Found Community ConversationsMisbah & Sarah
I first met Misbah in 2004 while working in retail while we were both studying. At the time Misbah was completing a Master’s degree in poetry. She has since had her critically acclaimed work published through Vagabond Press and in literary and academic journals. Over the years, Misbah’s creative practice refused to be contained, and her work extends into music, songwriting, visual and performance art.
We caught up on a Sunday afternoon over zoom.
Sarah: How are you!?
Misbah: What's happening? I'm good! I'm a bit sore, but good. I just had a gig on Friday and I think... It's just like, fuck. It's quite too hard. It's pretty intense being in your 40s and gigging when everyone's in their 20s and 30s. It's a different kind of thing. It's okay. But I'm leaning into my hag. Like I lean into her. She's really loud. She's there and she's the hag. I just got back from the gym and the only reason I get myself to go is just because I don't want to melt. I go just so that I don't become a wad of gum. And I saw your um flamenco [online]! So beautiful.
Sarah: Oh thank you.
Misbah: That's gorgeous, and oh my god I was like... all your hand those gestures that you do, and the dance with the um... the traditional
Sarah: Manton?
Misbah: Yes, manton! I thought that was very beautiful.
Sarah: Thank you. Yeah, I don't normally like to do any of that social media broadcasting, but it has been suggested to me if I am working in dance academia then my social media should reflect that.
Misbah: Oh, yeah, I get it. Like, really? Do we really ask, like, if you are in academia, do we need to fucking... broadcast? You know what? Nobody knows my real name. I work [at a university] and everyone thinks my name is Mia. They have no idea I've published anything. What I've published, and they have no idea of my other life and I love it.
Sarah: Did you tell them that your name is Mia or did they decide that?
Misbah: I think that I was getting a lot of like questions from students when I had my name as Misbah and then it was just... it felt like I was almost being culturally boxed in without wanting to. So I kind of thought if I could just, change that. I told them Mia about eight years ago. And so I think, and so many staff have changed and now no one knows my real name. I really love it. That's so funny with the social media thing it's just exhausting like I love some aspects of it, like community building. I love finding people, like, for example, this really cool Indian goth scene in India that I connected with. There's so many POC goths everywhere but I'm like one of the only ones [in Melbourne]. I'm really out on the edge down in Narm. There's not a lot of brown faces... brown women there doing punk/goth. So I'm kind of on my own little and that's fun but it's also just exhausting because you're performing and it's just physical. It's that's why I go to the gym yeah because it's such a physical thing singing and moving. I love to move. Like, I go see a lot of bands and I'm not... I just don't like just singing. I like to move and use theatrics and. Yeah, yeah. I just don't like watching a band and a singer that don’t move.
Sarah: Movement is crucial. But I would say that! What else is creatively motivating you right now?
Misbah: I've been reading the intersections of race and even though race is a social construct, but intersections like cultural background and women from CALD POC backgrounds who don't have accessibility to creativity and art. That's repressed. It can lead to a lot of quite severe mental health issues that don't get in any way tracked. I think that I felt so isolated from people and because I have my white background with my mum, it's always been a confusing liminal space for me. So back to art and creativity and art. I just have to lean in and create for me, unlike many women I know and respect, I really wanted children and I had a period where I really wanted them and I had to go through grief because I could not have them. I have unexplained infertility so that when I realized, so I hit a point of grief where I was like, oh my God, I'm never going to have children. I am never going to pass my magic on! I'm never going to pass my cooking skills on, my fucking to die for cooking skills and all of my fucking skills, my magic, my medicines, my things I would love to pass on. And in turn, learn from another being. You know, I guess an ego death. I had a massive one at Veruna Writers Centre. I came back completely different. But what I realised with the creativity is... it pushes me further because I, it's so tied to mortality. I was born goth. I was born at midnight in a hospital in Karachi with no running water. My name means lamp in the dark...
Sarah: I never knew that.
