Asherah

(see the "about" section - I mixed the two together)

Asherah is a musician, first and foremost. She plays keyboard, guitar, lute, clarinet, recorder (and similar flutes), ocarina, pan flute, doumbek drum, and sings in a rich, jazz-trained style. She writes her own music, using keyboard sampling to mimic a backup band in her one-woman show.

Her sound style is folky, with world beat, rock, jazz, and some electronica influences, and her lyrics tend toward the intellectual. Some are philosophical, some political, some reference classical literature, and some are downright geeky, with scientific or fictional themes. She's popular at science fiction conventions, hippie gatherings, and socially conscious coffee shops in liberal areas.

Though her musical skill is itself widely lauded, her lyrics show less universal appeal. Her philosophical works are sometimes criticized as inaccessible, the political as overly polemical, and the geeky as childish. Nevertheless, she has a wide and growing fan base, and a large internet presence. Though not signed to any label, she nevertheless supports herself through direct and internet sales, as well as concerts and small forays into merchandising. In her home town of Portland Oregon, she occasionally gets small amounts of radio play, and two of her five albums have currently been accepted by Pandora internet radio.

In performance, Asherah is energetic and charismatic. She's very comfortable on stage and works audiences with great skill. She's also a sensual dancer, with some very basic belly-dancing training, and she incorporates languid movement with her performance whenever possible, making her concerts more visually engaging than those of some folk artists.

However, Asherah's music career isn't her whole world. She studies philosophy and religion in what little spare time she can find (she identifies as "vaguely Wiccan-ish"), and often laments that she has neglected her education. She reads fantasy, science fiction, and centuries-old classical literature from around the world with a startling voracity, and is constantly working on some novel or other, though she has never finished one. Her writing is good, but unfocused. She also dabbles in several visual arts, but freely admits that she has had little success. She has been known to lament her inability to juggle.

Asherah adores animals, donating heavily to (rational) animal rights and environmental organizations. She is particularly fond of feral wolves and dogs.

In addition, she is active in several sexual minority communities and is openly bisexual and polyamorous. When she publicly dated a woman, two years ago, there was a minor local scandal over some threatening anti-lesbian mail the couple received. Asherah is almost totally cut off from her conservative birth family, though a few older neices and cousins have begun to defy family taboo and seek her out.

Asherah has many houseplants and three feral pets, a dog (irish wolfhound mix), a rabbit (a variety of dwarf lop, black), and a tortoise she inherited from a deceased friend (a cherry head - the tortoise, not the friend). She has no children and has never been married.