Posts in Culture
We Finally Have a Song for Molly

Last night, the kids and I watched Encanto together. Normally I use their movie time to do something else, and therefore I had only seen bits and pieces of it. Mea culpa. This movie is fantastic. Just when you think Disney has sold out completely and forgotten the heart of humanity, they go and write a story rooted in sacrificial love:

 
 

After the movie, my eight-year-old daughter and I turned on the sing-along version and rewatched the songs. When we came to “Dos Oruguitas,” in an attempt to explain the gist of the song to her, I latched on to the word futuro. “He gave his life for his children, for the future,” I told her. “That’s what a good father does.”

Cue the emo moment. We finally have a song for Molly Chase.

If you’ve read In Pieces, or even if you’ve read the first paragraph of the back cover blurb, you will understand why. Molly’s father acted the opposite of Abuelo, taking his life rather than giving it. The story that follows is Molly’s search for reconciliation. “Dos Oruguitas” taps into this longing. In the context of the movie, it is a song about betrothed love, paternal love, sacrificial love, confession, reconciliation, and restoration—personal, familial, and communal. Ultimately it’s a song about theosis.

Something has shaken loose with this song. Full confession: I have been battling a stubborn case of writer’s block. I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to finish the next book of the series, motivated largely by a desire to please others. Only yesterday I was saying to my husband that I wasn’t having fun with it, that I had lost something fundamental. Last night’s Encanto viewing restored it, whatever it was. Ultimately, I cannot write to please readers, or editorial, or my publisher, or even myself. I write to please God and the muses.

This emo moment couldn’t have come at a better time.

Lyrics available here.

 

Spanish version.

English version.

Thoughts? Contact me here.

 
Acedia, Wonder, Fiction, and the Christmas Spirit
The+Nativity+in+Detail+Fra+Angelico.jpg

What makes a story Catholic or Christian?

Beneath the surface answers (the positive portrayal of faith, the assertion of a moral universe), we find another one:

Hope.

Against a world-weary culture, Christians dare to hope. This hope changes the tenor of a story. Christians still write redemption arcs. (How naïf!) And when Christians write a tragedy, the story is told against the backdrop of God—overtly or subtly, He’s there, whether or not the characters embrace Him.

Matters of content, genre, form, artistry, and audience aside—and we can debate these points until we’re blue in the face—a novel is Catholic or Christian insofar as our crazy, childlike hope in a Redeemer makes its way into the fabric of the story.

Hope.

Wonder.

Credo.

This flies in the face of contemporary fiction and Western culture. Consider these words of Cardinal Sarah:

Saint Thomas Aquinas says that the major remedy for acedia is not in us but in God. It is the Incarnation, the coming of God in our flesh. Indeed, since heaven seems so far away and we can grow tired in our search for God, he himself came to meet us so as to facilitate our desire to love him, so as to make tangible the good that he offers us. In this sense, I think that the feast of Christmas is the moment when it is easiest to fight against acedia. In contemplating the manger and the Infant Jesus, who makes himself so close, our hearts cannot remain indifferent, sad, or disgusted. Our hearts open and warm up. The Christmas carols and the customs that surround this feast are imbued with the simply joy of being saved…

The West sometimes resembles an embittered old man. It lacks the candor of a child. Spiritually, the continents that came to know the Good News more recently are still astonished and enchanted by the beauties of God, the marvels of his action in us. The West is perhaps too accustomed to it. It no longer shivers with joy before the manger scene; it no longer weeps with gratitude before the Cross; it no longer trembles in amazement before the Blessed Sacrament. I think that men need to be astonished in order to adore, to praise, to thank this God who is so good and so great. Wisdom begins with wonder, Socrates said. The inability to wonder is the sign of a civilization that is dying.

— Robert Cardinal Sarah, "Acedia and the Identity Crisis,” The Day is Now Far Spent, pp. 126-7

The world is drowning in acedia. This is why Hallmark Christmas movies are so dang popular—people are trying to recapture the wonder. This is why most literary fiction remains unread, outside of a chosen few—people do not have the stomach for any more darkness. Or, at least, they do not have the stomach for darkness without redemption.

