Thought my name was “No” until the age of two. This is how I came to terms with my real name: My mother looking fierce, ready for an evening out, me smoothing some product from her vanity all over myself—I was only knee tall, she was the most beautiful thing I had in my world! I wanted to paint her portrait everywhere! Damn, she spotted me, “No! No! No!” she was lit seeing her favorite hue all over my toddler face-fingers-belly. Remembering that I’m just a reflection of she, she shook her head and laughed, “Silly, Aisha, silly, silly, Aisha…”
With memories like that coloring my world I couldn’t help being grown on the appreciation for light, laughter and love. Born with a mole on my foot, and a need for uncovering mysteries, I was raised in the desert where all things are resilient. By twelve I’d fill entire journals in one night’s sitting as midnight cyphers from my brother’s crew disintegrated walls and windows. I’d sweat out 120 degree Murda’ Valley days with Lauryn Hill, end band practice twanging with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, or meld day into evening charting ingresses in the boulder-speckled hills of childhood with Peter Tosh.
Always awed by the humble nature that we stand on the backs of our foremothers, I made it thus far by living the beats in my heart—knowing that I am we, and we are the salts of this earth that make it all go round. Currently I’m a documentary artist, and educational researcher involved in projects to enhance technology-based curriculum for the empowerment of urban and under served communities. I also live with a head full of fantasy and lyrics manifesting it as Mic Mistress Mama FeelGood.
Digging up an eighth-grade journal, here’s what I wrote to my love, Music:
you slither across my skin caressing my lips…
stimulating my soul n moving my hips.
you make my heart retreat, cataract, palpitate.
melodies in the dorian scale flow n ebb while the counter confronts doorless rooms
n dismembered windowless walls beating my breast until its raw,
we fall.
escape.
drift away.
make love.
I begin every morning with gratitude, and own the fact that I’m “Silly Aisha, silly, silly, Aisha!”
