What Hamilton Taught Me

a happy ham fam

Bunk beds are human shelves

He is so gay, I just can't help it

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Here’s Groffsauce hearing Sia’s vocals on the Hamilton Mixtape for the first time. I had the same reaction.

Lin-Manuel Miranda Is Ready For His Next Act (GQ):

Has it felt weird leaving Hamilton behind?

I was ready. My kid was born two weeks before rehearsals started. So we went from a newborn child at the beginning of this to complete sentences by the time I was leaving the show. That’s a hell of a thing, and that’s a marker of how fast it goes. I had so much stuff I had to do that was not getting full expression, because my life was built around 8 p.m. Performing Hamilton through two hours and 45 minutes, when you’re in it, was the most relaxing part of the day. Because I didn’t have unanswered e-mails, or family stuff I wasn’t doing. I was just supposed to be Hamilton, and I know the script on that one. Playing Hamilton is like taking the nozzle off your id and letting it fly. It’s walking into the room and going, “I’m the smartest person in this room—and you need to listen to me!” It’s getting to go out with your friends. It’s getting to flirt with everybody, male and female, as Hamilton did. It’s getting to experience joy and grief. It’s a 14-course meal of a role. So I leave very tired, but very fulfilled, every night. So I miss that. I miss the cast and crew. But I also had enough stuff going on in real life that I didn’t need this to be the rest of my life.

What’s been the high point?

Obviously, going to the White House was a very big deal. But often, it’s the little things. I’m such a pop-cultural junkie. Alex Trebek came backstage, and the first thing he said in that voice was, “Answer: This is America’s favorite play.” “What is Hamilton?” And I was like, “Did that really just happen? Is that how he starts every conversation?”

And the Hamilton mixtape we’re working on has been incredible. I’m a fan of every single person who’s working on it. And that’s from the newer kids like Chance the Rapper to Busta Rhymes, who was the first rapper I thought of for this project when I was still reading chapter 4 of the Chernow book. I came upon the character Hercules Mulligan, and I said, “That’s Busta Rhymes!” So to have him participate in the mixtape is fucking insane! The best way to describe the mixtape is that I drew on all my heroes to write Hamilton, and the mixtape is me taking Hamilton to all my heroes and saying, “What does this inspire you to make?” It’s my heroes in the hip-hop sphere, and favorite songwriters of mine, like Regina Spektor, Ben Folds, Ingrid Michaelson. It’s all over the map.

Did you have containment issues playing the lead role every night?

I didn’t. I genuinely didn’t. Like, I lose a son every fucking night. I get to cry over that. I get the catharsis of forgiveness. I get the catharsis of dying, and then at the end of the day I just wanna chiiiiill. Sometimes I have trouble coming down. My go-to calm-down music during the craziness of Hamilton was The Crane Wife by the Decemberists. I’d just listen to that suite of songs and lie down. And that’s about 15 minutes, and it was the perfect comeback to yourself, comeback to the world. It’s a beautifully told story, and you’re done. And by the time it ends, you’re like, “Okay, I can be myself again.” That was like a big thing I clung to.

I find that, for me, the work is a safe place to put all the stuff you don’t want to put in your real life. I don’t want to be a crazy, manic asshole. I don’t want to have an affair. I don’t want to have a fucking gunfight. But! There’s a part of your brain that wants to experience everything, and so work’s a safe place to explore it all. Both in the writing and in the performing. I get to write about an affair. I get to have the guilt and the feeling of that without having to fuck my life up. [laughs] Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you, because the side you want to bring home is the side that wants to be a good father and be a good husband and be a good son. In art we can be fucking nuts. So I didn’t have any depression left to play outside of the theater. I was like a dry sponge at the end.

The role was something you had to shed, too, right? What was it like to cut off your ponytail?

It was like returning to myself, to me, who I’ve always been, after two years of wearing it. I couldn’t take the train for a while. I’d see people recognizing—and you know what it’s like? It’s like in Inception, the moment when you’re aware in a dream and everyone walking down the street goes [looks slowly around, wide-eyed]. Now that my hair is off, and I look less like The Guy in the Thing, my life’s been a little easier. Yesterday I took the train uptown, and I’m in this crowded 1 train, and this teenage girl next to me goes, “You look exactly like Lin-Manuel Miranda,” and I go, “I know. I get that a lot.” And she goes, “You even sound like him.” And I go, “I’ve been getting that all year.” I felt bad about lying to her, but it was a really crowded train and there was not a lot to be done.

[…]

In the play, you have Hamilton rap, “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory,” and called it the most autobiographical line that you’ve ever written. Are you really that death-haunted a person?

I’ve gotten better. I was very preoccupied with it my entire childhood, my entire teens, you know, and it was sort of the dark side of me. I would get in a serious relationship, and I would imagine the ten ways my date could have died on the way home. Which, to my mind at the time, was like, “Well, that’s realistic. Nothing’s fucking promised.” Which happens to be true, but you don’t have to live your life picturing every horrific scenario. And I think I spent a good amount of real estate in my youth doing that, and it’s still a habit for me. And to me it’s a Spidey sense gone bad. Just dialed up to the nth degree. I remember when I wrote that line and articulated it out loud, it felt—I felt a little naked saying it, because it bares something very true. But it also applied to Hamilton. I felt good giving it to him, because it made sense.

At what point were you able to take some of that darkness and rather than let it paralyze you, make art from it?

