who tells your story

One of my favorite songs from the Hamilton musical soundtrack is "History Has Its Eyes On You," in the musical sung by Washington to Hamilton about the complications of legacy, something the latter was particularly obsessed by. Last night, we saw another show that brought this line in the song to mind again. We got some discounted tickets to see SIX, a concert-style review about Henry VIII's many wives, sung in the style of pop songstresses like Rhianna and Alicia Keyes. It was a delight, with many songs I will likely become obsessed with as well, but toward the end of the review, they posed an interesting question about legacy, and why they are only remembered for being the wives of a famous man. Of course, the twist on this is that really, when it comes down to it, Henry VIII really only stands out for his large number of wives and his church reforms (which are actually really about the wives and his desire for a divorce--pointing back at the women). Otherwise, he'd be just another Henry in the long line of British succession. They were the inciting force, well at least Catherine of Aragon's reluctance to accept an annulment and Anne Boleyn's creep into the marriage. Without them, the story would have been different--history would have been different. When we saw Amadeus a couple weeks ago, there were similar dynamics, though they leaned heavily toward Salieri's ultimate legacy and renown because of Mozart, and probably not the reverse. Mozart would still have stood out without the rivalry most likely. 

With women, especially women entangled professionally or romantically, its especially important to consider.  I was dating someone in the aughts who once caught sight of a copy of Anais Nin's diaries on my coffee table and said something about her involvement with Henry Miller (this was not even the ex who I stupidly gifted a first UK edition of Tropic of Cancer before finding out he was hiding a wife, but that's a whole other story for another time.)  While I dated some men who seemed to read very little, the Anais Nin commenter one was a more casual reader who named all the right books and films in his profile. I scoffed, of course, and said, she is like one of the most renowned diarist and erotic authors of all time. He shrugged. We were in and out of each other's lives for awhile after that, but we rarely talked about books again after that. I used to get really angry about Sylvia Plath, how her legacy was impacted by the man who was in the process of walking away from her. Ted Hughs never should have had control over her legacy, but there isn't a clear answer to who should have. It's funny how Plath is looked at in the US as one of the most accomplished poets but in the UK is often just considered some poet-guys wife. 

But then it got me thinking of how legacies are created anyway and how hard it is to fathom what of our work and lives will endure beyond our own lifetimes. I think of long dead authors like Shakespeare, or even still living authors like Stephen Kind, who are impressive for the vastness of their bodies of work. Or the writers who just happened to be hanging with the right cohort, and by "right" I mean remembered at all.  Like the Beats or the Bloomsbury Group--though some were obviously at the forefront and setting the trends (like Ginsberg or Woolf) while others just benefitted from proximity.. Who wil remember us--our work, our lives, is probably far less under our control than we know..Long gone authors like Edgar Allen Poe or Mary Shelley would have been gobsmacked to know how much influence and endurance their work has centuries later.

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