Painting With Expert

Behold a woman only slightly your senior, draped in a mini shift dress of delicately strung pearls, hair waving in perfected crescendos from the gusts of a hidden wind machine, singing into a microphone for screaming fans, both diva and audience sharing one unshakeable conviction: this is the only place in the world any of us could possibly be.

Beyoncé performed in early July in Toronto, kickoff city for the North American leg of her Renaissance tour. One of my dearest friends, Gaby, called me up to say she was flying there for the show and had extra tickets, and would I like to drive up and go with her? The answer here: always yes.

I would not label myself a Beyoncé fan, necessarily. As a self-respecting American teenage girl, Destiny’s Child was mandatory listening in the late 90s. But in later, slightly older college years, I embraced shots of angsty, angry rock and rap music, chased by large swigs off soulful singer-songwriter tracks. From there, downbeat electronica, indie rock, Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case and The War on Drugs.

In short, Beyoncé never made this writer’s front page. But I knew her earlier hits. Who knows how. We live in an embodied society, okay? We can’t not hear the major chords of it.

And you already know that Beyoncé has moved well beyond the realm of music, beyond Entertainment. She’s a one-name fact of 21st-century American culture, as much as McDonald’s or Ford. Maybe more.

That’s also about all I knew of Beyoncé, I realized, as song after song in Toronto proved I hadn’t kept up with this woman’s musical career since “Crazy In Love” dominated dance floors my sophomore year of college. All these ballads and party tunes were mysteries to me, especially given the poor acoustics of the SkyDome, aka Rogers Centre. (Canada, we need to talk.)