Simply The Best

I was six when I first met Tina. She was on the Oprah Winfrey show, which my mother watched religiously at 4pm in the afternoons. She was performing The Best and doing her signature dance moves, and everyone looked electrified, affirmed and happy. I asked mother “who’s that?” and she turned briefly from her own captivated stance, pausing her shoulder roll and hip bump and said “darling, she’s the Queen of Rock n Roll. She’s Tina Turner.”

I would go on to learn all about Anna Mae Bullock, her life, her hardships, her turmoil with Ike, her escape and her triumphant solo career – but what always snatched up my attention whenever she made an appearance was something I could only articulate much later in life.

It was the sight of raw power.

Tina had this presence in her speech and in her performance that was kind of like a wild woman archetype. Untamed and untethered, acting unto herself because she knew where she’d come from and was certain where she was going.

12 Grammy awards.

200 million records sold worldwide.

A plethora of hit songs.

And as she transcended her victimhood and made it into art, annihilating the line between R&B and Rock, leveraging sequins and fringe to an electrifying effect, prancing in Louboutins long before there was a Beyhive or a Navy, I remember thinking “this is how you age with grace” and “my goodness I hope I have arms and legs like that when I’m her age”.

In my early twenties she appeared once again on Oprah, talking about her retirement a few years prior. And what always stayed with me was when she said she was at a place of true happiness because she desires nothing.

The one true universal human truth is that we all wish to be happy. No matter who you are and what your life is like – you want to be happy. So how do we get to a place where we desire nothing?

Is it that raw power combusts into ecstasy when it is not interfered? That our interference and expenditure into consuming and acquiring material things is depleting its visceral nature, which when called home to its vessel (your body) it gifts you with bliss?

This week let’s muse… what is happiness for you?

Where do you go and how do you escape?

What are the stakes of your desires?

And when there is nothing remaining to acquire, no-thing outside of yourself to reckon with, how do you wish to feel?

With love, to a whole Queen.

‘til next Sunday!

Z.

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I explore the question “how do we overcome the barriers to existing fully as ourselves?” An inquiry into self, culture, the arts and social change. If you enjoyed this consider subscribing to receive more.