014: parents are people? / hammy pt 1
Arns is distraught over A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza and the tender words our parents leave unspoken. Nins eases us into Act 1 of the most millennial musical of all time: Hamilton.
CONTENT WARNING: grief, loss
referenced in this episode:
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
Podcast "BOOKS WITH JEN" ep 12 ft. Fatima Farheen Mirza
Fatima Farheen Mirza on "A Place For Us" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair
0:00 - Intro
9:43 - Arns: A Place for Us
31:39 - Nins: Hamilton Act 1
56:17 - Outro
[WARNING: this content contains spoilers]
summary
episode 014 of brb crying opens with Arns (Ariana) and Nins (Angela) yapping about what’s going on in their lives.
They get into their fan-submitted sob story segment, when they go over fan submissions of what makes them cry. Nins and Arns discuss how we as humans are conditioned to attribute success and a large part of our identity to our jobs and climbing the corporate ladder.
Arns discusses a book she read over the summer called A Place for Us, a heavy novel that explores finding identity, living between two distinct worlds, and the tender words that parents leave unsaid.
For the last segment, Nins dives into the plot, characters, and songs of a past (current? forever ongoing?) obsession, the hip-hop musical Hamilton. She reflects on what moments made her cry in her current rewatch of Act 1.
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00:00:00 hi I'm Angela Non I'm Ariana Kempis and this is brb [Music] crying
hello everyone welcome back to brb crying I'm Ariana also known as Arns and I'm Angela also known as Nins and we are two girls who are here to uh talk about our last cry session get into it get into it dig deep dig deep and uh you get to listen in while we overanalyze congrats you're welcome so what's up what's going on nothing much actually okay it's getting a little cooler it is got my little sweater on yeah you know yeah I drove to your house
00:01:01 and it was actually like dark outside it's weird right I was like Vibe okay yeah I mean I [ ] love fall yeah and that's it that's all and that's the end of my sentence I [ ] love fall love when it gets a little darker why do you think it is such a beloved season more so than I feel like any others like it's like such a fan favorite I think it's because well for me it's like the marker of a new school year and that you know my brain is hardwired to think in terms of I'm a seven-year-old girl yeah yeah
00:01:39 not pushing mid-30s no no no no no please and then also the beginning of the Burr months and Christmas it's like the anticipation anticipation gotcha but yeah I feel like fall is like you don't have to try as hard you put on a big ass [ __ ] sweater MH going out in public it's like I can just kind of throw something on and yeah cozy yeah it's upon us it is upon us hello fall Misty girl hello how about you what's up I don't know I feel a little lower energy today I think because I just had a really long day with lots of socializing
00:02:19 yeah so I feel like my voice is lower and I feel like a little more subdued and like I'm kind of just relaxing instead of peppering the that's the [ ] Vibe of this thing it is what it [ ] is this is a cozy Homey fall baggy sweater space you know yeah kick back mhm let's spill some tea okay you know yeah all right any other [ ] [ ] yes I do it's not [ __ ] it's actually quite a lovely message we did get a sweet so story and uh for all you newbies out there we have a section on our pod
00:03:03 called our sob stories and that is when we invite our fellow cry babies to submit a message to us about something that made them cry and with everyone's permission we share the messages here on our pod so today I'm going to be reading a story from an old coworker of mine her name is Ash and Ash sent us a message after episode 10 where I shared my struggles with finding an identity and a purpose outside of my job and it turns out that I'm not alone in this really shocking um here are some excerpts from
00:03:51 her sob story hey Angela just wanted to reach out to you about the podcast I really like the bit where you spoke about your job and how we are condition to a certain way of succeeding corporate ladder and whatnot I wanted to share that I relate with you and then Ash talks about how she had a really difficult experience at another workplace and she says it was so dramatic that I'm still dealing with anxiety attacks when it comes to work it's very unfortunate that in the name of work any sort of abuse emotional and
00:04:25 mental is being normalized I think it's also insane that even when you're feeling shitty you have to get it together and pretend like everything is normal at work which like 100% that was the hardest part it's like you have to just be a [ ] robot and it's like no dude I have to [ ] feel these feelings um but then she says I recently got stuck in India due to some Visa issues and lost my job it felt very shameful and I couldn't realize that our jobs are a separate entity from who we are I saw myself as a failure it's
00:05:01 interesting how our brains are wired to think that unemployment is shameful and insulting it took me 8 months to get out of the rut and make myself understand that I have my own identity without a job it was a huge learning curve this whole corporate hustle culture is scary and a lot of my own friends and colleagues go through this Insanity of identifying themselves through their profession on one of the rough days I was reading random posts on social media and one said who are you identify yourself without
