about Hamilton as writer, and how he creates his life by writing it into existence. But it starts on a completely (well, or at least seemingly) different note and subject:
In the eye of a hurricane
There is quiet
For just a moment
A yellow sky
In the delicate, hushed melody (the peace in the eye of the hurricane) the first time they’re sung, I find them the most beautiful lines in the entire play. They’re so simple and so absolutely perfect. “A yellow sky”— just three words, but so evocative, beautiful and terrifying.
The verse makes me think of haiku in its deceptive simplicity. It seems easy but it isn’t. Simple and perfect is hard— often harder than complexity and cleverness. I wonder if Miranda also thought of haiku. It doesn’t have the right syllables, but it has the feel, the short lines, the short verse, the seasonal reference, the delicacy, the immense emotion hitting harder because it’s unspoken, and the themes of mortality and humanity’s helplessness before death and nature.
Tabi ni yande
yume wa kareno o
kakemeguru
Falling ill on a journey
my dreams go wandering
over withered fields
- Matsuo Basho
And then Hamilton puts himself back into the picture, no longer an onlooker but an actor, and an actor in a very specific way. The music becomes fiercer, determined, frantic, arrogant - he DID write his life into existence, of course he can do it again. That's what he does. That's who he is.
I wrote my way out
I wrote my way out of hell
I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance
I literally did that. Exactly that. I wrote my way out of hell. I wrote letter after letter, one a day for six months until I won my own deliverance with a pen, like Hamilton, writing my way into America.
If anything defines me, it’s that. I write my way out. I write the life I want into existence. I don’t create new financial systems, but I wrote myself a very successful small business. I wrote my way into college. I wrote my way into grad school. I paid for grad school with writing. I wrote my way into television. As a therapist, I help people write the stories of their own lives. I am still trying to write my life back into existence, writing descriptions of my illness with just the right balance of detail and pithiness, clear and easy to read, in the hope of helping doctors see a narrative, a mystery with all the clues laid out, just waiting for the right detective to sort through the red herrings to find the solution.
I heard this song and it blew me away. I have never heard anything so much about me that I didn’t write myself. I believe that every work of art has its ideal reader— the person whom it speaks to as if it had been written just for them— and I am the ideal listener for “Hurricane.” Which is not to say that I am the only ideal listener. There could be lots of us. But I am one of them.
Of course, the irony of the song in context is that while writing his way out has always worked for Hamilton before, it’s disastrous here. “Wait for it, wait for it” reappears in chorus, now meaning both “audience, wait for the disaster you see coming” and “Hamilton, wait, don’t write a confession, if you wait it will blow over (like a hurricane) and your career won't die.”
It was the wrong thing to do (He’s never gon’ be president now!) but it was true to himself. To do anything else would have been out of character. Hamilton doesn’t burn letters, he writes more letters.
Once you die (and even in life, sometimes) you have no control over who tells your story. But the historical Hamilton wrote enough for Ron Chernow to have plenty of primary sources for his story. And then Miranda told his story, but also made it into Miranda’s own story, the story of a writer who needs words like he needs oxygen, who uses words like the man with a hammer who sees everything as a nail. And by doing that, he told my story too.
In an interview, Daveed Diggs said he'd never felt American until he played Thomas Jefferson. He was connecting with a completely different aspect of the play that I connected with, but what makes Hamilton an amazing work of art is its ability to do that in so many ways, to so many people, just like Miranda read a biography of Alexander Hamilton and thought, "He's an immigrant:" to make us see ourselves unexpectedly in a tale about people with whom we’d always been told we had nothing in common.
The song I wrote about in the previous post as writing my soul into a song was “Hurricane.” In the context of the play, it’s about an impending scandal. But it’s also the song that’s most directly about Hamilton as writer, and how he creates his life by writing it into existence. But it starts on a completely (well, or at least seemingly) different note and subject:
In the eye of a hurricane
There is quiet
For just a moment
A yellow sky
In the delicate, hushed melody (the peace in the eye of the hurricane) the first time they’re sung, I find them the most beautiful lines in the entire play. They’re so simple and so absolutely perfect. “A yellow sky”— just three words, but so evocative, beautiful and terrifying.
The verse makes me think of haiku in its deceptive simplicity. It seems easy but it isn’t. Simple and perfect is hard— often harder than complexity and cleverness. I wonder if Miranda also thought of haiku. It doesn’t have the right syllables, but it has the feel, the short lines, the short verse, the seasonal reference, the delicacy, the immense emotion hitting harder because it’s unspoken, and the themes of mortality and humanity’s helplessness before death and nature.
