"There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé:
Lavender, education, becoming other people,
The fucking sky
It's so overused because no one's sure of it
How it floats with flagrant privilege
And feels it can ask any question"
from "Please Wait (Or, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé) by Morgan Parker
Two and a half weeks later, and I am just now coming down off the high of seeing the Renaissance Tour. Though I have been a longtime Bey fan (flashback to a scene of my cousin (8) and I (6) trying to learn the body roll dance from “Check Up On It” only to be put on punishment for watching “inappropriate content.”), this was my first time seeing Queen Bey perform. I feel as though I’ve finally been inducted into a not-so-secret society where pleasure is King. And even though “Bey” Area woefully underperformed the “Energy” challenge, I had an amazing time dancing amongst a crowd of nearly 50,000 members of the Beyhive. In summary, I felt abuzz with possibility.
Beyoncé performed at Levi Stadium under the rare Blue Supermoon. A supermoon occurs when a full or a new moon comes to earth in an elliptical orbit, making it appear particularly large from our earth-bound view. A blue moon has nothing to do with color; this moon occurs once every two to three years due to moon cycles (every 29.5 days). Symbolically, the Blue moon is a time of reflection due in part to its rarity, which also lends itself to the unveiling of new opportunities and unique occurrences. A supermoon is associated with amplified energies. In numerous Black and Native spiritual traditions, a supermoon is a time to gather in unity and celebration. Putting two and two together, a Blue Supermoon is a brilliant combination of energy and possibility. Walking to and from the concert, I could sense a portal opening in the sky: an invitation to come into a higher sense of self in relation with the world.
You could say, by all measures of the word, I had a time.
Beyoncé is not thoughtless. A Virgo to the core, every action is test run and trialed, every outfit reconfigured to near perfection. Queen Bey wouldn’t miss a chance to perform under such an intense lunation. The urge to hone, sharpen and seduce pulsing the air like electricity. The concert, an offering, her lyrics, a manifestation.
O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E (B-E-Y-O-N-C-E)
Appears on the screen. Yeah, I admit I lose my shit.
I begin (and will end) with Beyoncé because, “you know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation,” is quite apt, as Houston’s Highness has been mentioned everywhere from Fox News to SNL to Morgan Parker to bell hooks. A symbol of Black Excellence™? For many. A divisive figure? Perhaps. But therein lies a significant part of her power: the ability to get a conversation started.
I am a poet, so I would be remiss not to mention how much I love how the moon refuses to be photographed. My sad Google Pixel couldn’t do her justice anyway. Somewhere in there is a poem about the moon and Beyoncé, how both allow themselves to be immortalized on their own terms, the power to push and pull, influence the tides. I can work on that one later. For now, I am preoccupied with opulence – this desire (or symbol of) for luxury in a world that often denies Black people any form of it. Without getting too linguistics 101, opulence has taken on many forms depending on who you ask.
Borrowing heavily from (and inspired by) queer ballroom culture, Beyoncé invokes opulence as a veneration of queer life. Celebrating an abundance of queer vision and the emancipatory nature of unabashed gender expression, queer opulence reminds us that . Ballrooms were built from scratch and still became some of the most radical places for queer personhood and self-articulation. Building entire worlds from fabric shards, recycled bottles, hand me downs, thrifted/stolen items and collages, creativity has become synonymous with queerness because of its necessity. Our discipline lay in the fact that we were the only ones coming to save ourselves. Opulence not as pillaged, colonial wealth, but as a framework through which we manifest our most radical selves. Opulence not a desire to accumulate, but as a desire to cultivate.
Reframing opulence in this manner rejects a scarcity mindset, one that I think is often used as a fear mongering tool among many non-environmentalists and some environmentalists. What if we viewed this world, in all of its opulence, as something to protect, elevate, learn from, rather than resources for consumption? What if we saw the world as a being, dripping pearls from her oysters, breathing with deep sea lungs, loving saltwater fish so much she manifested over 20,000 species of them? Could we fuse our fear to fugitivity? Could we join in ceremony of the black skies, the black waters, for all that we are connected through?
Beyoncé inspires creativity – just look at how many people rose to the occasion to design and customize their own Renaissance outfits. Weaving Black pasts to Afrofuturisms, drenched in honey and chrome, a show like that gives you something to chew on long after the stadium lights go off. Boastful, brash, colorful (but not tacky), otherworldly, humility cast aside. Our desire manifests into words, manifests into action. Manifest into consistent practice.
But that’s the tricky part, right? Commitment, and a creative approach to failure. piece so good because she puts in the work. Inspiration is nice, and can be a useful launchpad for a project, but in the words of the great Octavia Butler “habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not…habit is persistence in practice.”
But her work is also made possible by the commitment of her team. Beyonce is simultaneously a brand, a singer, a performer, a possibility, an experience. Dare I say her existence is truly an embodiment of opulence. What is possible when one harnesses discipline to habit. Mama just keeps getting better and better.
After the Blue Supermoon, it is more than apparent that we stand at both a cosmic and earthbound crossroads. In light of all this overwhelm, it can feel more comforting to abandon the dream. But the dream endures, whether we feed it or not. Our discipline This is the time we double down. This is the time we hone our craft.
The earth “corrects” itself in extremes. Climate change is not unique, it is painfully diurnal, but our adaptive and mitigative approaches can be. Infinity remains at our fingertips and the rest of the world is flooding.
Do I think billionaires have a responsibility to forsake their wealth in service of humanity and the planet? Absolutely. Would I go so far as to call Beyoncé a beacon of Black eco-futurism? Probably not. When O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E lights up the stadium, I’m painfully aware that Beyoncé and I are wishing for different things. But as I have come to appreciate the various ways Black creatives, aunties and elders articulate themselves, I remind myself that they are whole beings too. We can learn from their skills and their struggles, their aspirations and their pitfalls. Sometimes the best lesson is one of what not to do. What to shift. What to rewrite and repair. Mother as teacher. Earth as guide.
Since the supermoon, the vibes have been charged. We are at the precipice of a new world, the old one struggling to maintain its power. The world around us crumbles, and we emerge, like vines from the ashes. Age of Aquarius stumbling from ocean spray, eager to rehabilitate our otherworldly wholeness. Empire gnashing its teeth at the shoreline. So what does this all mean? I’m not an astrologer (though ya boy does dabble). While I do wash my hands with cinnamon on occasion and have been known to borrow soil from a creek bed or too, I haven’t tapped into that prophetic vision (yet). Here is what I do know: something in the air is sticky. A renaissance must be sustained by its participants and patrons. We remained tethered to each other through these fluid afterlives.
New work is coming soon! Stay tuned.