Do or Die, and My Favorite Drug

Friday, I was having kind of a shitty day at work. I was the only one in the office from my team, which by itself wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, either. I was also having a rough time at home. The Boy was scheduled to come home from camp Saturday, which was good but also stressful. Jack informed me of work schedule for the rest of the summer and September, and it totally sucks. When the three pistons of work, kids and my marriage (notice I don't include anything about my own personal life in this list, because it doesn't exist) all down at the same time, it is it a huge drag.

I didn't pack a lunch on Friday, so I had to punt for food. I could have ordered from Peach and had something delivered, or I could have bought food from the little refrigerator we have in the lunch room. 

Fuck that, I thought. I want a burger. I trekked over to a Belltown pub.

"Do you want a seat at the bar?" the host asked as I was dining alone. The World Cup Brazil versus Belgium was on the three televisions behind the bar.

"Sure," I said. I sat next to a couple who was watching the game. Brazil was down 0-2. The woman's ninety-four year old mother lived in Belgium during World War II. The mother was watching the game from her home in Iowa. I didn't have the heart to tell this woman I was rooting for Brazil. 

Watching this game felt familiar. Two weeks ago, the Boy's soccer team played a tournament in Burlington where they played five games in less then forty-eight hours. The first three games were qualifiers, and the last two were elimination rounds. The Boy's team made it to the finals for their group. For the last game, the boys (young men?) played an equally matched team from Portland sponsored by the Portland Timbers, the MLS team. The Boy's team was sponsored by the Sounders, Seattle's MLS team. Civic pride was at stake.

Both teams played hard. I've never seen a youth soccer game where there was so much heart from both sides on the field. The ball went back and forth, the players charging and sweating and grimacing. Every kid was fully engaged with the game. Parents on the sidelines dropped their usual conversations about life and kids and vacations to focus on the match. It was do or die for both teams.

It was awesome.

So there I was, in a bar on a Friday, watching the same thing play out in Russia between two of the top ten teams in the world. There was no holding back, no doing "just good enough." To lose is to die. These grown men, among the best athletes out of 7.4 billion people on earth, reminded me of the Boy's team in that last game. The size of the audience and the number of people who cared about the game was different, but if you were a parent on that sideline in Burlington in June, it might as well have been the quarter finals of the World Cup.

I am so glad the world has found a replacement for gladiator sports in soccer. Instead of people actually dying, they just feel like they have died when they lose. Sports Illustrated reported that

"Neymar has admitted that suffering elimination from the World Cup with Brazil was the 'saddest moment of my career' and claims he is having a hard time 'finding the strength to play again'."

To paraphrase, he felt like he died. I am sure something in him did die--the dream that he probably had since he was a little kid that he would lead his country to a World Cup victory one day. The dreams of his country died, too.

But Neymar lives, and will play again, even though that doesn't diminish the pain he feels today.

Sometimes life sucks not because you just lost the big game, but because of the thousands of smaller details of your life add up and weigh you down. It isn't one, big, terrible thing like cancer. As a mom, it is the lack of control over everyone else's mood and schedule, being at their mercy, and having no way to escape.

And then my favorite escape came to the rescue...

This week, I am taking Claire-Adele to orientation at the University of Maryland. I have to take three days off of work for this, which I really don't have. I wasn't dreading this trip, but I wasn't exactly thinking of it as a full-filled, exciting vacation as the main gist would be how I am going to part with my first born and approximately fifty thousand dollars. Seems kind of lose-lose. I texted my old friend Kendra who I knew from Chicago who now lives in Bethesda, Maryland to see if we could get together. Kendra is loads of fun.

"Want to see Hamilton?" she texted me back. This summer, Hamilton is at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

Hell yeah I want to go.

"My husband said I should go with a friend, but he said I couldn't spend more than $300 for a ticket."

I was so excited I couldn't sleep Thursday night. Kendra and I both searched online. The cheapest tickets I could find for Wednesday night was $500. Ugh. I was still hopeful.

This morning when I woke up, Jack was sitting at his computer. "There are Hamilton tickets for $299."

