i would love to come back here, && i’ve tried so many times but honestly , there’s just... so many bad memories with this muse, which makes me so sad, because john used to help me through so much. idk. maybe if i reread my biography it’ll come back.
From A Life of Alexander Hamilton by John Church Hamilton, our favorite biographer who gushes about Laurens all the time and named his son after Laurens.
❝ — once you let people into your head,– that’s it . you’re dead . consequently , what i’m saying is —- get out of my mind . ❞
@carapeace
love begets tragedy begets love ; he knows the ensigns of her arrival, of martyrdom, of midnight’s red - eyed blues & heartbreak’s dolorous gloamings. ( a final showdown between executioner & executed : the heart offers no ultimatums. ) “------ - ... YOU FIRST.”
OK TELL ME ABOUT JOHN /BEFORE/ the rev like. what was he like? how did he act? what would you say people thought of as his defining traits?
RUBS MY GAY REVOLUTION HANDS TO GETHER ...
there are several stages of john’s character throughout his life----- - & they were most notably defined in his youth. the death of his younger siblings, eleanor, & jemmy most definitely shook him right from the get go ; while yes, john was very wealthy, he was surrounded by death from a young age. henry often took the children & eleanor to homes in mepkin & ansonborough solely for the fact that charles town ( now charleston ) was riddled with disease during summertime. ( keep this in mind! while i don’t believe john was near charles town in 1782, this area in general tends to be riddled with sickness----- - a sickness he very well could have procured in that august he died, which would make sense considering he never had proper exposure to it. but that’s for another time. )
the idea of loss & the impermanence of people was a concept ingrained into him early in his life. so i don’t believe john took many things for granted aside from his wealth. as a young boy, henry thought very highly of john ; he was taking the beginner steps of an artist by impulsively drawing, & showed high aptitude---- - later on in life, people lauded john for being a quick study ( he knew many languages, although i wouldn’t say was very familiar with them ; look at his latin. ) he was a very good french speaker & caught on quickly to most things.
furthermore, john was trained in genteel talents----- - fencing & horseback riding in geneva, most notably, & so the idea of upholding himself to this standard was forced on him early on, coming from an aristocratic family. however, being such a good study, it also raised henry’s expectations of him---- expectations he sometimes failed to uphold. john held such a rigid set of expectations for himself for this “constructed identity” he created ( a good republican, virtuous, valorous, ) & this you must understand : most of the time, they were not his own. there was a dichotomy between the constructed & private identity. you can argue here that his abolitionism falls into the constructed identity category, & i would argue that his private identity was certainly different from his public----he was much more prone to giving into things he was beguiled by, & not, from what i remember, outspokenly religious. he was still religious, of course, but not in the degree henry was----- john did, after all, lash out paroxysmally at religious intolerance. above all else, john wanted to appear like a good republican----basically what was “expected” of him at the time.
he burned at chastisement. he took it as the ultimate umbrage, & when henry reprimanded him for a bad choice in friends, he quivered & dropped all of them immediately, & devalued himself to win forgiveness.
john was also exposed to interesting ideas in geneva : abolitionism, & a romanticization of suicide. while i disagree with mass.ey on many things, i sometimes consider the idea he put forth that john might have learned this ... romanticization of death from goethe’s sorrows of young werther, which established a movement of teen suicides inspired by goethe. additionally, geneva was taking a liberal view toward suicide------ - while the typical belief was that you were damned for hell, they thought quite different : they should be shown forgiveness & absolved. i am not saying this is rigid fact----most of this is purely speculation. i wholeheartedly believe that john was depressed & suicidal for a very long time, & that his final engagement was intentional. this influence might have exacerbated it. i don’t think it is something that should be ignored.
another important facet is his need to do the right thing : this is demonstrated by his vacillation to pick a profession. he laments law, exclaiming that he doesn’t want to profit off of humanity’s woes, even though he knows how profitable the profession is ; of course, his true heart lay in medicine, which henry subtly disapproved of. although he did give into henry’s wishes, he ended up in the war with a half - baked law degree & not really thinking where he would go from there.
before the war & his marriage, especially, john was highly idealistic & threw himself into this patriotic fervor that had swept up the colonies in the americas, even though he was living in britain. he spurned his friend kinloch for harboring loyalist views----he told him to go get fucked in simplest terms. in london is where you can see this festering cynicism----he was sequestered by a marriage ( & also guilty for not loving martha & for being gay, ) when he thought his true purpose lay across the sea to achieve what he had always dreamed of: glory.
all in all, remember this : john wanted to be perceived as a man from his class. people thought of him as intelligent, handsome, & for the most part, impressive : he could speak several languages, was well - versed in the literature of that time, & strong - willed in his convictions. he was an independent thinker, & was blinded, for the most part, by his heart---hence his recklessness.
——— ATLAS, o’ how eagerly you proffer yourself to torment. decrepit form can no longer hold the WORLD, ( does his world, a growing, sprawling nation not yet birthed, rest within the balances of this revolution ?? ) lissome shoulders GROWLING with malnutrition tremor, shake. is that the GROUND QUAKING, or this wildfire that has overcome his previously adept head ?? he suffers now, the lungs of a seraph expelling the cold that attempts to quench his ravenous flame. ahead, the GENERAL, iapetus, the PIERCER, striding without concern.
@carapeace· CALL .
thunderstorms stumble to halt amidst permafrosted syllables crumbling in his mouth, truculence tempered by sagging brumes that swathe & imbrue-----persephone marred by the whetted / snow - crested pinions of boreas. a humbled mammet to hiemal rule, like flower’s lips pinch’d shut by winter’s eburnean fingers, there is the poised silence seeking collection of sacrosanct words like bathyal seashells & the deliverance of them while palm’s embrace around the stem of the quill tightens. ( alexander, he knows, pneuma sculpted from floes, finds it so facile to leap into defense with only a single utterance. ) goose - feather’d pen ceases breathless / hoarse murmurations, lacuna cleaved instead by the poniard of astringent timbres. “------- -- YOU KNOW WHAT I AM GOING TO SAY.”
opiates induce ataraxies, stelliferous / freckled sky lines mottled in his dreams----starbursted colors behind his eyelids, so different from the mornings swathed in remorseful war - gray at every ascension of a new day, every quill that sleeps on empty desks. a lion slumbers on his ribs, beguiles him back down under into the tempest of the dreamworld until it fragments fantasies / phantasms ASUNDER into a rimy awakening, carrying the weight of three mornings in his mouth : acrid ash & cinders sift between syllables, the vestiges of gunpowder & red revolution. ( everything is too sharp for his eyes, too real ; razor - edged like the crisp planes of a brandished cutlass, lacking delirium, bereft of dream - glow. ) syllables galumph, the gait of language slurred & blended, netted together by the carolinian wilt-----a bough of nettles loosely fashioned together in the rawness of his throat. “... had my eyes not deceived me in the past, i would think i was dreaming still----the esteemed hamilton, separated from his quill to foresee my detriment.”
ellievsbear
