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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 2002)
february 15.2002 • Jaaft ML35 PEOPLE .............. ▼.............. O ne year ago Aisha Ayers was walking around thinking, “1 ^ 3 Slam bang So who has the answer to who god is? Aisha Ayers’ overnight journey to slam poet champ and recording artist know that I’m an artist, but 1 „ don’t really know what I’m \ supposed to do.” She’s since figured ? by L isa B radshaw it out. I The 2001 Portland Poetry Slam * Champion just released her first CD, Letters to My Soul, a collection of spoken-word poems. Ayers moved to Portland from her hometown of Sacramento, Calif., with her then-girlfriend in 1998. Her plan was to study and learn to make music. “O f course, nothing ever turns out the way you think it will, right F she smiles. She soon gave up school and embarked on a series of part-time jobs, constantly musing about what she really should be doing, all the while “scribbling in my journal at home.” Aisha Ayers can write poetry anywhere Early last year a friend con vinced her to come along with her to try out for the Portland Com mu Then she realized she’d have to commit nity College production of The some of those scribbled poems in her journal to Vagina Monologues. She was told one part was memory. Which she did. left— Dominatrix, the play’s most infamous After that, she moved on to an all-women’s role— which she landed, much to the delight slam event, and an alarm went off. “1 was like, of audiences. ‘Oh,’ ” she remembers. “It was good.” Good “That’s how my life is,” the 23-year-old enough to gamer her first place in last spring’s explains. “1 don’t get into a play except 1 have Poetry Slam. to have all these orgasms onstage.” From dazed and confused to slam champ in Soon after, this same friend convinced Ayers three months. It amazes the artist herself, and she to perform at International Women’s Day. The flashes a grin that lights up the world: “I’ve never application asked, “What do you do?” Ayers done this before. I don’t know what I’m doing.” recalls. Dawing on that stage performance, “I kind of shakily put, ‘spoken-word artist.’ ” I think about it a lot. My dad’s a preacher after all And he taught me well about what the Bible said I teas supposed to be when I grew up. Unfortunately l ended up running away from home with a girlfriend and finding my love and my god through my writing This is my art. A yers’ work is reflective of her experience— being queer in a straight world, black in a white world and a woman in a man’s world. It’s a lot of ground to cover, and it’s highly personal ground. That can be tough stuff to expose, she admits, but “at the same time, I don’t feel that this is my choice completely. I’m not doing this for any other reason except I feel led to.” She’s also convinced listeners are no fools. “Mostly, I’m saying everything that everybody else knows...they’re going through so many of the [same] things.... For them I’ve almost kind of read them instead of m e.... If anything, I think the audience members might feel a little more naked than I do,” she laughs. My hands are inside your body mastering your divide I want to feel you lover ride this out Spread around my hands 123 — One finger for each deity in this trilogy One for love, two for fear and three for souls welded beyond intelligent human control A yers can feel a little bogged down in all those identities of hers. Dating white women is sometimes challenging, particu larly when a partner’s family has to deal with “lesbian” as well as “interracial.” This, too, becomes part of her makeup, part of her work, and she has learned to embrace it. “What else would I have to give.7” she questions. “Because that’s your thing— whatever is your struggle is your gift. My mom always says that ‘to whom much is given, much is required.’ ’’ She and business partner Emily Huffman started Venus RyTrack Records last year and immediately released Letters to My Soul as their first project. The two plan to record other multi cultural women artists “because we’re under represented,” Ayers insists. “We went to [see] Medusa; she’s a hip-hop artist from Los Angeles, and her show changed my life. ..we’re so starved for this.. .1 want to find a hip-hop artist out there who’s like some fierce little girl M.C. who doesn’t have to worry about me hitting on her or trying to get her to be a backup singer when she needs to be frontin’ her own thing. I want some body to have a chance to do it.” Amen. JH L etters to M y S oul can be found at Music Millennium, In Other Words, Reverb Records, Reading Frenzy and It’s My Pleasure. LlSA B radshaw is the Culture Editor of Just Out and can be reached at lisa@justout.com.
