Ayesha Harris: An Artistic Voyeur

Our eternal quest to know more of who we are can lead us to recognize that we are more than our physical identities. When we close our eyes and take a few deep breaths, we become aware of thoughts like thunderstorms running through our minds. In a few more moments of consciously breathing, we start pulling away from our thinking mechanism and sharp focus, dispersing into a wider perspective to observe ourselves from a distance, seeing a broader picture. In that blissful space of beingness, we begin to explore and experience a fuller sense of who we are—life itself.

Artist Ayesha Harris stars as Britt in the Netflix LGBTQ+ drama series Glamorous. She says, “If I need to strip everything away and get to the bones of it, I am a creative human being. I’m somebody who wakes up to look for the nuance and subtlety of things. I am a consummate observer who crafts everything in my life because I absorb everything I see. Then I make it my own. So, I am an artistic voyeur.”

We invite many uncomfortable situations into our life experiences that, in retrospect, we can acknowledge as a blessing. If we are honest with ourselves about what we think and feel, we can connect the dots of how our inner state of being directly reflects our outer world. We often attempt to control external conditions by fighting against them. When we release all control and look within, we can shift our internal state, which brings us to live in our true freedom. We can try to control the conditions around us, or we can allow ourselves to tune into the feeling of what we want regardless of the current conditions. It’s all valuable. It’s our right to choose what we know to be the best for us at any given moment.

“I definitely didn’t want to close the barber shop I used to own in West Hollywood. I sought a way to start, segue, and explore different things. Being a business owner, it’s so intense. I was very engaged with everybody who worked with me and all the folks that came through as clients. When the barber shop was destroyed due to a construction accident, I was glad no one was hurt and that I had insurance. I’m sure it was nothing I didn’t quietly ask the universe to give me. I needed the break anyway. I didn’t ask specifically for my shop to be destroyed. But sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for. And something was telling me that I needed to move on,” Ayesha pauses, smiles, and continues, “I want to reopen a barber shop in a different capacity, though. I loved hearing people’s stories when they were in my chair. They can be very vulnerable. Usually, people want you to bring them back together, both esthetically and internally. It was a vulnerable space. It was very therapeutic as well. To be a good barber, you have to have a good memory to remember what people tell you and show genuine interest.”

About Britt, the character Ayesha plays in the Netflix LGBTQ+ drama series Glamorous, she says, “Britt and I have a lot of similarities. Britt is very vulnerable with her feelings and how she expresses and loves the people close to her. I’m very much like that. Britt is such a little bulldog. And I can relate to how she creates her own atmosphere, and everybody must adjust. She’s grounded in a very beautiful way, and I can relate to that, too.”

Falling in love with who we are, means full acceptance of all positive and negative reflections. When we fall in love with the whole of us, we can see others through the lens of compassion. In that state, there is no need for approval but a preference to be love and be loved. We all are unique in expression and equal in existence. We are inhaling the air that someone else exhales; we are exhaling the air that someone else inhales. Breathing is life, and we are the life force embodied as the vibrational density we perceive as physicality.

“Inclusion starts with yourself first. You have to really accept what you’re bringing to the table as an individual. And then you’ll be able to accept better and be open to including others. I think a lot of people assume that because you’re in the LGBT diaspora, all is well and in harmony, but there are a lot of riffs, and there are a lot of communication gaps that I would love to see filled, or at least question or answered as it does in shows like Glamourous. I love that the show highlights people’s lives, and these people happen to be gay. So, again, inclusion starts with self and then with conversations that people should be more willing to have because there’s such a lack of education. Even within our community, so much is happening so fast, and everybody’s trying to catch up. And genuinely so, inclusion starts with vulnerability, being open to your fellow person too, to fully not just listen to their experience, but try to absorb it in the best way you can be in your own individual,” shares Ayesha.

Often, there is doubt about our worthiness to be, do, and have anything we want. We do not earn worthiness; we are worthy the moment we take our first breath. We are all here for a reason to create and uniquely express ourselves with the purpose of enjoying the process of it. Our goals and dreams are not a destination but transition points to experience life to its fullest. Nobody can create in anyone’s experience. It’s only our focus on what others think that can affect the way we feel about ourselves.

“You don’t want people to dictate your own emotions. Whoever you love or don’t, it’s my choice, not yours to create an emotion within me. Venetia was definitely learning how to be loved and the capacity to be open enough to receive certain admiration, to be vulnerable, and to realize that she’s worth all her dreams and desires that she wants in his world. And I think Britt was trying to push her toward that. And Britt needs to learn a little bit more grace when it comes to criticism and when it comes to people telling her something. Hopefully, we explore that more in season two. People should be able to say to you and still love you,” candidly says Ayesha.

About what Ayesha expects the audiences to take away from watching Glamorous, she expresses, “Some of us live very cool, fantastical lives, and some of us have beautiful, normal lives. I think there is beauty in the everyday, and I’m still this very fabulous, interesting queer person, but I’m also just a person. And that is what I want people to take away from watching Glamorous. We make queer people so exotic and so different that it’s easy to other us. And then it’s easy to have strange ideas about us. So, then you’re so different that you need a different bathroom, law, and people to make clothes for you. We can start and continue to see that we all really are the same with shows like this. Because literally, the subtext in Glamorous is us being gay; the context is that we’re trying to get this business and our lives going, and we are in love. There’s so much more to life because we don’t walk around saying, ‘I’m doing gay things today.’ But it’s more like, I have errands to run, I’m taking care of my baby, and we are living our lives. I would think there are many beautiful stories out there that just happened to be told by queer people.”

When we ask, it is given. All is possible. All can become a tangible experience. From the vibrational perspective, every desire exists in the energetical field at its full potential. It’s not for us to conjure the “how” of our desires to become a physical reality. It’s for us to get the clarity of our desire and release it to discover it in its physical form. And it always comes in ways that we usually couldn’t even imagine. Like this, we can live many lifetimes of experiences in one physical iteration.

“I’m learning how to play my electric guitar. And an outrageous desire of mine would be to be on stage with someone, but I don’t want to be in the band; I want to be a guest guitarist. Imagine people would be like, wait a minute, she’s an actress, a guitarist, and she’s fucking kick ass. I want to be a part-time musician,” shares Ayesha about her most active desire at this moment.

Pretending or strategizing can get you to places, but it’s exhausting. Honoring who you are becoming and allowing yourself to care about your state of being first also gets you to places, but with fuller fulfillment. Ayesha says, “I love that I don’t feel the need to change who I am in any room I walk into. And I say it constantly, but I’ve watched people change and shift depending on who they are surrounded by. It’s crucial, especially in this industry, to create your own atmosphere and create your own little snow globe of how you will be and honor that. I find that one of my superpowers; you will get me how I am. And love it, like it. And I love about others the desires of people to be loved. I love seeing that in people. Everybody wants to be loved. I love that the undercurrent of existence is to find somebody or find the thing that makes you happy.”

Like Ayesha, are you allowing yourself to be and express who you are with authenticity? 

**Interview completed before 7/13/2023**

Photography // Kevin Scanlon
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