A RENAISSANCE OF POWER ~ A Reflection on Beyoncé’s Movie.
If anyone needs to see what a BIG IM’POSSIBLE GOAL is, RUN and go see Beyoncé’s movie “Renaissance.”
She is the Muhammad Ali of our time.
Yet she is all of us.
Beyoncé is a study in authentic POWER owned in Black skin. Throughout this movie she tells us clearly: “MY POWER YOU WILL NEVER TAKE.”
Power is a word that we have a poor relationship with. Because much of what we call power is not authentic power. It is the ego trying to survive.
True POWER cannot be given, taken or destroyed. And Beyoncé knows this. This is the kind of POWER that the Queen has stepped into, not just for herself but for us all.
To hear her tell it, it has been a journey. And in this movie she has opened HER bible and read the script out loud in a way that only a few artists, business people, and leaders have done.
Here are some of my take-aways.
REINVENTION
Her talk about her reinventing herself, touched me deeply. It caused me to reflect on where I am coming from as a young Jamaican boy child of working class parents to be the man I am today. She tells us about the wounds she has had to work through. She knew that her daughter did not have her experience of hard knocks to be ready for that stage. So she had to be that knock, and stamp of approval for her. She knows that POWER is in the making, that we are initiated into POWER. And she doesn’t mind being a steward of that path for the people she cares about.
ART AS PROCESS.
For her, her art is her B.I.G. — her project of personal transformation and reinvention—in the form of a global tour four years, if not a lifetime, in the making.
At the outset she tells us, it is about the process.
In watching this movie, I was reminded that we find our B.I.G. even as our B.I.G. finds us. It is that alignment of pain, passion, talent and gift that unfolds through us a world in which we can all thrive. When we follow it, when we align these elements of our lives, we open a path to individual and collective transformation.
We are re-invented in the face of an authentic engagement with POWER.
CREATIVITY AS A PATH TO AUTHENTIC POWER..
How we open that path is through the process of true art. Each of us are artists of our lives, working with the same tools as Beyoncé—pain, passion, talent, a healing gift and desire to be “part of something way BIGGER.”
There were other take-aways: her honoring of ancestry and the role of Black Gay men in her making; the honoring of her parents; the power of vision, her ability to hold space for herself as mother, business owner and performer; her masterful use of eroticism as a pathway to liberation; her ability to center Blackness without defense or offense... amongst others.
As the year closes with multiple wars on personal and global fronts, Beyoncé has left us with a great challenge: TO RISE with her and to use these tools to step into our POWER and create together a world of LOVE.
In the end she sums it up beautifully: POWER and COMPASSION are not mutually exclusive. Beyoncé is the embodiment of this, and it’s lovely to see.
I cannot thank her enough for giving us this demonstration of centered and authentic BLACK POWER.
THIS IS HOW WE ALL RISE!
Deep Bow to Queen Bey
🙏🏿❤️
Olubode