00:05:33 mentioning your last name your college your education or your job title I think that hits home and a lot of people need to hear that Ash thanks so much for sharing that we are unfortunately not alone when it comes to struggling to Define ourselves and our self worth and our successes outside of our job J titles and our salary levels when I replied to Ash I told her that when I remember her my first thought had nothing to do with her work ethic even though it was exceptional instead I immediately
00:06:17 remembered how kind she was and how sweet she was and those are the things that really matter I know it's hard to unlearn something so ingrained in our minds but to all our listeners nurse we hope that in this space you feel safe to leave all of that behind and just allow your true self to come through thanks Ash for sharing that I really identify with being unemployed and feeling like [ ] [ ] about it and feeling like a failure I've been unemployed many a time and it sucks like that's it like it just
00:06:53 [ ] sucks on top of not having a job mhm you feel like it's your fault you feel like wow this random Corporation is allowing me to Define how I look at myself yeah yeah it's rough it is rough it is rough but again I think that's why we're doing this because we've been there and we realize like holy [ ] we have so much more to offer to this world there is so much more under underneath all of that that's one of my favorite things about growing older just being able to let go more and more of what society and
00:07:39 everyone else says all this [ __ ] around who we are and who we should be and how we should Define ourselves and being able to see myself as separate from where I work it feels so good to like come home to yourself that way yeah yeah just like being able to genuinely say wow that doesn't matter to me as much here's what matters so much more Embrace that yeah I'm going to be honest it took me a long oh yeah time to get to this point oh yeah but why I thought you were only seven yeah I am this is true but yeah to be on the other
00:08:20 side of that maybe not even fully on the other side of it but to be able to separate myself a little bit more easily what a [ __ ] relief dude yeah yeah thanks Ash thanks for sharing that's such a cute name Ash so yeah if there are any other sub stories that our dear listener you want to share with us please send them our way we are hello at BRB crying podcast.com or you can submit a form on our website BRB crying podcast.com or DM us chase us down you'll figure out how to get to us oh don't worry we are
00:08:55 everywhere always yeah all right any other administrative stuff to get to um yeah sign up for our substack what are you doing we got lots of good stuff on there and things that we just don't even talk about on the Pod and we just want to keep building Community with all of you in this way so please please please read subscribe support babe I know you got like 1,000 unread emails in your Gmail what's one more what is one more that's actually worth it yeah it's [ __ ] funny it's moving it's cute and
00:09:36 that's all I got that's all we [Music] got okay okay lay it on me Arns okay [ ] me up I will [ ] you up how do I even begin um let me just read my notes Let me just start with what I [ __ ] wrote okay so during our summer break I thought I would do a little light reading M you know how to read um I do know how to read cuz as I mentioned previously I went to school so during this summer break of ours I was like oh sick I'm going to get into one of my hundreds of unread books on Goodreads okay and I found a book that I put on my
00:10:24 list years ago and it happened to be available on Libby so I was like okay [ __ ] it like sure I knew it would be a good read cuz it's rated so highly on good reads and I'd been wanting to um I didn't think it would break my soul open it was it was bad okay oo yeah I mean I I could not stop crying oh I love that love that for you yeah yeah I mean I was after I finished the book I think I just sat there for like 20 minutes it's just oh my God I'm I mean I don't know if you should be excited about that oh okay no
00:11:04 I mean do you want me to like this story or not God I'm sorry I'm just there's so much enthusiasm that you're radiating and I don't know if it's oh okay is it a heavy book yeah yeah yeah yeah I see I see it is it a little heavy okay so I'm going to talk about a place for us by Fatima Farheen Mirza have you read this I don't think so okay so yeah I think that maybe this is also why I'm like so subdued today because this has just been on my list to talk about and I'm like oh my God I don't really want to talk about it okay sorry I'm if
00:11:43 you're listening for the first time she [ ] hates this podcast I'm really sorry I do want to be here no listen sometimes we got to talk about heavy [ ] I know yeah we don't have to refrain from it we just we got got to get through it got to do it yeah all right so my sources for today there is a podcast episode from a podcast that is called books with Jen and in episode 12 she has a discussion with the author another source is an interview that the author did at the 2018 Miami book fair so this is when the novel came out 2018
