If you follow this blog and my writing here with any regularity, you’ve come across at least a couple of posts referencing the musical, Hamilton. This one will continue with that hyperfocus as my girls have come to refer to it because I have been listening to Ron Chernow’s book, Hamilton, which inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda’s writing of the Broadway musical, which I have watched the movie of several times over the course of two weeks (along with smaller reels with different actors around the 10th anniversary of the musical), and have also listened to the musical soundtrack. When I stumble across something I deem lovely or wonderful or inspiring, I tend to immerse myself in it for a period of time.
Perhaps this idea of circling back around to Hamilton seems equally fitting given the ongoing and growing inability we have cultivated in the recent past to have civil debates or even conversations around complicated topics but instead we tend to be divisive and put forth vitriolic rhetoric without sticking around for any additional discourse. Of course, even the rap-battle debates in Hamilton between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson tended toward a bit of the invective. Still, I find my girls’ suggestion that debates around important topics should involve rap battles and mic-drop moments as seen in Hamilton sublime.
If you (still) have not watched Hamilton, there are two scenes involving these two founding fathers—Jefferson and Hamilton—wherein they square off over Hamilton’s proposed financial plan for the budding United States and then over whether the new nation should support France’s own revolution for freedom. Every time my girls have watched the movie version of the Broadway production of the show, they have been quite enthusiastic in their belief and suggestion that we should institute a rap-battle practice in our current congressional and other political debates.
Honestly, I’m not sure they’re misguided at all.
As a writer who minored in history during my undergrad years, I hold Lin-Manuel Miranda in high esteem for his ability to boil down the historical facts at play in these theatrical moments to the rhythmic rhymes he assigns to Jefferson and Hamilton in each of their face-offs. There is no denying the obvious and absolute talent of Miranda. Given the two historical figures’ way with words as both writers and orators, I cannot help but believe they would be as impressed as the Hamilton audiences were or as I am with Miranda’s ability to capture those historical moments in drum-beating, finger-snapping rhymes.
What I love in this almost-whimsical suggestion from my two amazing teenagers is their deep appreciation for the creative efforts of someone like Miranda. I also love that they enter into my hyperfocus moments, watching the show with me on my whims or singing back lines from the show when I sing them or, in the case of my youngest, humming them, causing her to come in and ask me what I’m listening to in my ears. I suppose, as someone who is invested in wanting to make sure my girls feel seen and heard, I am grateful for the ways they see and hear and even celebrate me in these seemingly small ways. And, clearly, there’s no debate about that for me.