Lin-Manuel Miranda (notes from a BBC interview)
/In this post, there is a list of the advanced words and phrases from the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs interview with Sabrina Cohen-Hatton - a firefighter and psychologist. Aggie and I are currently creating a podcast (in which we will explain some of the words) and it will be launched on 1st Nov!
You can listen to the interview here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00092wm
INTRO
0:49 Hip hop nerd from Manhattan
0:57 Wrote Hamilton - “told the story of the country’s first bureaucrat’
1:07 Unlikely success of its titular hero, one of America’s founding fathers
To call it a 1:11 smash is an understatement
Sold 1 bill worth of tickets, grammar, pulitzer prize
Michelle Obama “best piece of art I’ve seen in my life”
1:28 Not content with writing and starring in his own musicals
In Mary Poppins Returns
He raps too
When you’re making something you’re trying to fall in love with it
HIGH OF BEING IN A SHOW
Pirate King in my first time show
I remember working so hard
2:38 The applause was the most gratifying sound I’d ever heard
CREATIVE AND MUSICAL LIFE
2:54 Is it always whirring? [LL re: his mind being a busy place, director, MC…]
Mum and Dad had very different viewing habits
3:06 The heavy stuff
Dad took me to every Schwarznegger movie and every musical ! I am like my Dad
3:18 I need something mindless
FREESTYLE RAP
Did this with Barack Obama !
3:34 It was surreal
Probably not my best freestyle but the best I could do with the leader of the free world !
FIRST TRACK (CABARET)
Reminds me of my mother
4:26 screaming along with Lizer
How I fell in love with musical theatre
4:55 I get goosebumps every time I hear it
IDEA BEHIND HAMILTON
5:55 Pointing out its heros in auspicious beginnings
5:57 An illegitimate, orphan immigrant
6:04 Mostly hip hop
6:12 What was the moment when you thought - this is it, this is going to fly
6:22 It came to me, this guys a wordsmith
Wrote about a hurricane and it’s so good its used in relief efforts
6:48 Writing about your struggles so specifically that you transcend it
6:53 He starts writing under a pseudonym
It isn’t congruous, the founding fathers with this very contemporary music
CASTING OF HAMILTON
7:22 Tell me about casting the show
Cast actors from very many different backgrounds, why was this important
7:36 Looked for the most diverse group of people who could bring these words to life
“Story of America THEN told by America NOW”
8:06 How thrilling that is
Didn’t seem that weird to me, but certainly made an impression
SECOND TRACK
8:31 My sneaky attempt to get 3 songs into DID
8:52 Forefront of expanding vocabulary
8:59 At the peak of Hamilton craziness
My calm in the storm was listening to the Crane Wife
9:29 Used it to zone out
→ Meditation
NEIGHBOURHOOD (in NY 200th street)
10:26 nosebleed territory [LL]
Tiny Latin American country
First chapter in so many immigrant stories
Had a live in nanny
11:06 Who actually raised my father
Never spoke a word of English, even businesses who weren’t Latino owned spoke Spanish because that was the clientele
PUERTO RICO
Grandparents worked until the day they died
11:48 She was a real gossip so travel agency was the perfect job
12:04 slurpie machine
12:12 During the lunch rush
12:16 across the plaza
I associate with just lots of free white construction paper (at town credit union, bank) with which to make paper planes
12:29 shuttling between lots of people who were working all the time
Ear for dialogue - tuning into gossip
My name was “Luisa’s son who went to New York” in PR
The best recipe for being a writer is to be a 13:11 a little out of place everywhere
CHILDHOOD
13:13 Won the lotto when I was 5, got into an elite public school called Hunter
→ going from 200th st to fancy school, Spanish with messed up accent in Puerto Rico and at school live far away
Thinking about which part of yourself is most 13:41 applicable to the people I’m around
THIRD TRACK
13:57 Album I remember most in my parents’ vinyl collection
SHOW OFF
14:50 To what extent were you a show off [LL]
14:52 I saw a video of you cutting a rug to footloose in your bedroom
I was alone, showing off to a camera
Camcorder became my life
Parents worked a lot, always had more than 1 job
15:33 She was into sort of boys and not being home
15:44 Playing around in my imagination
SCHOOL
Loved Hunter,
16:00 Had every phase there
→ First job was teaching English there
16:15 As a kid it’s intimidating
16:21 Kids were smarter and swimming in deeper waters
Learned that funny is a currency
16:32 double down on this passion of mine
SENSITIVE TO MUSIC
16:45 How did that manifest?