Tabi ni yande
yume wa kareno o
kakemeguru
Falling ill on a journey
my dreams go wandering
over withered fields
- Matsuo Basho
And then Hamilton puts himself back into the picture, no longer an onlooker but an actor, and an actor in a very specific way. The music becomes fiercer, determined, frantic, arrogant - he DID write his life into existence, of course he can do it again. That's what he does. That's who he is.
I wrote my way out
I wrote my way out of hell
I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance
I literally did that. Exactly that. I wrote my way out of hell. I wrote letter after letter, one a day for six months until I won my own deliverance with a pen, like Hamilton, writing my way into America.
If anything defines me, it’s that. I write my way out. I write the life I want into existence. I don’t create new financial systems, but I wrote myself a very successful small business. I wrote my way into college. I wrote my way into grad school. I paid for grad school with writing. I wrote my way into television. As a therapist, I help people write the stories of their own lives. I am still trying to write my life back into existence, writing descriptions of my illness with just the right balance of detail and pithiness, clear and easy to read, in the hope of helping doctors see a narrative, a mystery with all the clues laid out, just waiting for the right detective to sort through the red herrings to find the solution.
I heard this song and it blew me away. I have never heard anything so much about me that I didn’t write myself. I believe that every work of art has its ideal reader— the person whom it speaks to as if it had been written just for them— and I am the ideal listener for “Hurricane.” Which is not to say that I am the only ideal listener. There could be lots of us. But I am one of them.
Of course, the irony of the song in context is that while writing his way out has always worked for Hamilton before, it’s disastrous here. “Wait for it, wait for it” reappears in chorus, now meaning both “audience, wait for the disaster you see coming” and “Hamilton, wait, don’t write a confession, if you wait it will blow over (like a hurricane) and your career won't die.”
It was the wrong thing to do (He’s never gon’ be president now!) but it was true to himself. To do anything else would have been out of character. Hamilton doesn’t burn letters, he writes more letters.
Once you die (and even in life, sometimes) you have no control over who tells your story. But the historical Hamilton wrote enough for Ron Chernow to have plenty of primary sources for his story. And then Miranda told his story, but also made it into Miranda’s own story, the story of a writer who needs words like he needs oxygen, who uses words like the man with a hammer who sees everything as a nail. And by doing that, he told my story too.
In an interview, Daveed Diggs said he'd never felt American until he played Thomas Jefferson. He was connecting with a completely different aspect of the play that I connected with, but what makes Hamilton an amazing work of art is its ability to do that in so many ways, to so many people, just like Miranda read a biography of Alexander Hamilton and thought, "He's an immigrant:" to make us see ourselves unexpectedly in a tale about people with whom we’d always been told we had nothing in common.
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I also love the repetition of the things that don't discriminate, but take and take and take - love, death, life - and squirming into the middle is Hamilton, who takes and takes and takes but (by omission of the "doesn't discriminate") just takes for himself, the personal thorn in Burr's side that he could maybe do something about rather than a vast, impersonal force that you can do nothing but wait for.
I see a lot of Sondheim influence in that song. He's also a master of repetition, using the same phrase in different contexts until it suddenly punches you in the gut.
One that immediately comes to mind is "The Ladies Who Lunch."
Here's to the… starting off each verse, with its variations getting darker and darker:
Here's to the ladies who lunch.
And the first line that's going to repeat with variations… but he's going to make you wait for it:
Everybody laugh.
Lounging in their caftans and planning a brunch.
On their own behalf.
Caft/behalf is one of those all-time genius rhymes. It's almost too clever, but that suits the character. She's always the smartest in the room, and it got her absolutely nowhere.
And then the next toast:
And here's to the girls who play smart-
Aren't they a gas?
This time, no command to everybody, though the audience might be waiting for it; the first verse set up an expectation that it would be repeated. But it isn't.
Third toast:
And here's to the girls who play wife-
Aren't they too much?
Again, no "everybody." I think at this point the audience decides that's not going to repeat and forgets about it.
Fourth toast, the most bitter:
And here's to the girls who just watch-
Aren't they the best?
When they get depressed
It's a bottle of scotch,
Plus a little jest.
Final toast:
So here's to the girls on the go-
Everybody tries.
And the "everybody" is repeating at last, just so it can do this:
Look into their eyes and you'll see what they know.
Everybody dies.
There's the huge, unstoppable forces beneath all the trendy, surface-y things the ladies are clutching, trying to hide behind, trying to cover their eyes with. And it concludes:
A toast to that invincible bunch.
The dinosaur surviving the crunch.
Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch-
Everybody rise!
Rise!
Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise!
Rise!
…I need a Hamilton icon. I already have lots of Sondheim icons. Anyone want to make me an icon of "I wrote my way out?"
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His analysis of his own lyrics is fascinating, particularly where he's critical of them. (Also, seeing the things which were cut or changed allows a deeper understanding of how shows get constructed.)