00:12:22 all right some cook context context so this is the first book chosen by Sarah Jessica Parker for her imprint SJP for Hogarth so she reads through and like chooses what she wants published and so she chose she chose this one I sorry can I just say I almost wish that you had read this book okay because it's like I feel so responsible now for like telling you everything about it that like just expressing the full weight of it and I know I cannot do it justice yeah so let me just disclaimer everyone
00:13:07 just [ ] read this book because what I'm about to say is just nonsense compared to her writing okay so she wrote this over the course of eight years she started it when she was 18 and she finished it when she was 26 which again what the [ ] was I doing when I was you read what I [ __ ] wrote at 18 you want me to pull up my Tumblr dude I don't even know yeah so she says in one of her interviews that this novel is her trying to figure out the big question of what we owe ourselves and what we owe our
00:13:41 family okay so this novel is on a very high level exploring what it's like to live Between Two Worlds and searching for your identity which I know is a theme that both of us identify with and a lot of us identify with and thinking about where we're from where we're going and what we want to take with us I'm just going to give heaving size in between every segment okay so plot let me just let me zoom out and talk about the [ __ ] plot I feel like I'm addressing this like it's a chore um I'm really sorry I
00:14:21 I do I do Fatima if you ever listen to this I my God I Okay so okay plot this book is about an indian-american Muslim family living in Northern California and the opening scene is a wedding and it's the eldest daughter getting married and there is a palpable tension because her younger brother who is estranged from the family shows up to the wedding and from that point it's all questions and no answers so then from that point we dive into the meat of the novel which which is the past and it's not told in a linear way
00:15:04 it's more like a collection of memories and the memories center around three of the family members so it kind of alternates between their perspectives okay so I'm going to run through the characters so we got Hadya she is the eldest daughter very eldest daughter straight A student super responsible never disobeyed is and it's ingrained in her from an early age that her role is the big sister and she Bears this burden of feeling responsible not only for herself but for how her actions affect her
00:15:48 siblings so one of the lines that she's told by her dad is you're like their mom when Mom is not here which is [ ] and then we have Huda the middle sorry I just can't imagine this really beautifully written book that's [ ] I'm like defiling this book it is might I just say it is so beautifully written it is so incredibly crafted this is her first novel and she just blew it out of the water I could not find a bad review I mean everyone was just like what oh man so don't mind me um turn this off actually just stop
00:16:39 listening okay so we have Hula who is the middle child and we know the least about her and interestingly none of the memories center her she is kind of like a side character throughout the whole thing and then we have the youngest child Amar Who is the only son and he is so beloved in this family but he's also rebellious and misunderstood he wants so badly to be a devout member of his local Muslim community but he has the most qualms about his faith and the most resentment and questions and he just
00:17:23 feels so at odds with everything he should be and he's also always at odds with their father and one of the lines is listening to this man praised his father Amar felt as if a balloon were growing in his chest and he was afraid if it popped he would cry he had been cheated out of knowing the best of his father his father had reserved his kindness for others so it's one of those relationships where everyone talks about how great his dad is and he just doesn't even he doesn't see that side of his dad
00:17:59 So eventually Amar runs away and becomes a strange and that is where we find ourselves at the beginning of the novel and then I'm going to talk a little bit about their parents Rafik and Leila so Rafik is portrayed as this really strict father very devout very by the book unfeeling everything is Black or White he's close-minded and Leila is the mom and and she holds her daughters to these high standards but she has such a soft spot for her son Omar because she knows that he's different and that he needs a
00:18:38 different kind of parenting and a different kind of love and so she's softer with him and so much of her memories are spent marveling at her family there's this one scene where she's watching her husband push her daughters on the swings and this is like a very uncharacteristically Carefree moment for their family it reads it takes so little just the slightest touch of his hand against their backs and their bodies sore their laughter reaches her and she is shocked by a plunge inside her her affection for Rafi surges