"What?" I said, looking at his screen. Saturday, seats in the first row of Tier 1 were $500. The Kennedy Center must have dropped the price as the day of the show was getting closer. I texted Kendra. She wasn't there. Did everyone know about this last minutes drop in prices? If they did, these tickets wouldn't last. I bought the tickets. If for some reason Kendra couldn't make it, then I'd figure something out. For an hour, I sat waited for her text.

In the meantime, I had to two tickets to Hamilton for Wednsday night. The problem of getting rid of an extra ticket was peanuts compared to the thrill of having them. The escape is what I imagine what a shot of heroine is like, when it creeps into your veins, and nothing else matters except the high.  Jack and Claire-Adele were screaming at each about her getting her driver's license. Suddenly, I was less pissed off about Jack's schedule, about my son staying out super late last night, about the crap at my job. I was floating in my Hamilton glow, the anticipation of seeing it again.

Just as the grit in of life's gears was wearing me down, sometimes things fall in my direction. Two weeks ago, the Boy's team won the tournament with a goal scored in the last ten seconds. And Kendra can join me for Hamilton.

Wait for it, wait for it. I'm willing to wait for it..

The wait ended Friday night.

We finally got to see Hamilton. Yay! I think to myself as I read the Seattle Times article about how some fans were not able to get tickets to see it here. I could have waited until it came to Seattle, but then I might not have been able to get tickets.

The day of the show, I was jittery. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I got to see one of my favorite paintings, Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cypresses. On a normal trip, that might have been the highlight. It is much more impressive in real life because the colors are so vibrant. I understood the nature of art when I saw this picture sixteen years ago when it came to St. Louis. The artist picks a topic. For a writer, words and sentences are colors and brush strokes.

We took the subway back to the hotel from the museum because Jack was running the marathon the next day and didn't want to tire his legs out after the three mile walk. I would have been happy to walk. As we got on the train around 4:00, I had a small panic. What if the train gets stuck in the tunnel and we are stuck here for five hours and I miss the show? What will happen to my mental health if I miss the show after waiting for a year? All through the week, I kept the tickets buried in a pocket in my backpack. Every time I got back to the hotel, I made sure they were there. I made Jack bring a second copy of the tickets to New York in case my copy got lost.

Those tickets were a symbol of so many things. Sometimes there are problems in life that can't be fixed, or not without struggle or tremendous effort. Our family was facing about three or four of those things last November. Hamilton was our balm. The tickets said I'm sorry, I love you and We have your back, kiddo, when words were alone were not sufficient or believed. Hamilton tickets were the grand gesture that said things that couldn't be said.

Why do I love to travel? I love to be transported to a new place to experience new foods, new sites, new sounds. Some people travel with their families and use the time to bond. Others travel alone and meet new people. We travel to be transformed, to be in inspired. The reason people love to read and see movies and plays is to be transported to a different time or place, inside of someone else's mind and story.

So it goes with Hamilton, and why not just me but thousands of others are willing to pay more for a ticket to see a show than the cost of the airfare to get to New York to see it. To be transported is why we bought the tickets almost a year ago and were willing to wait.

We went to dinner before the show, with plenty of time to spare. Restaurants in New York are pleasantly efficient without rushing. We stopped at the Hamilton gift shop before the show, but I didn't buy anything because I was in a hurry to get in line. Jack and the Boy jaywalked across the street to get to the Richard Rodgers theater. I feared getting arrested for jaywalking and missing the show. I didn't want to be like the little girl living on Venus in Ray Bradbury's short story "All Summer in a Day" who got locked in a closet during the only hour the sun shone on Venus in seven years. Would I have flipped? Yes. Yes, I would have.

We got to the line around 7:20. I asked the woman in line ahead of me if she had tickets to the show or if she was waiting in line for something else.

"I hope we have tickets," she said as her teenage daughters took selfies. "My husband has them. We better have tickets."

"I have the tickets," he said pulling them out and showing her.

"Why don't you make sure we are in the right place?" she asked her husband. This woman was more neurotic than I was.

