Monáe's Musings | Fabulous and Fortunate Podcast

It matters for women to go out, be in their whimsy, and have fun. It is extremely healing for nothing to be required from you except for your enjoyment. There’s something about homecoming that really does it for me.

From the tailgating to the whimsy, it’s a time that truly speaks to the whimsical woman experience. One of my favorite parts of homecoming has traditionally been Yardfest, a tradition that has come to be known as the peak of the homecoming festivities. A time to don whatever and go into a yard and fellowship and simply bask in the radiance, I really love it.

This previous time I went to homecoming was truly unlike any other. And honestly? Of course it was. Besides being marked by fellowship, it was marked by a certain frequency of absolute silliness. It felt good to be silly, to skip through the metro and not have to worry about how I was getting home – I knew I would get home when I needed to. And then I thought: how could I incorporate this more into my own life? This feeling of knowing everything is simply handled as long as I show up.

In the magic of the sparkles that dotted my eyelids and the sparkle I felt inside, I was brought back to when COVID absolutely upended everything. I still remember the day we all first became aware of a potential biological warfare threat. I was leaving my class and the professor mentioned we may not meet in person for a few days as colleges started to receive news from the departments of health. No one really had a clue that COVID was going change our lives the way it did. I surely did not. It wasn’t until we were forced to vacate the dorms (without our things might I add), go home, and return in spurts throughout the summer to retrieve our things we left behind. I will always remember those few months afterwards and especially the day I went back to campus to get my things in the summer of 2020. Concerts were being cancelled left and right and the division was ramping up in every single way.

Returning to the same campus I abruptly left with reverence, grace, and so much empathy for that version of myself now was truly everything. How many times do we hold past versions of ourselves and just bask in them? Truly honor that phase and see how far things have changed, but how much is really still the same. The same spirit essence that vibrated through me then (late night poetry readings, incense, cocoa butter smelled on every floor of my dorm, and darties in the spring) vibrated through me last week. In a different note, but the same vibration. More of that whimsy. More of that sparkle. More of that absolute magic. Dillydallying is actually really fun and I decided that I needed to do it even more-so than I normally do. Then, I realized that I am super glad I always have marched to the beat of my own drum. Not too dissimilar from the drums on campus that day.