Ideas should
do something
to the room.
Essays, poetry, performance and spoken work by Aaliyah S. Ghani Asé. Explore the ideas in the form you want to encounter them.
Enter The Oddtonomous AséThe War on Individualism
Belonging is not the problem. The question is what happens when acceptance begins to require your own disappearance.
When Pressure Makes You Prove the Wrong Thing
A strong performance can still answer somebody else’s doubt instead of producing what you chose.
What the Hell Is a Woman For?
Motherhood, ambition, appearance and the constant revisions to the rules governing women.
When Beauty Pays, Who Collects?
What happens when attention, aesthetic labor and cultural influence create value without ensuring ownership?
Beauty Is Currency
An original, independently authored piece on beauty, femininity, self-possession and expression.
A No Is Not the Same Thing as Reality Answering
An argument about rejection, external response and the evidence a decision has or has not actually received.
Why Am I Not Making Progress Even Though I Know What I Want?
A useful distinction between discipline, material resources and a next move that fits reality.
Why You Keep Staying in a Life You’ve Already Outgrown
A spoken investigation of familiar positions, identity and what it means to examine the seat you occupy.
To Speak the Obvious / performed
Aaliyah reads “To Speak the Obvious” from Poetic Imprints, performed as Asé’s Leisure.
No works in this selection.
Beauty
Is Currency.
First published in 2025. Read Aaliyah’s original piece on beauty, femininity and expression.
“Beauty is currency and currency is power.”FROM BEAUTY IS CURRENCY
Why You Keep Staying in a Life You’ve Already Outgrown
Watch Aaliyah examine the life you have learned to occupy, and what it takes to choose differently.
Watch hereTo Speak the Obvious / performed
Watch Aaliyah perform her original poem.
Play the performanceThe Stuttering Lisp Podcast
Listen to Aaliyah’s spoken inquiry on culture, choice and human life.
A thought.
Spoken plainly.
Watch Aaliyah’s short videos here.