The following is the introduction to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new book, Gmorning, Gnight! The work is a collection of his popular inspirational tweets that wish his followers, well, good morning and good night. Miranda, who you may know from his musical Hamilton, is the star of the upcoming Marry Poppins Returns and is the executive producer of Showtime’s new Kingkiller Chronicle series. He tweets like he’s running out of characters.
I wanted to wish you good morning.
I wanted to wish you good night.
I started to write these on Twitter,
A way of just being polite.
I’m really quite hooked on the Twitter,
They should take my phone out and lock it.
The biggest distraction for someone like me?
An audience up in my pocket.
So I start the day with a greeting.
And end with a night variation.
It safeguards my evenings and weekends at home,
To sign off, a mini-vacation.
The greetings are sometimes flirtatious,
Or cheeky, or weirdly specific.
They’re pulled from my life or my brain or my thoughts,
Terrific’ly Twitter prolific.
I don’t have a book of quotations
Or wisdom I pull from the shelf;
Most often the greetings I wish you
Are the greetings I wish for myself.
So if I write “relax,” then I’m nervous,
Or if I write, “cheer up,” then I’m blue.
I’m writing what I wish somebody would say,
Then switching the pronoun to you.
And after a few years of greetings,
They started to vary in tone;
And people said, “Lin, your gmornings and nights
Are the nicest things up in my phone.”
Now I get tweets like “This saved me”
Or often, “I need this reminder.”
You tell me, “I printed this out and I keep it
Around, on my desk, in my binder.”
So you asked, “Will you make a book, please?”
I replied, “Oh, consider it done.”
Then I reached out to Kassandra Tidland
Who lit’rally RT’s my best T’s for fun.
And speaking of best T’s, and besties,
There’s besties I’ve made through my writing.
Among them is polymath Jonathan Sun,
His drawings and words so inviting.
Then we sat down together and made this;
It’s the book that you hold in your hands.
You can open it at any moment or page
With the hope you find something that lands.
And it’s nice to have things to hold on to,
Some kindness right here, within sight.
You can read this whenever you want to.
It will be here. Gmorning. Gnight.
Listen to Miranda read the poem from the audiobook below.
From the book Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You by Lin-Manuel Miranda; illustrated by Jonny Sun. Copyright © 2018 by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
