Who is aleksiah when she’s not performing?
Alexia Damokas learnt about poetry as a 12-year-old school kid, a moment that contributed to aleksiah the 24-year-old performer preparing to headline a national tour.
“You know how every kid in primary school has like, one facet of their personality that they make their entire ‘thing’ for like, the whole year? That was song writing for me, and it just stuck,” aleksiah tells CityMag.
“My entire life since then has just been song writing. I love how it’s super cathartic and expressive, but also at the same time it can be fun, it can be silly, it can be deep, it can be sad, it can be whatever you want it to be.”
Deep and sad are two common tones in aleksiah’s music, with her debut EP, Who Are You When You’re Not Performing? delivering a vulnerable insight into the human, and specifically female, experience as she sees it.
“There’s absolutely no shame in being and feeling the same things as other people,” aleksiah says.
“If anything, I love the fact that people can relate so much to my songs, it makes me feel not alone, which I think is just such a human thing. No one wants to feel like they’re alone in what they feel and what they think.”
In the EP’s title track, a gut-wrenching ballad about feeling unworthy and navigating the debilitating pressure of expectations, aleksiah finishes the song with a commitment, singing: “I’ll teach my daughter how to give a good performance”.
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“That is kind of this character that I’ve got in my mind saying I can’t beat this cycle. This cycle is never ending. It’s been this way since the goddamn patriarchy was invented, and I can’t beat it, so I have to assimilate, I have to join,” aleksiah says.
“I’ll teach my daughter the exact same things I was taught because I’m not strong enough to break the cycle.
“It’s defeat. It is literally defeat. And I hope one day I can write a part two to that song, where I do feel like I can make it a happier ending, and a more powerful astute ending.
“But at this point in time, I, like so many of my friends, do feel a bit trodden down and a bit like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. I just wanted to write something realistic, I guess.”
When CityMag speaks to aleksiah, she is days away from heading off to record her next EP, having just returned from supporting Lime Cordiale on their Australian tour.
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She is growing fast, with a strong social media following and 40,000 monthly listeners on Spotify at the time of writing. But this growth comes with its downsides, she says.
“At shows I get people coming up to me and just like, touching my hair, and saying very interesting things to me,” she says.
“I think it’s really interesting – in a derogatory way, interesting – that people think that just because you’re up on a stage, or just because you post a lot on social media, that it gives them the right.”
The singer related these parasocial experiences to her song ‘Pretty Picture’, which she wrote about an incident where her face was edited onto explicit photos and shared online as a teenager.
“I can look at that song and think ‘oh wow, I guess this does happen’, just in a more socially acceptable way now that I’m a singer with a public Instagram and a public TikTok, a public figure I guess.”
So, who is aleksiah when she’s not performing? Well, she hasn’t quite worked that out yet.
“I don’t think anyone has because I guess it’s changing. Every year you get older, you get a bit more wiser, you get a bit more cynical, and a part of you dies, but a new part is reborn.
“I will let you know when I figure it out.”
This story was first published in The Game Edition of CityMag, in Summer 2024.