I mean, it’s a mix of growing up and going to therapy and realizing you’re not alone. After I broke up with my high school girlfriend, I spent the summer in therapy. There was no stigma in that. My mom is a psychologist. My parents met at NYU grad school for psychology. So I only regret that I waited so long to do it, you know? [laughs] I should have done it at 14, not at 19. And the best thing about going to see a psychologist is you say, “I’ve never told anyone this,” and you unload your deepest, darkest thought in your head, and they go, “Okay.” And you go, “But you don’t think I’m the worst person in the world or I’m the best person in the world or like a crazy person?” And they go, “No, that’s really normal. A lot of people feel like that.” And, you know, my preoccupation with death was one of those things. You work out the stuff you’ve built up in your head, and you talk it out until you can lay it on a table and look at it and go, “Well, that’s fucking crazy.” And that’s true, but I don’t have to sit with it all the time. It doesn’t have to rule me.

Do you feel like being in England is going to hinder your ability to comment on things in America, to be as socially relevant?

I never meant to be socially relevant. [laughs]

What about your Tony-acceptance speech?

I don’t see myself as chasing these moments. The Tonys were scheduled on Sunday, and that shit [the killing of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub] happened in the morning. I would have liked nothing better than to thank all my peers and the hundreds of people who went into making Hamilton possible, but this thing happened that morning, and you have to meet that moment. I think a lot about trying to meet the moment as honestly as possible, because I don’t pretend to have any answers. In fact, I have infinitely more questions than answers. You know, the opening line to Hamilton is one long run-on fucking question,* which we puzzle out but never really answer. That’s all I control: I can control how I meet the world.

After the Reynolds Pamphlet

Alexander: Hey, if you're staying with us, could you at least take out the trash?

Angelica: Yeah sure, where do you want to go?

Hamilton Wallpapers (3/?)

Ensemble: HERE COMES THE GENERAL

Aaron Burr: Ladies and gentlemen...

Ensemble: HERE COMES THE GENERAL

Aaron Burr: The moment you've been waiting for...

Ensemble: HERE COMES THE GENERAL

Aaron Burr: The pride of Mount Vernon...

Ensemble: HERE COMES THE GENERAL

Aaron Burr: ... GEORGE WASHINGTON!

G. Wash: OKAY, WE GOT TRAFFIC ON THE WEST SIDE, GET OFF AT 79TH AND TAKE THE LEFT SIDE...

Hamilton: Every Song Summarized

Alexander Hamilton: It's ye home boi Alex

Aaron Burr, Sir: Two college men walk into a bar with three drunkards, and-

My Shot: Do you ever just want to overthrow a government (Featuring Alexander having an existential crisis)

The Story Of Tonight: Painful foreshadowing coming from Laurens

The Schuyler Sisters: its ye home gals angellica eliza AND PEGGY

Farmers Refuted: It's Time For Alexander's Opinion

You'll Be Back: I cannot fucking believe King George III is a yandere

Right Hand Man: Burr needs to call the rejection hotline

A Winters Ball: RELIABLE WITH THE *LADIES*

Helpless: Ye gal Eliza falls for ye boi Alex

Satisfied: Angelica has emotional issues and I want to help her

The Story Of Tonight Reprise: SPIT A VERSE, BURR

Wait For It: Burr spits a verse (Sort of)

Stay Alive: Charles Lee shows up and Laurens is like "We should shoot that guy"

Ten Duel Commandments: Laurens shoots that guy

Meet Me Inside: Alexander gets grounded

That Would Be Enough: HEARTBREAK.

Guns and Ships: L A F A Y E T T E

History Has It's Eyes On You: Don't fuck up because history is always watching

Yorktown: Alexander and Lafayette overthrow a government

What Comes Next?: King George is still a yandere but now he's a Bitter Yandere

Dear Theodosia: THE DAD SONG

Non-Stop: Burr wonders why and how Alexander does things

What'd I Miss: Jeffy boi is done getting high in France and now he's back to get high in America

Cabinet Battle #1: Political debate turns into a rap battle

Take A Break: Alexander says "No" 500000 times

Say No To This: Alexander forgets how to say "No" 500000 times

The Room Where It Happens: Burr needs to call the rejection hotline again

Schuyler Defeated: Alexander throws away Burr's friendship bracelet

Cabinet Battle #2: you must be out oF YOUR GODDAMN MIND-

Washington On Your Side: MOTHERFUCKING SOUTHERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANS

One Last Time: Washington is resigning and Alexander has abandonment issues

I Know Him: JESUS CHRIST THIS WILL BE FUN!!!~

The Adams Administration: Hamilton fucking obliterates John Adams

We Know: Jefferson, Burr, and Madison become the TMZ of the 1700-1800s

Hurricane: Alexander decides to #expose himself

The Reynolds Pamphlet: Alexander probably regrets deciding to #expose himself

Burn: ELIZA DESERVES BETTER THAN THIS

Blow Us All Away: Alexander encourages his son to get in a gun fight and is shocked when he gets shot

Stay Alive Reprise: CRUSHING DEPRESSION

It's Quiet Uptown: EVEN MORE CRUSHING DEPRESSION

The Election of 1800: Jefferson is tired of drama and he just wants politics

Your Obedient Servant: "Fucking fight me, Alex." ~Burr

Best of Wives and Best of Women: WOW EVEN MORE CRUSHING DEPRESSION

The World Was Wide Enough: "Talk shit get hit." ~Burr

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story: I'M CRYING OVER A FOUNDING FATHER.

Jefferson: When you said "magical in bed" this isn't exactly what I was exp-

Madison: *holding up 8 of hearts* Is this your card?

Jefferson: *softly* Holy shit.