00:19:16 and she wonders if she has ever loved him the way she loves him now and so she's looking back on these memories and she thinks it wasn't always so bad we had had our good moments so where did it go wrong how did our family come to this and that is the big question that the whole novel is trying to answer where did it go wrong and how did we let Amar down and what was my role in this and what could I have done differently and so Amar, Hadya, the eldest, and Leila it's kind of alternating between their three perspectives and you
00:19:54 get to know them all so intimately it's just one of those where you you feel like you know them and she says in interviews how much she mourned you know when she was done writing it and it's not even though it sounds kind of confusing because of the way it jumps around the past it's not overly complex it's not like a ton of big words like a lot of the authors that we talk about it's always these complex messages boiled down into like these simple words that communicate so much so after the bulk of the novel is spent sifting
00:20:27 through the past and these memories were pulled back to the present back to the wedding and here I will say that if you like to know absolutely nothing about anything you should probably just stop listening it's not really spoilers but listener discretion advised how was that that was good right so this wedding I ugly cried during one of the scenes but I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to cheap in it okay okay anyway so you know you're ugly crying reading this wedding scene and then you kind of think that
00:21:01 like okay like we're [ __ ] chill now and then Fatima ends this novel with a it's like she sees your open wound and she takes salt and she just yeah just pours that salt because she ends she ends with a segment from the dad's point of view and is the only segment in the novel that is written in first person let me just tell you how it opens when you were born you did not cry and then he talks about how this baby that he's talking to wasn't breathing and everyone was panicking and he says because you could not breathe easily I
00:21:48 could not either you realize that this whole segment is him speaking to his son Amar the whole thing and it flashes very quickly through so many of the scenes throughout the novel except from his point of view and I think I highlighted like every other sentence because it was just oh my God every you know line after line so I will say I did not grow up in the Muslim faith I don't know what it's like to have had a childhood where I felt so confined by my faith and my culture but to an extent I think we all know what
00:22:30 it's like to not quite fit and can imagine how [ __ ] shitty it is when the place where you don't fit is at home and so this segment ruined me because I imagine Rafik's words to be everything a parent might feel towards their child but never say you know questioning what kind of parent they were what they could have done differently processing everything in retrospect picking apart all those moments and expressing everything that they couldn't back then there are a couple scenes I want to a couple quotes I want to talk
00:23:11 about so there's this one scene he comes home and he's watching them from the window before he walks in and he can see the ease that they feel when he's not there and it says you and your mother placed plates and bowls of steaming food onto the table all the while your lips moved your expressions changed whatever you spoke about engaged you both and I thought about how I know only silence and then there's another scene they had this really big fight Rafik and Amar and he says you did not speak to me
00:23:45 after that I couldn't really blame you would you believe me if I told you I hated myself more in those moments than I imagined you hated me and then one last quote I want to say once again I felt felt like I did not know how to interact with you I wonder now what we could have been had I had the courage to lift you into my arms as I wanted to then and so throughout this novel you're taking through this journey and you're made to think that he's this cold unfeeling parent and suddenly everything
00:24:18 that you thought you knew about him is just completely undone because he's basically saying I wasn't a perfect parent I was actually kind of a shitty parent and if I could go back there's so much I would have done differently but here we are and in spite of everything my soul reaches out to you and my soul will always look for you and it might not be enough to undo all this pain that I've caused but this is what I can give you and I think this line sums it up perfectly what happens in this life is
00:24:50 not final there is another and maybe there we will get another chance maybe there we will get it right and I had this realization that reading this that maybe that typical strict immigrant parent who can't see beyond their blinders maybe they're actually more complex than we realize they just don't have the time or the space to explore themselves in that way and I think that what Fatima does so beautifully with this novel is she contextualizes our parents decisions and actions and she offers these healing
00:25:30 words not just for Omar but for her readers who can identify with what it's like to be in his position and a lot of us have had to accept that we have to meet our parents where they are they're not going to change what am I going to do about it even if we don't forgive them for hurting us for our own peace of mind we have to accept that and there's a grieving there's a Mourning that happens when we accept that that it's not going to change but the thing is like even if these words from Rafik to
