Dear Gossips,
“Beyoncé” is a great name. She has used her name so creatively in so many ways. Duana wrote a book about names called The Name Therapist. It’s about what our names say about us and what they don’t. It’s about how we feel about our names, why some people love their names and why some of us are still learning to like our names. I don’t think Beyoncé has this problem. Has she ever had this problem? Beyoncé’s name is one of her many, many assets.
#BeyGOOD is the name of her foundation. Last year, to mark the one year anniversary of Lemonade, #BeyGOOD established the Formation Scholars Awards Program for young women pursuing post-secondary degrees in the arts and African-American studies. Yesterday, in celebration of Beychella, BeyGOOD announced the Homecoming Scholars Award Program, naming the four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Xavier, Wilberforce, Tuskegee, and Bethune-Cookman), supporting a student, regardless of gender, at each institution for the 2018-19 academic year. The connection is obvious. Beychella was a tribute to HBCUs and to underscore her point, she’s putting money on it. And remember, as I wrote yesterday in my post about the Beychella production, I’m not sure she actually made money on the performance – not when you consider what it would have cost to make Beychella happen.
Speaking of that production and what went into it – check out Ben Hagarty’s Instagram post yesterday, he was one of the people shooting the show (thanks Margaret!). As he says, it was 6 weeks straight, 10 hours a day. And he’s just ONE of an entire ecosystem of people involved. You saw how many people were on that stage right? And to a person, every head turn was perfect, every smirk was on time, every gyration, every kick, every baton toss, every goddamn step was at the highest level. As Ben said, this is what you bring when you work with the greatest.
This week’s episode of our Show Your Work podcast is all Beyoncé everything – how Beyoncé works, why her work is so extraordinary, and what it takes to work at her pace and quality. To be posted this afternoon.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
