I’m not plugged into mainstream media and music. I don’t know about pop stars, pop music, and all of that. Occasionally I’II hear something, because I have a nine-year-old daughter, but mostly I’m uninterested. Also because I don’t care for hyper-sexualised music videos of young, half-naked women writhing about with pink lipgloss giving me deer eyes.
So I was surprised that I bought a Beyonce album. Beyonce has never been on my radar. I wasn’t a fan, and didn’t know her songs. But the moment I began listening to her visual album Lemonade, something started happening to me.
A healing started to happen.
It’s hard to say how exactly. I don’t know if it was the dazzling cinematography, or the depth and beauty of Beyonce’s voice, or the soulful music that makes you want to swoon and groove. But I found myself weeping, gasping, elated. And also dancing around half-crazy pounding my feet and hands.
And then things started happening … Women began appearing. It was as if the bloodline of women—past, present, and future—came to be with me and dance with me.
They stood around me in a circle as I danced, and in their faces, I saw loss, love, grief, fear, and betrayal.
I also saw violence and oppression, desperation and slavery. I felt the “hurt” and pain of women. Their cries, screams, pleas … falling on deaf ears. For weeks I thought about women hurting. Men hurting, too.
For weeks I “worked” and danced with Lemonade every day.
Then suddenly it lifted, and I was in a higher, better place. I was somehow “returned”—healed, more whole, together, stitched back together. More of a woman. More of a healed woman. More of a loving and tender woman.
A return to She.
But this is what great art does, right? It creates a healing journey, a healing arch in which we walk across to see life in a brighter, healthier, and more beautiful light.
Great art transports you so you can return luminous.
Have you had this experience? Which album or piece of work was it for you?
with love,
Belinda
