Haven't gotten around to updating... My bad. Me and Apricot had a great Tuesday. We went Christmas shopping and ate at Fizzolis. I fucking love that place, we both agreed its only a place to go to every few months. I still have to get Stones Christmas presents and send it to him. Fingers crossed I get it sent in time so that he gets to open it. I had a bad day at work yesterday. Just some customers going assholes. Anyways I get a call from Stone (while at work still) and he said that he just woke up and thought about me. (it's around midnight) He tells me how happy he is that I'm in his life and that he adores me and a bunch of other sweet stuff. I was crying once we hung up because he unknowingly just made my night so much better. I'm so thankful for him.
Kinausap kita. Kinwento ko sa iyo. Sabi ko, mayroong balak akong i-date, pero hindi ko in-entertain. Ang rason ko, ayoko kasing maging unfair. Ayoko kasi hindi pa ako totally okay. Ayoko kasi hindi pa ako buo. Hindi ko lang masabi na... ayoko kasi ikaw lang ang gusto ko.
Shall we backtrack to that old standby of, "why do I love Hamilton?" Let's get started, okay. With the women's roles.
1. (These numbers are all out of order.) Of course there's only a few of them; the play's mostly about men, and I don't know if it counts as passing the Bechdel Test. (Second verse of "The Schuyler Sisters": people shouting in the square / bad enough there'll be violence on our shores / new ideas in the air / Angelica, remind me what we're looking for.) Cause the play's about Alexander Hamilton, and a lot of it's about "the rooms where things happened," both in peacetime and war. But within those chosen parameters - and working with recorded history - I appreciate the choices the play makes to try to include women's stories.
2. Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy! (~the Schuyler Sisters.~) And Maria Reynolds, too…. the sisters are incredibly important to each other. Eliza's the most important person in Angelica's world; and Angelica’s incredibly important to Eliza too.
3. The love triangle in this play is so much more than that. Because the sisters choose each other over it - they refuse to be rivals. Because Angelica's attachment to Hamilton is used as a device/excuse to make her more present, not vice versa!
4. And because of how much it's about women finding ways to live within the constraints set upon them. "I'm a girl in a world in which my only job is to marry rich," sings Angelica, and that's why she has to be single and immediately smitten when she meets Hamilton; it's so she'll be faced with that trade-off, and make her choice.
5. Her marriage, sailing off to London, was the only way she could be in "the room where it happens."
6. And Eliza's "Helpless" when she meets Alexander both because she's in love and that's what love does to you; but also because she's a woman, too, and even rich to Alexander's poor, there's not much she can do about a marriage if Alexander doesn't propose, or her father doesn't allow it; and also not much she can do inside the marriage, if (when!) it doesn't go how she wants.
7. (SERIOUSLY, notice how Hamilton sings "I've never been so" but DOESN'T sing "helpless" at the end, it's amazing.)
8. One thing I love is how much agency Eliza claims with regards to her personal life. Which - women being confined to that sphere - is oppressive, in general, and Angelica, for example suffers from it greatly! But Eliza keeps pressing Hamilton to come/stay home, look around, that could be enough, she defiantly says "I'm not sorry" for not writing to Alexander about her pregnancy. This is her life, and her choice!, to value the private domestic world above affairs of state. It's not for everyone, but it's just as valid as the reverse.
9. And she does value her privacy, that line of separation - they don't get to know what I thought.
10. Even her public works are personal and domestic, in some ways, The Orphanage; but maybe her family is more important to her than anything else, and why shouldn't it be. Family is important.
(…. I ran out of time at this particular juncture; and am not sure exactly how to finish this off anyway. Besides that Angelica and Maria Reynolds are also both very much - working within the constraints, as mentioned above, and structurally present based on their presence in Hamilton's love life, but… they have agency, they make their own choices for their own reasons, Angelica I discussed above a little, but it goes for Maria Reynolds, too! She was in a bad situation; she wanted something a little bit better. She doesn't feel like a simple temptress or femme fatale any more than Eliza or Angelica or like points on a love triangle, she’s not in the wrong for it - Hamilton is, he treats her badly, her feelings it seems are real. Every one of these women feels real, and so make real the narrative roles that they inhabit. And none of them ever oppose each other, not even Eliza and Maria Reynolds… Eliza’s betrayal there is all about Alex's choices, not the other woman whom she doesn't know.)
#the amazing digital circus
#heated rivalry
#aromantic
