On any given day, you could potentially ask my mother how many times I listen to the Hamilton soundtrack — and every single day, it would be exponentially more than the day before.
If you had asked me before I saw Hamilton on Broadway if I really cared about Alexander Hamilton and the drafting of the United States Constitution, the answer would be an eerily triumphant, “Nope! Couldn’t care less.” I hadn’t ever so much as contemplated whether Aaron Burr shot first, or if Alexander Hamilton purposely shot into the air to avoid shooting his foe. Those same questions now invoke a surge of rage that courses through every vein in my body, and I can almost feel the heat rising from my throat as I would almost instantly reply, “Burr shot first! He thought Hamilton was planning to take deadly aim because he wore his glasses to the duel! Hamilton didn’t want to kill his friend!” Did I ever care or know about this prior?
Nope.
Many months after watching the show, I think I’ve more or less figured out why.
In a formal school setting, having history spoon fed to you is not even the slightest bit enthralling. You take notes, you memorize, you regurgitate, and ultimately, you forget all about it. There are no human emotions, no intimate connections, no intrinsic relations — you are an outsider watching (subjectively) the greatest nation being built, and you have no part in it. Usually, when an individual finds that they don’t have a place within something, there is ultimately a disconnect. The timeline between my existence and Alexander Hamilton helping birth the Constitution feels like eons upon eons of which I simply cannot relate to or feel anything for. I didn’t exist within that time, so I definitely don’t have the same feelings towards it as I do towards something monumental that did occur during my lifetime, like 9/11.
This is where the impact of making the story of Hamilton into a musical comes in. This time, as an onlooker, I learned so much more about Hamilton’s story, and Burr’s, and even Eliza’s than I had ever known before, and related to it deeply and intensely as I watched it visually unfold before my eyes. I hadn’t known of Hamilton’s affair, but Eliza’s heartbreak upon finding out was so passionate and fervent that I found myself welling up with tears. In fact, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room. Her feelings were raw, real, and inevitably, they were human. I am sure most of the audience could relate to the feelings associated with heartbreak: the anger, the confusion, the loneliness. As Eliza sang of her heartbreak, I could feel a shiver move up my spine as her voice changed to match her ever-shifting internal emotional warfare, from anguish to frustration towards her own naivety — it resonated within every corner of my heart, and I felt almost like I had just been through a heartbreak of my own.
I related deeply to Eliza’s pain because although history can separate all humans by time, time can never dissect the rawness of pure human emotion. The events of our time may differ, but the pain of heartbreak will always be a universal constant — it is something that will remain unchanged, even as the hands of time do a number on the world around us.
What better way to convey this idea than through art, something that touches the hearts of individuals on a daily basis? This is a universal truth that I believe Hamilton understood, and as a result, I not only learned something but I established a deep connection with the events of that time.
To relate is to learn, and to learn is to relate.