He did as he was told. He came back moments later and said, "The doors open at 7:30." Everyone was happy to be there early. I was the most laid back and intense crowd I have ever been in. This family had come from Dallas to seem Hamilton. In the theater, we ran into other friends from Seattle.

The show started. The first few lines of music are jarring, and the words would be considered by most people in polite society to be offensive: "How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman..." The crowd cheered and cheered and cheered.

The only thing the crowd didn't do was cry at the right spots, myself included. One person behind me was sobbing, and thought to myself Newbie... There are at least four songs that had a devastating emotional impact on me the first time I heard the entire soundtrack in one sitting. I was sobbing during "Dear Theodosia," "Burn," "It's Quiet Uptown," and the finale.

When I got to the show, I had heard these songs dozens of times, so much so that I had nearly memorized all of the lyrics. I was slightly jealous of the newbie, hearing it fresh on Broadway, able to feel those emotions live and fresh while the actors were on stage. I wondered about the first performances for the original cast who likely had to listen to an entire audience crying their eyes out night after night.

And I wondered as I sat in the room where it happened. Isn't that what so much of us want, too, to be in the room where it happens?

Cramming and Fasting for Hamilton

In less than two weeks, I will be in the room where it happens. Jack is running the NY Marathon and the family will tag along. Part of Jack's bribe to bring us along were tickets to Hamilton.

Squee!

I am so excited I can't stand it. The Boy brought home the music home in seventh grade, and he and I became hooked. "You'll be Back" was the first song I heard. The first time I listened to the entire soundtrack in one stretch, I cried so hard I had snot bubbles coming out of my nose. I would listen to the soundtrack as did my physical therapy for my knee.

I have told very few people that we are going because I don't want anything to jinx it. We bought the tickets almost a year ago, and I am afraid to mention that we are going in case something terrible happens and we miss it. I am hoping there won't be a hurricane, flooding, windstorm, nuclear war, or other epic disaster that prevent us from getting to NYC.

While the Boy and I have almost memorized all of the music, I have one more thing to finish before I see the show: Ron Chernow's biography of Hamiton. As I friend of mine once said describing my reading of Les Miserables, I have a long-term relationship with Alexander Hamilton. I started reading it more than a year ago, but put it down to read other stuff. I am on page 266 out of 818. Thankfully, the last ~100 pages are footnotes.

I picked up where I left off, in the middle of a discussion about the Federalist papers. John Jay wrote five, James Madison wrote twenty-nine, and Hamilton wrote...the other fifty-one. In one of my next posts, I will quote all of Hamilton's brilliant ideas about executive power and how if he met President Trump he would verbally eviscerate the man. But not now.

In contrast to trying to read as much of the book before I see the show, I am trying to avoid listening to the soundtrack. I want it to be as fresh as possible when I see it in less than two weeks, so I am "fasting" from the music. I slipped today and listened to "Wait for It" and "Best of Wives and Best of Women" at work on my headphones. The Boy and I have talked that the hardest part of watching the show will be trying not to sing along. Awhile ago, there was a meme about "Mirandize" where it means not being able to think about anything other than the lyrics to Hamilton. Been there. I had the lyrics of the second song running through my mind this morning when I woke up: "Well I'm going back to sleep."

Was Aaron Burr Black?

The Boy has been compulsively listening to Hamilton, which is non-traditionally cast.

"Was Aaron Burr black?" the Boy asked.

Obama was elected when the Boy was in kindergarten. To a kid who has only known the country with an African American president, this was probably not a bizarre question. Of course he knows there was slavery, but that didn't mean it applied to all black people. To him, asking if one of the Founding Fathers was black was a legitimate question to which he didn't know the answer.

I hope one day my granddaughter will ask me who the Founding Mothers were, or why weren't they called the Founding Parents, and it will be a legitimate question to which she didn't know the answer.

"Hamilton" Addiction and Seeing it First

My son has gotten me a new addiction--worse than Lego!--and I have it worse than him, I think. I have found a new minor obsession: Hamilton.

