If you ever find yourself in a position to sit down with Lin-Manuel Miranda, know this: You never really sit down. He is always in motion, on a mission.

When the 36-year-old composer and lyricist was dreaming up the songs for “Hamilton,” the Broadway phenomenon that he wrote every line of and stars in eight times a week, he would often walk for hours in New York, willing the words to come. Even now, he insists that the calmest he ever feels is during the 2 hours and 45 minutes of the show, when he gets to bound around onstage as Alexander Hamilton, “yelling and rapping at the top of my lungs. It's the most relaxing part of my day.”

The physical exertion returns him to himself, offering an unlikely respite from the attention that's swirled around him since “Hamilton” became a cultural and financial force. The only way that Miranda stays whole, now that everyone wants to engage with him — Hollywood, the White House, hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, the music industry, Broadway obsessives, big-money investors, American history buffs, prize committees, schoolteachers, the political establishment — is to keep moving.

“Hamilton,” which opened at New York's Richard Rodgers Theatre in August 2015 after an off-Broadway run, isn't just a hit musical. It's one of those rare cultural phenomena that reaches beyond its genre and infiltrates the broader conversation. Fourth-graders love the show as much as 80-year-olds. Hip-hop fans and history buffs are giddy over its inspirational, intricately rhymed retelling of the founding father's relationships with Aaron Burr, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and more.

President Barack Obama is a fan, and a parade of celebrities have streamed through, including Oprah Winfrey and Paul McCartney. Tickets to the production, which nabbed a record 16 Tony nominations, are tough to acquire, unless you're willing to drop up to $3,000 on the resale market. The cast recording was the Billboard album chart's highest-debuting cast recording in 50 years.

When Miranda speaks about his current cultural influence, which he does with phrases like “all eyes on me,” and “the world is calling,” he does so matter-of-factly. He knows that there's no use being coy about what has become undeniable: He is the most powerful person working on Broadway today and a galvanizing figure in music, publishing and film, as well. He is grateful to be living out “the timeline where it all went right. There are many other timelines that could have been,” he says.

He merged a historical story (the rise and fall of a founding father) and classic medium (stage) with today's vernacular and rhythms (rap, R&B, pop) and a cast that reflects contemporary America (the actors playing Washington, Burr, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton's wife, Eliza Schuyler, and her two sisters are all people of color). He merged the country's raucous, inspiring past with its vibrant, volatile present, offering both an elegy for where we have been and a beacon for where we might go next.

Miranda's closest — and most important — relationship is with the hundreds of thousands of fans who have likely never seen the show. Ticket scarcity has motivated him to create an entire world around it, so that people, and especially young people, can feel like a part of the movement even if they can't get into the theater. This strategy began with the cast album, which was released only six weeks after “Hamilton” opened on Broadway. Roots bandleaders Questlove and Black Thought engineered the sound. “Hip-hop fans are the toughest fans,” Miranda says. “You win them, you win them for life.”

All of this brings Miranda close to his fans, and Twitter brings him even closer. Miranda admits he has a low-level addiction to the service. He is an expert at starting memes and using hashtags to make his 350,000 followers feel included in a secret world where those who “really get” “Hamilton” go to hang out. Miranda has cultivated — and maintained — a level of devotion among his followers that branding agencies only dream of. He insists that there is no gimmick to it, just a raw desire to connect to other rap, theater and history nerds.

“I hate the word branding,” he says. “I don't feel like an entrepreneur. I feel like a writer who is forced to wear an entrepreneurial hat occasionally.” To balance out the actual branding campaigns that are trying to capitalize on the #Hamilton movement (Hamilton SoulCycle classes, Hamilton-themed cocktails in Manhattan bars), Miranda solicits fan art and wordplay, responds to questions online and speaks to his followers with the intimacy of a friend.

“Hamilton” may be a work only a few have access to, but Miranda has created an equally special club for everyone else.