By Jamie Strickland
Who will tell your story
I know I’m about a decade late on this, but I finally discovered why people love “Hamilton,” the Broadway musical so much. I mean, I figured I would like it, being both a big history nerd and a fan of live theater, but wow!
We recently saw it live at the Durham Performing Arts Center, and it was everything it’s cracked up to be. The music, the choreography and the already fascinating chronicle told in such a creative way.
I had intended to watch the filmed version on Disney Plus for, well, years, and just never got around to it. Then last year when I learned the production was coming close to home, I decided to hold out and watch it live for my first experience with it.
Every time I mentioned to anyone that I was going to go see it, I was met with a shocked, “You haven’t seen “Hamilton” yet?!? Not even the soundtrack?!?”
Ultimately, I’m so glad I hadn’t, because I wasn’t judging it against other actors or singers and I was able to take it all in, in person, for the first time. With this year being America’s 250th Anniversary, the timing was especially fitting.
I walked out with so many feelings and impressions, from the story itself but also the way it was performed. My teenagers were mostly concerned with where we were going to eat afterwards, but I needed some time to process.
I found the last song especially powerful — those lyrics have stuck with me and spun around in my head a few dozen times since then.
In “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” the focus shifts to Eliza, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, and what she does with the rest of her life.
It starts with George Washington singing:
Let me tell you what I wish I’d known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control
Who lives
Who dies
Who tells your story
The song goes on as a narrative of Hamilton’s accomplishments, and then turns to Eliza herself, telling us about how she spends the next 50 years of her life memorializing her beloved husband.
Symbolically, she picks up Alexander’s quill and tells us how she toiled over preserving his papers so they ended up in the national archives, how she founded an orphanage that still exists today, how she spoke out against slavery, raised the funding for the Washington Monument and so much more. Yet at the end, she finds herself still questioning whether she had done enough to keep his memory alive.
She became his devoted chronicler. His story might have faded into obscurity without her work to preserve it.
In just that first verse of the song, there’s so much to unpack, but one thought I keep coming back to — would Alexander have approved of the way his story was told?
We really aren’t in control of our own legacies or the way the world remembers us.
As someone who has the privilege of telling other people’s stories, I can only hope I’ve done justice to the lives, accomplishments and impact of those I’ve written about.