I am big fan of live theater and musical theater. When I was a kid, I was in the children's choir for a local production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Weber. We did the show back in 1980 before he wrote Cats and Phantom of the Opera. I saw Chorus Line when I was a tween. I loved the dancing and music, but most of the plot was above my head. Jack and I saw Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables when we were college students living in Chicago. Jack got me tickets as a Christmas present when we started dating.

For those three shows, I didn't know much of the music before I saw the show. It was all fresh, new and surprising. Sometimes it goes the other way with a musical. I took my daughter to see Les Miserables one summer when it was touring in Seattle, and she was unimpressed. After listening to the soundtrack on my iPod when we took on car trips, both kids loved it. When we saw it live last year, they were fairly familiar with the music and enjoyed the show. Now she is a diehard fan, playing and studying the music on the piano. We just saw Billy Elliot cold a few weeks ago. Aside from the family drama on our end, the show was good.

I am worried about Hamilton. My son is memorizing the lyrics to his favorite songs "My Shot" and "You'll Be Back." I am listening to the music, reading about it, and watching every interview of Lin-Manuel Miranda ever recorded. (Damn you, YouTube!) I watched videos of him performing at the White House in 2009 and then this year. I've seen the little selfies videos behind the stage. I saw the CBS Sunday Morning video before the show made it to Broadway. I ordered a copy of the book by Ron Chernow that Miranda based the musical on. I am addicted. This is a problem. (I'll spare you the links. If you get addicted to Hamilton, you can blame yourself, not me.)

I am jealous of Stephen Colbert. He saw Hamilton in previews. He said the first fifteen minutes were interesting, and he wondered if they could keep it up for a whole show. In the middle, he was thinking, yes, this works. At the end, he was crying.

I want that. I wish I could have that fresh, unexpected experience of seeing Hamilton unknown like Steven Colbert did. What if I scrape together to get tickets and fly to New York and by then I've heard it all a thousand times and then I am bored or unimpressed or disappointed, thinking the whole thing is overhyped? That would be hell. That is one of the beautiful things about seeing plays when you don't know much about them: they are a surprise, and surprises can be wonderful.

I remember the first time I saw Mamma Mia. Jack and I were in St. Louis and we went with his boss. I was a massive ABBA fan growing up in the 1970s, and I own almost everything they recored on vinyl, plus the CD ABBA Gold, which had a primary slot in the CD player in my car a few years ago. I thought the plot of "Guess who the dad is?" was stupid and a little absurd. And then as it the story unfolded, I loved it. I took my daughter, Claire Adele, to see the movie with Meryl Streep when it came out, and she loved it too. She had a Mamma Mia birthday party when she was ten, and the girls got the karaoke version of the DVD and sang along. One of my favorite memories of her childhood would be Jack and I talking in the front yard, hearing the ten girls singing at the top of their lungs. (In my childhood, we would sing and dance to Barry Manilow's "Copacabana.") Later that summer, Claire Adele and I went to London where we got first row seats to Mamma Mia in the West End. Claire Adele sat mesmerized, glued to her seat, unable to move, she was so in awe. I was so jealous of the performers who got to go on stage every day and sing and dance and party. What a life!

While Claire Adele had the magical feeling of seeing her beloved show live, I still dream of the fresh experience. Jack, the Boy and I saw Come From Away when it was playing in Seattle last winter. Come From Away is a musical about the town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada when seventy transatlantic flights were diverted there after 9/11. A few friends highly recommended it, so we got tickets, and it was amazing. The show is scheduled to go to Broadway this fall, and I feel personally invested in seeing it do well. I hope Hamilton's star may cast a light on Come From Away, not overpower it and block it out. Hamilton is different with hiphop, while Come From Away has more of a folk music feel, the music that would be played in small towns in faraway places, not in the center of New York. Come From Away isn't about oppression and gaining freedom, it is about how a small town in the middle of nowhere helped thousands of people in the largest crisis in recent times.

The scary thing about seeing something first and loving it is that I hope other people love it as much as I do. The people who saw Hamilton first were lucky.