00:26:05 Amar are never uttered by our own parents to hope that this is what they would have thought and what they would have said is it's such a gift it's such a gift that Fatima has given all of us by imagining that this is what they would have felt maybe you can help us understand them a little bit better and kind of hope that underneath it all there was tenderness and maybe there was a part of them that wishes that it could have been different too obviously I was ugly crying could not breathe when I was reading it and
00:26:42 then again I had to like go back into it and pull out those quotes and a couple nights ago and it was the same thing I couldn't breathe yeah wait so you're telling me that our parents are people yeah our parents are people I feel like you and I are so focused on looking at our emotions dead in the face and just saying I'm not [ __ ] afraid of you anymore and then we get this air of conceitedness like it's so easy I know that it's really hard it's really hard to face them and a lot of our parents
00:27:39 have found other ways to shut them off or ignore them but that doesn't mean it's not there and this is what happens when we get even a glimpse of it it just destroys us because it's like I think it's a universal experience of a child of an immigrant family just like pleading begging please please please love me in the way that I want to be loved and it's like our parents are saying like please please see that I'm trying I don't want to read it I'm scared there's did I mention I don't know if I told you this this is 10 years
00:28:29 later 10 years later from after the the wedding oh so in this segment there's grandkids around now and Rafi is like he says something along the lines of just how easy it is to love their grandkids because that's all they expect from him and he's like talking to his grandkid and the grandkid says oh like Mom is number one and you're number two and he says like he picks him up and he Whispers yeah I'm numbered two like I've never even been someone's number one so I'll take it there's a lot that I'm not [ __ ]
00:29:10 talking about with this book that destroyed me but yeah it's just the whole concept of imagining this is what they would say this is what they would feel this is what they do feel and they don't voice it and it's like all we see is the disconnect mhm and so imagining that Gap being bridged is overwhelming I think for me at least yeah I just feel like it's one thing to be able to write a [ __ ] book at 18 but it's another thing to have that type of soul that has that empathy for the parent let me stop you there she said that
00:30:02 throughout this whole process of writing this novel the eight years she was kind of in a similar mindset as her characters blaming the dad then she wrote that scene of the dad pushing the daughters on the swing and she had this flash of tenderness towards him and then she just wrote that last segment she said it just poured out of her she doesn't even really remember writing a lot of it wow so it's kind of like the breakthrough that we have as the readers yeah but she experience it herself and the way she delivers it is it evokes
00:30:40 that same feeling yeah yeah well I'mma add it to my good reads yeah it was a a beast of a first novel yeah Sarah Jessica Parker girl you got some taste I mean we knew that but yeah I mean I barely skimmed the surface but I wanted to talk about it because because I want everyone to read it yeah for themselves yeah great promo I've been influenced yeah yeah what is it called again it was a place for us a place for us a place for us there is a place for okay moving [Music] on all right what do you
00:31:43 got I am here to dig you out oh thank God I'm ready we got a fun one today okay yes this is what I need I think you'll enjoy it okay but before I introduce my topic today I do have to make a confession turns out that I'm actually a millennial did you know this I did know this I wore my side part today um is that a millennial thing yeah really babe I got to get you on Tik Tok nah I'm okay I did notice you did have a side part today though okay yeah cuz you you had a middle part the past couple times yeah
00:32:28 but I was like I think I'm going to do a side part today specifically I also have my black leggings on okay loose crew neck okay you know I'm a millennial I am 2014 cool I have accepted it okay embraced it mhm what are some ways that you think that you scream Millennial neutrals oh that's true that's true neutrals are you kidding me yeah yeah yeah they like the bold yeah flashes of color yeah do you want to know another way that you and I both scream Millennial there was a time in our lives where you and I were
00:33:09 obsessed obsessed with Hamilton oh [ ] yeah we're going there should we start from the beginning do we need to sing wait what are you you're covering like the musical correct okay yeah I will say that I am going to be doing it in two parts act one and act two correct yeah there's no way I could fit everything into my one short segment today okay but we're covered in Hamilton today dude okay flying through the cook contest C contest I got a lot of [ ] to cover today okay Hamilton is a hip-hop
