Letter To My Younger Self: The Big Issue Presents...100 Inspiring People on the Moments That Shaped Their Lives - Softcover

Graham, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1788702344 ISBN 13: 9781788702348

Publisher: 535, 2023

Synopsis

Billie Jean King, Mary J. Blige, Mavis Staples, Alice Cooper, Jane Lynch, Danny DeVito, John Lithgow, Chelsea Clinton, Paul McCartney, Buzz Aldrin, James Earl Jones, Ozzy Osbourne, Dionne Warwick, Ian Rankin, Margaret Atwood, E.L. James, 50 Cent, Neil Gaiman, Dolly Parton, Dave Grohl, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Salman Rushdie, Olivia Newton-John, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and many, many more.

Over 10 years ago, The Big Issue began to ask well-known figures to give advice, offer hope, and share a few jokes with their younger selves. They opened up in ways they never had, reflecting on their lives and themselves with affection, sympathy, and, sometimes, disbelief. This collection of 100 incredible letters includes Paul McCartney on how he found inspiration, Olivia Colman on overcoming confidence problems, Mo Farah on the importance of losing, Diane Abbott on self-belief, Jamie Oliver on trusting your instinct, and so much more.

Letter to My Younger Self is a revelatory and profound exploration into the wit and wisdom that age brings, and of the unique insights that looking back can reveal.

About this title

About the Author

The Big Issue is an award-winning magazine offering employment opportunities to people in poverty by giving them a share of the profits from sales. Jane Graham is the books editor of The Big Issue. She has worked as a producer/documentary maker for BBC Radios 1, 3, 4 and Radio Ulster. As a writer and broadcaster she has contributed to the BBC, The Guardian, Uncut, and The LA Review of Books, among many others. She has been conducting interviews for The Big Issue's Letter to my Younger Self since its inception in 2007.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