"Hamilton," "Les Miserables," and Duels

My son has taken a recent interest in the smash* Broadway musical, Hamilton. Like most middle schoolers who do not live in New York City, my son has not seen the play yet, but he has downloaded and listens to the music on the bus with other middle schoolers. My high school age daughter Claire Adele has no interest in Hamilton--she is a devoted Les Miserables fan, and anything else is less than. As John Seabrook writes in The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, teen tastes change rapidly and kids won't like what their siblings like just because they need to be different. The Boy and Claire Adele are Exhibit A.

Would they fight to the death over which musical is better, Les Miz or Hamilton? Very likely, but they might also fight to the death over who gets to sit in the front seat of the car on the way to dinner. Which brings me to the topic of duels. As you may recall from your American history class in high school, (spoiler alert) Alexander Hamilton died in a famous duel with Aaron Burr. (And so ends the musical, I gather.)

So why a duel? I don't recall exactly what the Hamilton-Burr duel was about, but why did duels exist? What was the purpose? I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it said that people would believe so strongly in an idea that they would be willing to die for it. When the Boy first heard about duels to the death, his comment was "And the Europeans thought the Native Americans were savages?"

Duels brings up an interesting concept that I hadn't considered: believing in an idea so much you are willing to die for it. I suppose that is why soldiers go to war, or why suicide bombers exist. But to take a singular idea and fight another individual in an organized way with rules and protocols? That seems a little bizarre.

Or maybe not? Did it serve a higher purpose? Could there be good in duels? Consider this a hypothetical or philosophical argument. I do not suggest we return to this practice. Look at the current polarized political climate in the United States with the conservative Tea Party on one side and the uber-progressives on the other. Would people be more flexible in their thinking if they had to die for their opinions? Or would people let go, and listen more carefully to the other sides arguments? Would both sides have to come up with solid arguments as to why or why not? Did they seek a third way where both parties could be understood?

Would people be willing to die so transgendered people can use whatever bathroom they would like? "Because it is gross" is suddenly does not seem to be such a valid argument for a reason to die. "Because transgendered kids get bullied when they have to use the boys locker room in high school and they don't want to get beat up" might be a better argument. What about "Let's stop harassing transgendered kids regardless of what bathroom they use," also seems a bit more civilized, but that might not be sufficient for a transgendered kid who is trying to pass as one gender then has to use a different bathroom. "But was if a pervy old man tried to get in the girls' locker room?" "What if that man is wearing a bra and lipstick?" "How many transgendered people do you know? How many currently use the bathroom they identify with and we don't notice?" The dialogue night evolve more before people get out their swords or pistols. People might discuss things a little more thoughtfully and thoroughly before assuming the other side is completely wrong. It might be talked to death, by which I mean discussed about until all major points and perspectives have been exhausted. Maybe empathy and rigorous debate would reign. Respect of various positions would be necessary so that effective points and counterpoints could be made. Maybe the voice of those in the minority would have a reasonable chance of being heard.

The other interesting thing about duels in that both parties were consenting to participate. We are going to France this summer, and my father is worried about terrorist attacks. Last night at dinner, my daughter said that CNN said Europe might not be as safe as people think it will be this summer. I asked my kids what they felt about it.

"I think we will be okay," the Boy said, "but I don't want to die in a mass bombing. I'd rather have an individual death or be directly murdered by an ISIS person." This was an interesting conversation on death as we were at a restaurant where we had to wait for a table at 6:20 p.m. and the average age of the patrons was 75.

Claire Adele agreed with the Boy. "I think it is okay for terrorists to kill an army base," said Claire Adele. "Those people signed up to fight, and they are serving their country. That would be an honor death. People in airports aren't signing up to get shot."

Would duels stop terrorism? I don't think so. Instead, terrorism is just a variation of the concept. But what about my teenage kids? Is all of this arguing and bickering serving a higher purpose? Is it teaching them to stand up for what they believe in and argue in a safe spot? That it is okay to be different, where Les Miz and Hamilton can peacefully co-exist? And in the end, aren't they both singing similar songs?

* I just finished reading The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory by John Seabrook. It is a great read and now I know the difference between a "hit" and a "smash." A hit is something that is really popular. A "smash" is something really big and changes the rules of the game. Hamilton is a smash.