00:33:49 musical babe if you don't know that like where the hell have you been okay ingeniously created by Lynn Manuel Miranda it is based on the biography Alexander Hamilton by Ron Cherno and depicts The Life and Times of Alexander Hamilton one of America's founding fathers MH it took Linn Manuel Miranda seven years to compose this sorry Fatima he [ __ ] he just that one year and it premiered Off Broadway in February of 2015 and then on Broadway in August of that same year the show intentionally casts non-white
00:34:32 actors to play these historical figures and Linn Manuel Miranda describes this Choice as quote America then As Told by America now so straight up we were obsessed with this like there was a 2 year window of my life that this musical just consumed mhm um 27 I would say 2017 2018 MH this was the only thing on my mind yeah I mean we knew every word to every single song no that's true that's true please forced everyone in my life to listen to this all my siblings all of my friends but I remember distinctly as familiar as we
00:35:22 were with the entire story memorized the entire story before watching it live I remember when I sat in that theater I was shocked because I was like wait a second I'm sobbing I was like what the [ __ ] because I felt like I knew what to expect MH and then the act of watching real people perform this in front of me with their facial expressions with the body language with all the choreography I was like oh my God this is a masterpiece this is a masterpiece so in a previous episode episode 11 you talked about Bridgerton
00:36:07 the mini-series Queen Charlotte which focuses on Queen Charlotte and King George I did yes and so this is the same King George that's featured in Hamilton so it got me got me thinking okay I was like should I dabble back in should I relapse and so yeah I watched it I watched it recently and I'm so glad that it had actually been I think years since I had seen the show again from start to finish because I had just built up such a [ __ ] immunity I was like desensitized almost to the story mhm and yeah I had watched it very recently from
00:36:52 start to finish and my God sobbing again and now that I'm in this era of my life where I'm not holding back anymore with the emotions I just [ ] let it run through me you know what I mean cuz I think when I was in that theater for the first time I was like I'm not crying you know like get it together get it together no I was in the safety of my living room I was like [ ] it I'm going to pause it so I can finish crying before we move on love that for you wow so I was trying to think of the best way
00:37:26 to tell the story because there's so much to cover and there were so many times throughout this musical that made me cry that I think are all worth discussing so in order to not make this a two-hour long podcast I'm going to cover act one today and then I'll cover act two in our next episode okay so I'm going to go through the plot and as we go through the story we'll spend a little bit more time on the songs that specifically wrecked me you mean we're going to sing them I'm like you laugh but uh um unlike Arns I don't really care
00:38:04 that much about spoilers I also think that if you don't [ __ ] know what this is about this is your loss babe so hopefully this is a review sesh of something that you two have also been very obsessed with but my God if you have not seen this it is on Disney plus listen to the soundtrack you will not be disappointed okay I do have to add my one little disclaimer though that obviously this is a musical based on real events and real people but like I'm not really trying to fact check today nah we're not putting our
00:38:43 historian hat on would take too much time would take too much time Google's free I'm mainly going to dive into this musical and solely focus on the story it presents and not necessarily view it as an accurate window to the past so let's just keep that in mind okay okay [Music] so so we're introduced to our main character Alexander Hamilton so opening song just gives you some C context about Alexander's upbringing he was orphaned at a young age he really came from nothing and that rough background where
00:39:25 he really just had to like figure [ ] out on his own really marked this desire for him to make something of himself he's like I'm going to leave a mark on the world I don't know how yet but I'm smart and Scrappy and I'm hungry so I'm not throwing away my shot sorry so he does all this [ ] he ends up in New York okay with nothing but a hope and a dream so in New York he meets Aaron Burr who becomes a lifelong friend of his and Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton are complete opposites in character Hamilton is this
00:40:07 loud mouth God it's so hard to not quote specific songs loud mouth do it look at me I'm the [ ] go getter in your face kind of dude and Aaron Burr is more of a quiet calculating kind of guy he never reveals what he's really thinking he moves in silence and I was actually curious so of course I looked up their zodiac signs ah uh-huh Alexander Hamilton is a Capricorn I think I looked this up too cuz I think I knew that he was a cap that's why he doesn't shut the [ ] up he just [ __ ] talks and Aaron
