How lucky we are to be alive right now
A couple weeks ago, I went to see Hamilton.
No, I don't want to talk about it.
JK! It was great. There are no new superlatives to use when it comes to this show, so I will relay some other facts.
1) Mike Colter, who plays Luke Cage, was at our matinee showing. He is distractingly broad, with shoulders and back muscles that legitimately made me breathlessly utter to my friend in the dark, "God, I wanna climb him." Also, his complexion is so smooth and even that it glints in the dark, with or without the stage lights. It's almost...offensive how good looking he is.
2) It was Renee Elise Goldsberry's last day performing as Angelica Schuyler. Her voice sounded almost identical to the cast recording version – her voice really is close to flawless live. When she sang Satisfied, I wept. At the curtain call, she wept, and this time I wept with her. The woman won a damn Tony Award for this role, you know? And for those of us who were watching her back in the days of singing behind Vonda Shepard on Ally McBeal, or as Evangeline in One Life To Live, it felt like a personal victory; a world in which dreams come true after years of hard graft, and an interaction with the gift to the earth that is Lin-Manuel Miranda.
3) Christopher Jackson is a fucking pro. He has such presence that he made me sit up straighter in my chair every time he was on stage. Live, his voice sounds like warm honey poured over a steel girder.
4) Javier Muñoz is so sexy, it's kinda ridiculous to look at him. Ugh. Here is a super piece on/featuring him.
5) After the show I bought a Hamilton tote bag at the merch stand. Look, this is who I am now. If it offends you, I urge you to look away from my lovely new tote bag, and I pray you find a way to recover from the haterade addiction you're battling. Get well soon.
The book I contributed an essay to, The Good Immigrant, is out shortly. You can read an essay by actor and musician (and very handsome man) Riz Ahmed, also from the collection, here. We are going to be Radio 4's Book of the Week in mid-October. I am exceedingly proud of us. A book! A good book! 2016 has been a very good year, in many ways.
I am a lot less homesick these last couple weeks. I've had two British pals in town over that time, and the simple act of hearing them pronounce words the "proper" way helped a great deal to curb my homesickness. One of the British guests, R, did that wonderful British thing of saying "fuck off" with the correct 13 hidden 'f's for the price of that first 'f'. Ffffffffffffffuck off. I felt giddy when she said it. I gurgled like a baby. Swearing sounds so much nicer in British.
My 30s have been my best skin decade so far (we do not count the pre-puberty years, because childhood is but a mirage, and all the good skin therein means nothing in the grand scheme of a lifetime's worth of skincare). But then last week, a constellation of pimples rose on my left cheek. I have rarely been so furious.