I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory
It is pretty funny that the last post on Zac’s Facebook page is him harshly critiquing the musical Hamilton. Two Christmases ago, Zac, Jacob, Doug and I went to the Pantages in Los Angeles to see Wicked. In the Lyft home, Jacob and Zac were deep in a back-and-forth commentary about Wicked as a Clinton-era parable of how Gen X essentially threw its hands up and said “Welp, this country is a huge mess of our collective making. Y’all figure it out for yourselves. I’m gonna run off into to the forest and live in my own inertia”. Or something to that effect. Somehow the conversation pivoted to Hamilton and Zac started talking loudly about how Hamilton is historical revisionist bullshit. I provided the trite but true observation that Lin Manuel Miranda created a production that centers people of color in American history, which is rarely ever done. Zac admitted that he hadn’t actually seen the play but had heard some of the songs. I shut down at that point. I always got annoyed when Zac would have a super formed opinion for something he HADN’T ACTUALLY SEEN.
Zac will hate this, but I think he’s a lot like Hamilton from Miranda’s play. Hamilton was ridiculously opinionated about everything. He was inexhaustible in his writing. He argued passionately and disagreed with just about every one of his contemporaries. He both respected and was incredibly frustrated with his nemesis. He grew up poor (somewhat debatable for Hamilton but not for Zac and I) and worked his butt off. People saw his potential and were both in awe and jealous of him. My brother was all of these things too. What Zac had that Miranda’s Hamilton does not is empathy and self-awareness. And my brother was an unapologetic socialist, so the analogy stops at anything related to Hamilton’s political and economic beliefs.
The other thing that Zac had in common with Hamilton was how close they lived with death. Hamilton never thought he would live as long as he did. Zac said that to many of us. When Hamilton is eager to run into battle, Washington asks him to be his secretary and says “Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder”. No one knew that better than my brother. To live was to crawl on your hands and knees through the thick, black fluid of self-hatred, pulling and clawing your way through every day and making a choice to set yourself on fire to get it to melt away. Death on the other hand, was a sweet release. Zac died too young with too much more he could’ve said and done. For better or worse, many people felt the same way about Hamilton.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that his last comment on his Facebook acknowledges that Hamilton does have a great villain song though. Zac loved a great villain song. Did I mention Zac would hate this post?