00:40:44 bur is an aquarius it's a [ __ ] science it's science anyway so in this point of musical he finds his chosen family his boys you know John Lawrence Hercules Mulligan and Marquis de Lafayette here's Mulligan sorry and they're all hyped up to join the revolution to gain independence from Great Britain sorry King George we loved you in episode 11 did you're a caricature in this one I'm so sorry yeah yeah but anyway Hamilton and his boys become soldiers in the Continental Army and then King George is like what I'm
00:41:26 going to send over my troops my British troops on a chose day you know a cocky accent we the king of Britain I like to imagine makes sense all right so the British troops arrive the US is down bad okay it's [ __ ] rough and Hamilton's like trying to make a name for himself in this war and he catches the eye of this guy I don't know if you actually know who this person is probably not um kind of lost to history yeah his name is George Washington he was big during the war he was like a general okay okay so he
00:42:11 reaches out to Hamilton and he's like oh my God Hamilton you're so smart and you're so cool and like will you be my secretary please and Hamilton's like I mean I guess I can do that like I kind of just want to like fight some dudes and be in the thick of the action but I guess I'll [ ] write for you he understands that rubbing elbows with Washington is a big [ ] deal and again he's so obsessed with building a legacy and he's like okay fine I will be Washington's right-hand man um because he knows that this will
00:42:50 eventually pay off so now Hamilton has this pretty respectable role as the general Secret ter and girls are [ ] into him okay he's hot as [ ] so there's this cute little ball and anyone who's anyone is at this [ ] ball including the it girls of the moment the Skyler sisters MH there's three sisters Angelica Eliza and Peggy and what can I say they're bad [ ] Angelica is the oldest and she's this whip smart well- read well-educated girl boss energy and Eliza the middle sister you will never find anyone as
00:43:42 trusting or as kind sweetheart angel baby we love her and then Peggy's there too um anyway so Eliza and Hamilton meet at this ball Angelica introduces them and babe the sparks are flying okay and we cut to the chase Hamilton and Eliza get married they're like this is a 2 and a half hour musical we have to cover 47 years we're getting married in 3 minutes so they get married at the end of this song So at the wedding Angelica Eliza's older sister gives her made of honor speech and this is the first song that
00:44:27 in my watch [ __ ] me up but it's it's a cute one it's a little I'm going to say 2 out of 10 okay mhm so this song is her made of honor speech but it really is more so her inner monologue okay okay like she doesn't know no yeah unfamiliar and she's in this inner monologue of hers she's rewinding to the very first night that she met Alex and Stander at this ball right before she introduces him to her sister Eliza and you realize that Angelica actually fell for him first this was the only man that she ever met that she felt
00:45:13 matched her intellect and her ambition but as the eldest daughter in her family with no Sons she knows that she can't marry this penniless man she needs to marry rich and put her family obligation above her own heart so she decides to introduce him to Eliza knowing that they'd fall in love she commits the ultimate sacrifice and chooses her younger sister's happiness over her own and she says but when I fantasize at night it's Alexander's eyes as I romanticize what might have been if I hadn't sized
00:46:00 him up so quickly at least my dear Eliza's his wife at least I keep his eyes in my life I was smirking earlier when you were telling your story because when you talked about the older sister and what the role of an older sister is being that second mom to these younger children having to learn how to put someone else before you from such a young age you and I are so spoiled mhm as younger sisters and we will never know we will never know all the things that they did for us without question and I
00:46:53 just I love you sister love you love you the real ones you know truly yeah so this one I mean just a masterpiece in storytelling the song it's just incredible and again it's just a light teaser for what's to come in this musical so back to the plot Hamilton and Eliza are married war is still raging still down [ __ ] bad mhm Alexander is trying to prove himself and he's over being a secretary he's like George Georgie can I lead a battalion in the Army pretty please and he's like no because you need to write my
00:47:48 letters and Alexander's like wow I'm really [ ] tired of this I don't like this [ ] it and George is like oh my God the disrespect like you're going on timeout you're gonna go home and so Alexander goes home and he realizes that his wife is pregnant with their first son and they have this really tender moment and the song is that would be enough another one for me I would say we're we're up in the Auntie a little bit okay we're going like a three okay and it's this really beautiful song and in the beginning of it Alexander is
00:48:31 reacting to the fact that she's pregnant and he's like holy [ ] I'm going to be a dad you really want to have a child with me like I don't have anything I don't have any wealth aren't you ashamed of me and Eliza responds like listen I don't give a [ ] about any of that I'm already so proud of everything that you are and this family this life with you that is all I need that would be enough for me and I just hope that that would be enough for you too the song breaks my heart because she is not asking
