I’m late to HAMILTON, listen to the cast album all the time, waiting for tickets to come down in price below a mortgage payment. Daydream on occasion of creator Lin-Manuel Miranda bouncing into my 1968 history class and waking me from my slumber. But most often I think about the beautiful multi-talented and multi-colored creative team and cast that puts this masterpiece on stage every night, who tell the story of a ragtag group of antagonists, their discontent with England and with each other bloodying the countryside. Imperfect individuals who came together to form a more perfect union that remains imperfect.

Almost 250 years later I have only two words for those laziest of thinkers who think somehow that being white or male or straight or rich is better. It’s not, and those are not my two words. The thing that matters, the only thing, is individual character. It is what they had in mind when they formed this union, praying that somehow coming together without a king would lift us up above our fears, our weaknesses, our jealousies, our hatreds. They set forth some high shared ideals and left room for us to set them even higher, knowing we would never quite live up to them but that we might head ever higher in the process, together. A union looks higher and extends a hand to help everyone get there; a mob looks lower and raises a fist to knock others down there.

Two words. We choose.

Peter Brav

I Am Late To Hamilton