And Just Like That, Hamilton the Musical Came Into Our Lives

"What's he doing?" My sister asked. 

With earbuds in place, my son Miles was wandering her house, roaming in and out of rooms in a trance, in his own world. Was he muttering? Rapping? Singing? 

I look over at him, hoodie up, head and shoulders bobbing, his hand holding an iPhone 6. 

"It's Hamilton." I tell her.

"Hamilton?" Asks my other sister scooping one of her twin one year olds up and wiping her nose. 

I know that mine is not the only teenager taken over by the new musical Hamilton, which opened on Broadway last August after a several month run at New York's Public Theater, but taken over he is.

We had listened to the musical's soundtrack on the hour drive from San Francisco to Novato for my niece Savannah's birthday party, with Miles' iPhone perched on the armrest between us. He paused the songs at moments while shouting to his grandmother in the back seat about what is going on in the show, in the story, at that moment. Mom is hearing impaired, and the lyrics are rapid-fire, clever - hard to understand on the first go, even when not in a car, and when not hard of hearing. My mom wants to relate, and connect with her grandson on his new love but now is not the right time. We all agree he will show her the lyrics while they listen together another time.

Miles' obsession had started a month before when at the tail run of an original school musical he was in, a friend had turned him onto a couple songs from Hamilton. He came home and introduced me, via YouTube, to King George singing about the American revolutionaries breaking free of England. Styled like an old British pop song, You'll Be Back is a breakup song with tinges of possessiveness, control, despair. With some monarchical twists: "I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love..."

Miles moved on to the opening song, Hamilton, memorizing those lyrics (as did I soon afterwards. One can't really help oneself.)

"How does a bastard orphan, son of a whore 

and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot 

in the Caribbean, by providence, impoverished and squalor 

grow up to be a hero and a scholar...?"

A few days later Miles told me he had downloaded the entire cast album - 46 songs.

During non-school hours, Miles carried his iPhone around with him, listening, steeping in the words, the rhymes, the infectious energy. He followed me around as I washed dishes, put things away, folded laundry, the iPhone playing in his upright palm. Stopping the song periodically he would keep me up to speed, "this is when Thomas Jefferson has just gotten back from France," he tells me, hitting play again. Thomas Jefferson in France? Obviously, I am not up on my American history.

The immersion in All-Things-Hamilton continued as Miles sought out YouTube videos, cast appearances on late night talk shows, articles, and Wikipedia entries about the American Revolution. (I have been amazed and delighted about this new obsession, now nearly three months old. Music, musical theater, American history. It's gotten him off the XBox! Mostly.)

Like any good album propels its listeners to do, Miles has moved from song to song, getting hooked for days on a given track, developing new favorites, doubling back. King George was his entree to the show, but each and every song is captivating, intricate, compelling (I am hooked now as well, and his father is too. Picking me up one day to go collect Miles, Frank had the soundtrack playing in his car. We both own a copy of the double CD on Miles' insistence. When Miles got in the car he was surprised to find that his parents were listening to it on our own!)

We began to look for tickets to see the show in New York. What would it take to do it? What would it cost? Seeing the prices, I would back off. it's impossible, I would think. The show is long sold out and tickets, while available via a secondary market still sold through Ticketmaster, are insanely priced. We'll wait for its run in San Francisco, we say, and I begin to figure out how we'll even get tickets then. We didn't get to see Book of Mormon until its third visit to San Francisco. 

How patient can we be?