00:49:17 him to be anything other than who he already is and what she's doing is instead just begging for that validation that this life that she fervently wants with him is what he wants to and so In This Moment Alexander is like yes okay I will choose you I will be here for this family and then Psych the next song comes and he's like actually goodbye I have to go to war um okay so then more plot happens spoiler alert we win the war we do it's crazy yeah the songs in the musical that depict us winning this
00:50:14 war incredible iconic don't you just get pumped up every single time guns and ships okay so the war is over but now the hard parts starts how to start a brand new nation imagine I know right I have to how do I start a country I'm like how do I how do I like grow my podcast holy [ __ ] okay so now all of these war heroes are tasked with trying to figure it out how to establish a democracy how to write a constitution how to form a government but during this time both Alexander and Aaron Burr have
00:50:56 kids Alexander and Eliza have a son named Phillip and Aaron Burr has a daughter named after her mother Theodosia and there's a song that Hamilton and Aaron Burr sing together and it's of them singing to their newborn children and it's called dear Theodosia and straight up I just have to say that in 2018 I did not give a [ ] about this song h I was like okay let's just get to this finale for act one because that song is [ ] sick mhm and when I watched it again last week I was like this one we're getting spicy we're
00:51:42 getting like I was level 56 okay okay so this song is basically Aaron Burr and Alexander acknowledging the gravity of what they're about to do build a new country mhm and they realize that their children are going to grow up alongside this new nation and Aaron Burr and Alexander have this obligation to do everything that they can to leave behind a world that's safe for their kids and it's this realization that the work that they're doing is not solely for them this is their like legacy that they're leaving
00:52:29 behind and the lines that really got me were I'll do whatever it takes I'll make a million mistakes I'll make the world safe and sound for you you will come of age with our young nation we'll bleed and fight for you we'll make it right for you if we lay a strong enough foundation we'll pass it on to you we'll give the world to you and you'll blow us all away and uh I think the reason that this one hit me now is because I think I've just become a lot more cognizant of the role of a parent everything that they do every
00:53:19 small minute thing is it starts to affect this child that they are now bringing into this world and all the parents that I know are not building a new country but they're still building that foundation for someone else to stand on to grow on and just having this song capture the magnitude of that role and recognizing the weight of that responsibility and I love when Aaron Burr says that he'll make a million mistakes because no parent knows how to do that perfectly but my God it doesn't make what they're able to
00:54:19 do any less incredible like I don't understand how you as a parent aren't just sobbing constantly here's the thing I am I think that in the day-to-day it's the you know you pick her up from daycare and you put her in the car seat only to realize her diaper is around her leg instead of her butt that's the things that like pull me out sure of like this is beautiful yeah yeah yeah like what the [ __ ] is this yeah yeah but I it is 100% what you're saying if I think about it too much it's oof yeah I mean
00:55:03 that's that's the last part in this whole act one that got to me but just to close it off in this finale another [ __ ] epic ass song basically describing Hamilton's career as a lawyer in this country he co-writes The Federalist Papers defending the new constitution he becomes Secretary of the Treasury Aaron Burr kind of just is there just lurks keeps his head down and Eliza watches her husband choose his career time and time again over her and their growing family so that will be a theme that we will
00:55:46 revisit in act two stay tuned everyone yeah but that's that's what I got for today um yeah the musicals pretty good yeah solid six out of 10 mhm act two next week we're going to get very spicy okay so buckle up I hope that if you are a fan of this musical this inspires you to rewatch it again do your homework come prepared for next week yeah all right all right that's what we got today well that's what we got thanks everyone for listening follow us on Substack the link is in the show notes and also in our Linkedin bio we are Brb
00:56:31 Crying podcast on all socials and as Den said please send us your sob stories send us your cry recommendations hello brb crying podcast.com brb crying podcast.com the form on our website leave us a five star rating nothing less nothing less or I will delete it as I have mentioned I will find a way Reddit that's what we got today and that's what we [ __ ] got so catch you all next week I guess mhm next week we will be back we we will mhm but until then brb cryinges here
Until next time…brb crying :’)