Misbah: I was given to three women in the village when my mum wasn't feeling well, who then tattooed my face with weird images and my mum freaked out! I just have a very strong sense of the gothic. I wrote a will when I was eight! I mean... So I think the creativity is tied to mortality. That's kind of what it’s like for me; I need a deadline. Deadlines are sexy give me a deadline baby you want something done give me a fucking deadline! I say that to everyone you want to meet me? Give me a deadline. You want something done? Give me a fucking deadline and I will produce magic for you! So with the creativity I think... the collaging... I hadn't I got into college. I had I had a lot of equipment for it but I just lost interest in it because I was doing other stuff and I just didn't know where to go with it. But when I got back from Varuna I was like “oh I know what I want to do!” I had a kind of creativity that comes from a feeling something I need to, but it's not a feeling of importance. It's more like this expression needs to come out because I know that it holds magic, you know? Because... I think that's what some work is, collage work, like Genesis P.Orridge from Psychic TV. They did a lot of sigil work and I'm into sigils. I've been doing a lot of sigil work.
Sarah: I don't know what that is.
Misbah: It's a sort of form of chaos magic. So you create these symbols, for example, you can express a desire on a page and then you take away the vowels. Then you cut each consonant if it appears twice, then you arrange the consonants you have left into a symbol. It holds the energy [of your intention] so you create these sigils. I guess I'm just rambling now but I'm trying to tie back collaging. don't go, oh, I'm so creative. It's just I've always done it. Like it's been. Yeah. I'm possessed. Yeah.
Sarah: It's really interesting. I find this interesting to think about different people's processes. For me I just have to start doing something, when I feel myself putting off a task it's usually because I'm in my own head and I don't know what I want to do. But the way through that for me is not to wait until inspiration or possession happens. If I just start, even when I don't feel like it, the process of doing and I always have my best ideas when I'm doing it already.
Misbah: SI don't wait for inspiration though. I don't wait for inspiration. The possession is like I'm not waiting for something to hit me. What I'm trying to say is like... the number one thing I've learned is when I move my body, it's the most important thing I can do. It's the most important, whether that's going for a ride, being in my T-shirt, no bra, dancing, going to the gym. Yeah. My body is my vessel, my vehicle into creative space. The more as I move through time and the aging body, I have to pay attention to it because it has a lot of things it wants to say. So that link to my corporeal existence is so much more tied now than it was when I was in my 20s. It's still the body tells me and it's not a possession like a spirit, it feels I'm embodied because I can't create if I'm not embodied, if I'm not feeling sweaty.
Sarah: I think you’ve really articulated your process well, because I often think if someone hasn’t had the privilege of studying or working in the arts, it must look like you've waited for inspiration. Or like, wow. But it's really interesting, this idea of embodied, because obviously that's a huge area of theory within dance, but what you're just describing actually also reminds me a lot of... in flamenco we have a concept called duende. There's no exact translation from Spanish and my Spanish is terrible to non-existent! But duende describes... and when you see someone experiencing it, you know it... it's like a feeling of pure embodiment, almost to the point of transcendence. And you would have felt it. It's similar to awe but not. It's like when you go to the gallery and the architecture of the space just has you crying.
Misbah: I feel it every time I perform.
Sarah: In flamenco, it’s the highest. The highest level of performance is experiencing duende and people will call it out, like “oh! She's got that duende!” or like “She's on fire!” that kind of thing. I've heard people describe duende as though flamenco flows through you like you're just a vessel...
Misbah: Yes divine union. It's like the idea that you are shattered so the art can flow through you. You are no longer. You have dissolved so that what needs to come through you, whether it's the dance, the voice, now it comes through you and there is this, a perfect alignment of spirit and body and dance movement. And I have that almost... I have that, yeah, I experience something like that every time I'm on stage... or not all the time, it's not every time, but sometimes I have it and it's almost this, “I'm free!” That's so beautiful. I'm free at last. Fuck, I'm finally free, like... I'm free and I'm not thinking I'm free because I'm free. Like I'm, but it's only retrospect. I look back and think, “oh that was it”. And, my heart is lighter, like time and space and it's something greater than me. I think that's something that... it’s joy and I just want everyone to feel everyone to have that. I think if everyone could experience it... oh my gosh... there would be less fighting. There wouldn't be wars. Like if every person felt that, like that's what art can do. It can bring people together.
Mishbah Wolf, Slipstreams (2026).