Made an ass of myself getting teary listening to music
Now I recognise this is a superpower
17:01 Struggling to hold it together
17:12 As an infant I would start crying if it was a minor chord song
Upset about “I just called to say I love you”
17:51 ONe that you’ve harnessed? [LL re superpower]
18:01 i think that my work marries those 2
I think subconsciously that I write things that both my parents would enjoy
18:10 but will also kick you in the heart when you least or most expect it
18:21 It pings off neurons on both hemispheres of your brain
Music does stuff to us chemically that we don’t even understand
FOURTH TRACK
Little younger than Hip Hop
Grew up just south of it in the South Bronx
I would write raps with my friends
19:08 Song about getting passed over
19:16 I’m allowed to write about the stuff I’m insecure about
→ revolutionary
19:19 I’m crazy about the voices
19:25 The high pitched voice is actually subconsciously what I’ve been emulating since I’ve been rapping
It also ends with a burp, how weird is that!
CAMERA AS A COMPANION
It’s easier to film something than be a part of it
20:35 It became a crutch for me in high school
Footage from all these random moments
Saw a play where the character gets 21:29 called out for always being behind the camcorder
I started writing musicals then and there, saw a truly contemporary play
COMMON THREAD - TICKING CLOCK
Stories that fascinate you 22:03 they have a common thread
22:05 the ticking clock
You’re marked by your awareness of it
Aware of it from a pretty young age
Part of it - growing up in NYC
22:49 a little always on alert
Experienced death at a young age, best friend drowned in the lake behind their home
Six months of grey
JK Rowling - thestrels (the things that bring carriages to hogwarts, only people who’ve seen death can see them)
FIFTH TRACK
23:48 A real bomb to me
Written by a young singer songwriter who was my 7th grade student !!
Great student
Not prepared for how 24:39 self assured this song was
24.42 I’m in awe of this song
FIRST MUSICAL
Wrote first musical In the Heights at 19, opened in broadway in 2008
25.35 I was so impatient
26.15 we found all these like minded people
BEING CALLED A GENIUS
Called a genius (by your Dad on stage) and also received the Genius grant
27.06 I try to knock that pedestal out from under myself as often as I can
knock someone off their pedestal
to show that someone who is very successful or admired or loved very much has faults like everyone else
27.23 If you try and live up to that kind of word (genius) you’re setting yourself up and everyone else up for disappointment because I’m human and I mess up all the time
6TH DISC
28.28 Depths of wisdom
28.38 Regina spektor summing up life
HURRICAN IN PUERTO RICO
29.51 ..the island of blue tarps (tarpaulin) when you’re landing instead of roofs
29.58 generators (aunt and uncle had to use them for 5 months while waiting for electricity)
30.05 it was a stark reminder of the colonial status of this island
30.15 horrible body count (knew it was much higher)
30.31 home to the most resilient people on the planet
A campaigner for puerto Rico
Took Hamilton back there - performed
31.15 It was one of the toughest and yet most triumphant months of my life
The crowd wanted him to go back out so he went in his bath robe - people cheering
32.27 I always felt like an outsider on the island (the embrace of the reception he received healed something inside him)
7TH DISC
32.47 old school salsa crooner
33.08 Beautiful memories ….not stepping on my wife’s very elaborate dress!
REGRET
34.06 I really have an allergy to sitting in it
34.17 conversational gambit (was dating someone who doubted everything)
LIFE IN CARDIFF
35.08 it’s joyous
3528 Does being there allow you more anonymity
35.45 I’m having a blast in Cardiff
8TH DISC
36.10 I’m in a hip hop improv group
THE ISLAND
38.02 My shoulders unclench when I’m there (at home)
38.15 I know the manifold uses of a coconut
38.20 I’m pretty well done for
39.01 It was such a glimpse inside her brain Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Luxury: Coffee