Essay: How I Opened Up to Hamilton

By: Cecilia Gigliotti

Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life, a book that rode the coattails of the musical phenomenon you’ve almost certainly heard about, was published on 20 September 2016, my twenty-first birthday. The titular man himself may have been that age upon docking in New York—if, that is, we abide by the 1755 birthdate, which historian Ron Chernow honors and Guide author Jeff Wilser rejects in favor of 1757. From what is known about Hamilton, he was liable to make himself appear younger, more like a prodigy. There’s probably no way to be sure. In any event, this publication date was a sign. I had never heard of Wilser and I put my trust in his hands. The book arrived in my mailbox a week later, and I finished it within ten days.

Let me be candid: I’m one of those guys who devoted little mental energy to Hamilton until his musical biography turned up and changed everything. Though I guess more mental energy than some; I’ve always been a musical guy. As in, someone who cares about music and about musical theatre. As a twelve-year-old experiencing In the Heights on Broadway, I could see creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s talent plain, even if I didn’t exactly relate to the material. When my mother sent me word of Hamilton months before its debut, my interest was piqued, given my penchant for history told through musical theatre (see: 1776). As for the ten-dollar Founding Father, I could say only that he was the first Treasury Secretary and was shot by Aaron Burr. And the single thing I could say of Burr was that he was Thomas Jefferson’s Vice President at the time.

Uh-oh, but little did I know what a sensation Hamilton would be, how it would take hold of my home country, the US, and my household. By the time I read the capitalizing Guide, I hadn’t even committed the score to memory like some I knew. As genuinely interesting as I found the book, it also had the advantage of suggesting that I was farther along in my familiarity with the show than I actually was.

The truth is that I had been burying my fascination with the bits of the show that I had encountered, avoiding it at every turn. I was troubled, in that annoying hipster fashion, that people who had likely never heard of Miranda were now hailing him as the new voice of Broadway. And I was intimidated by the show’s lyrical (practical tactical) brilliance. In a turn of amazing self-criticism—read: self-absorption—I, a writer-musician-noted perfectionist, felt that I might as well quit the business before I began. This show had accomplished everything one could conceivably hope to accomplish. What was the point of trying?

This cyclone of aversion would likely have kept me in my place were it not for my sister, the Eliza to my Angelica, more generous and less jealous, whose near-mastery of the lyrics finally tipped the scales and inspired me to serious listening. And the more I listened, the more I too became convinced of its genius, and wanted to understand the lives of the men and women depicted. My mind was now suitably fertile for Wilser’s tilling.

In retrospect, I lived by Hamiltonian principles long before hearing of him. As I familiarized myself with his life and legacy, I like, or just as often shudder, to think that I share a few traits with the political prodigy, over two centuries dead. I do what he did his whole life, though always he sets a more extreme standard that asks me how far I’m willing to go. I burn the midnight oil working, tending to prioritize that work above all else. I take time to open up to people, by turns as wary of the world as I am optimistic and open to it. I talk voluminously: at school, I found presentation time allowances inadequate. I can be defensive to a fault, arguing my points until I prove myself right; the chapter called “Being Right Trumps Being Popular” resonated endlessly. Speaking of arguing, I much prefer a shouting match to giving or getting the cold shoulder, which has at times put my friendships on precarious ground. The constant internal pressure to prove myself will sometimes keep me fighting for longer than is healthy or helpful, especially if the opinion of an authority figure is at stake. I often felt more understood and accepted by my superiors than by my peers, especially in childhood, though fortunately I never made an enemy like Jefferson. I looked up to these superiors as mentors, perhaps in ways more sedate than stealing cannons and penning farewell addresses, but no less fulfilling.

Occasionally, my way forward has necessitated first digging myself into a hole. One such circumstance occurred over a summer I spent on my college campus working, instead of taking a break. While it did not concern infidelity and posed no threat to my reputation, I could have done myself comparable damage if left unchecked.

Perhaps my defining characteristic is that I have never been satisfied. There’s a dark kinship between Hamilton and me: we have common demons, albeit on a different scale in a different setting.

All this said, even that twenty-one-year-old pretender reading Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life could identify one critical difference between us: my insecurities stand in my way every so often. Hamilton evidently stopped at nothing, enacting his own fall as thoroughly as he did his rise. He continued to hope for a better future despite dismal beginnings; he continued to pursue greatness despite resistance from the old-money anti-immigrant establishment and reluctance from no less than George Washington; he continued to work despite domestic struggle and tragedy, to write despite defamation on all sides, and to defend his honor despite the final cost. What I take from him is to continue; that no blow is fatal (until it is); that a new home is a new opportunity; that what I believe in, if it is worth believing in, demands my best effort; that I have to carry on, for him if not for myself.