I am 16 years old and I am obsessed with two things: movies
and musicals. I am desperately trying to get myself into a
position where I can make these things when I grow up. I am
just starting to write my first musical, a 20-minute musical we
put on at school, called Nightmare in D Major. I’ve already
filmed a couple of two-hour-long movies with my friends
with my camcorders. I took it all so much more seriously
when I was 16 than I do now. Way more. I remember having
a temper tantrum one day when I really wanted to film a
scene for my Meatloaf musical (Bat Out of Hell: The Musical)
and my friends didn’t show up. I was like an angry big-wig
Hollywood director, trashing my own room. Then I was like,
‘Well, who have I hurt here except myself? I’m going to have
to clear all this up now!’
My parents both loved musicals – we listened to a lot
of musical cast albums: Camelot, The Sound of Music and
my dad’s favourite, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, with
Debbie Reynolds. He was in love with Debbie Reynolds
all his life. And I was always interested in Hip-Hop. I grew
up just one neighbourhood away from where it all started
in the South Bronx. Hip-Hop really was in a great place in
the early nineties, with so many different genres. A Tribe
Called Quest, Dr. Dre, Biggie… I’m grateful I grew up
in that time, when Hip-Hop could be anything and tell
so many different stories. Some of the best storytellers I
know are people like Biggie. So, it was a no-brainer for me
to bring Hip-Hop into theatre because of course it could
tell stories as well as musicals could.
I was definitely an anxious kid. I don’t think it’s an accident
that all the protagonists in my shows are grappling with
legacy and how much time they have. I think that’s hardwired
into you as a New Yorker but it’s also something I
was painfully aware of at a very young age (his best friend in
kindergarten drowned in a lake behind her home). I thought,
‘We might only get one go around, what am I going to get
done in that time?’ Cut to me trashing my bedroom because
my friends haven’t shown up for my video.
I was a very sensitive child, very empathetic. I could
watch something bad on the news and that would be me
in the foetal position all day because I’d seen something
horrible that happened halfway across the world. I think
that stressed my parents out a lot, that I would extend my
empathy so far that it would cripple me. I mean, it would
ruin me for a day. But I also think my mum worked hard
to protect that in me. She saw it early and the tools she
gave me for dealing with that were . . . ‘You want to be a
writer, right? It’s all grist to the mill. Remember what this
feels like. One day, one of your characters will feel like this
and you can pull this memory out.’
If you met the teenage Lin now, I think you’d find him
pretty funny. He’s not without his charms. But he’s very
self-serious. If you wanted to talk to him about film or theatre
he’d talk your ear off about his theories. And probably
he’d be a little insufferable with his intensity. Picture your
most insufferable record store guy – that would be me at
16 – ‘What you really have to underSTAND is . . .’ But when
you go through making something yourself, you realise how
hard it is and you become a lot kinder. Even if you don’t
respond to something, you just go, ‘Well, they tried.’ Then
you see Sweeney Todd or West Side Story and you really surrender
to it, and then you’re transported back to earth at the
end of the show and you think, ‘What the fuck just happened
here? If only I could one day write something as gorgeous or
as deep or as complex as that.’
I think the younger me would be very pleasantly and happily
surprised that I found someone I love and want to spend
my life with, and we’d have kids. Because you’re terrified
at that age. ‘Well, I’m the most hideous, unlovable thing in
the world. Will anyone ever kiss me?’ and ‘Will I ever get to
first base?’, as it’s presented to boys. So that fear that I might
never fi nd someone, younger me would be shocked to hear
he found someone who is actually just two corridors away in
the same high school. But I’d tell him to relax. When I had
my first serious girlfriend, around sophomore year, we stayed
in the relationship too long because we thought, ‘Well, this is
it. No one else will ever love me. I’ve found the one person,
so I’m going to hang on for dear life, all through college.’ We
were terrified to let go. I’d tell the young me, ‘It’s okay to feel
lost and alone for a bit. There’s going to be a lot of people in
your life.’
I’d tell my younger self to go to therapy a lot sooner. I
eventually went when I broke up with my first serious girlfriend.
And there were so many giant fallacies that I was
holding in my head. Things I thought that only I thought.
That’s the greatest thing about therapy. You finally confess
this huge secret that only resides in your heart and they go,
‘Yeah, that’s perfectly normal. What else you got?’ And that
thing that felt so huge in your head looks so tiny once you’ve
laid it on the table. I’ve gone for intensive periods twice in my
life, both around big life changes.
The most nervous I’ve ever been in my life was in 2009
when I sang the opening number of Hamilton to Barack and
Michelle Obama in the White House (as part of an evening
of music and spoken word). I’d only ever sung that song
before to my wife and the guy at the piano. They’d asked
for a song from In the Heights (his first and at that point,
only production). But they also said, ‘Unless you have something
about the American experience.’ And I had 16 bars on
Alexander Hamilton. The first vote of confidence I got on
it was from Stan Leith, a legend in Hollywood who was
producing that evening. I sent him the lyrics – I hadn’t
even finished the music – and he wrote back, ‘Okay, you’re
closing.’ I asked him beforehand, ‘Is it cool to sing about a
son of a whore?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool.’ But
the arrogance of youth! I’m appalled at the swagger of the
28-year-old me, to try something untested in an arena like
that. I’d only written 16 bars! Me at 39, I’d never do something
that risky at the White House. But 28-year-old me,
with just one show under my belt, nothing to lose – off I go!
I was nervous at the White House until the moment I started
singing the song. If you watch the footage (on YouTube), you
can see it. When I’m explaining the set-up to the room, you
can see me stutter, and when I explain (why George Washington’s
Treasury Secretary Hamilton is ‘the embodiment of
Hip-Hop’), you see them laugh and me scream, ‘You laugh
but it’s true!’ My voice breaks. Yeah, the intro was shaky, but
as soon as it started, I knew my 16 bars cold and you can see
my confidence grow. Yeah, it turned out pretty good.
The biggest thing I’ve learned since I was a young man
is patience. I started writing In the Heights when I was 19.
We opened on Broadway when I was 28. I was substitute
teaching at the time. I was desperate to get it on. As soon as
I write a song, I want it in a theatre. I love the applause. And
we were offered chances of spots in theatre festivals for In
the Heights. If I’d been on my own, I’d have been more impatient.
I’d have put it up at a festival and it would have come
and gone. But my greatest stroke of luck in all of this was
finding Tommy Kail as early as I did. Tommy said, ‘We can
make this better.’ And gradually we met all these significant
people and the show took a leap, then another. And when we
got to Broadway, we were ready.
If I could go back to any time in my life it would be
the week we performed the sixth-grade musical. My very
ambitious music teacher who directed the sixth graders
did a four-hour extravaganza of 20-minute versions of six
musicals – that’s a lethal dose of musical theatre. I had to
play a farmer in Oklahoma!, Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye
Birdie, Captain Hook, backup to Addaperle, in The Wiz,
a son in Fiddler and Bernardo in West Side Story. It was
hard work, but ah, the joy of all of school being about
putting on a musical. And then all our parents and the
entire school watching. The sixth-grade show is a big deal.
When you’re in fourth and fifth grade, you’re all going,
‘What’s the sixth-grade play going to be when we’re sixth
graders?’ So, your whole life is a build-up to it. And the
fact that we got to do six of them! It was a wild dream for
me. It was the most thrilling week of my life.

Edition details

• Publisher: 535
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1788702344
• ISBN 13: 9781788702348
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448