Doodling My Way Through Italy

My husband pulled this journal out of storage today. From our honeymoon to Rome, Florence, and Assisi, 2004:

Hamilton for the Hoi Polloi: Twelve Quick Thoughts
 

Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton. (Wikipedia)

 

My first impressions of Hamilton, now that I—and the rest of America—have finally seen it:

(1) An unavoidable irony: only the well-to-do can afford tickets to see a Broadway show about a penniless immigrant overcoming the odds.

(2) Assigning the role of narrator to Aaron Burr was a stroke of genius. And Leslie Odom Jr. was great in the role.

(3) Miranda did a fantastic job of distilling the complex political crises of the 18th century down to their essentials. As someone writing a story set in the 1790s, I know just how hard this task is. There’s not a single throwaway line in Hamilton

(4) Every jibe directed toward that hypocrite Thomas Jefferson made me cheer. Or giggle. Or cheer and giggle. My favorite: “He doesn’t have a plan, he just hates mine.” (As my husband says, plan beats no plan, every time.)

My sister recently reminded me that, as an eighth grader, I dared to ask a Monticello tour guide about Sally Hemings. This was before the DNA testing, and I received a not-so-subtle reprimand from the tour guide for being a smart-aleck.

Jefferson. Not a fan.

(5) I had forgotten about Martha Washington naming her feral tomcat after Hamilton. Snort.

(6) My one major critique of Hamilton (and it’s a big one): the story does a poor job of setting up Eliza and Hamilton’s relationship. For me, this undermined both Eliza’s character as well as the story pay-off and Eliza’s finale. If we in the audience don’t know what they had in the beginning, then we don’t experience catharsis as strongly as we ought when their marriage is threatened, nor when they reconcile.

How does the set-up fall short? 

The courtship sequence leans wholly on Eliza’s “Helpless.” We don’t see Hamilton falling in love with her, with him as the point-of-view character. The historical Hamilton was smitten with Eliza Schuyler to the point of distraction, as letters written by his fellow officers attest. The musical, however, gives the impression that Hamilton’s affection for Eliza didn’t match hers for him, which just… doesn’t work in a love story. Not having his viewpoint onstage was a huge missed opportunity. 

This weakness is compounded by the fact that Miranda pushed aside most of the historical ambiguity regarding Angelica and transformed her into a selfless martyr type, à la Éponine in Les Misérables. Angelica’s powerful story overshadows Eliza’s at Eliza’s expense. Angelica is intelligent and sympathetic; Eliza comes across as an uninteresting nag. (Though, perhaps this is apropos: Angelica overshadowed Eliza in real life, too.) If we keep the Angelica-as-martyr trope, then it’s absolutely essential to build up Eliza’s character and to make Hamilton’s love for Eliza more explicit, right at the beginning.

Did the historical Angelica love her brother-in-law? Yes. Did she suppress her love for her sister’s sake? Yes, as far as we know. Did she and Hamilton flirt? Oh, yeah. Was Angelica his intellectual interlocutor? Yes, though Eliza played her part in helping him in his work, too. But Angelica had been married two years when Hamilton met the Schuyler sisters. Eliza was never a second choice because marrying Angelica was never an option. 

Perhaps Miranda doesn’t write a lot of love stories? And therefore didn’t have a handle on love story genre conventions? Someone more familiar with his work might know.

(7) That said, Philip’s death made me tear up. That part worked for me.

(8) The Maria Reynolds affair continues to interest me as a study in human weakness.

(9) I’m curious what people think about Hamilton in light of our current debate on race. Hamilton is triumphalist about both race and America. Does it stand up to critique?

(10) I loved the Broadway references. “I am the very model of a modern major-general…”

(11) My New Yorker husband and I both enjoyed the jabs at New Jersey.

and lastly,

(12) King George III. I laughed so hard. Da-da-da-da-da…!!