About Keisha Manuel

I'm an autistic content creator who's always loved learning about and practicing various types of artistic forms of expression (including singing and/or music) in order to find ways to pursue, promote awareness around, and attempt to collaborate with others on the subject of ways to find solutions for positive world change. Autistic people, especially autistic woman, I've noticed are often skilled (due to their heightened capacity for pattern recognition) with a unique capacity to evaluate and analyze whatever subject that fascinates them and often are capable of finding innovative ways to figure out solutions, improvements, and methods of utilizing their subject of interest that most would never have considered and is often times even more efficient than how it was prior. Autistic people are also known for certain qualities like heightened sense of justice (being often seen as too morally strict) and literal thinking (Which makes us uncomfortablely honest and often unable to understand or pick up on social subcontext or cues, often making us seem to have a sense of innocence and niavity that is often taken advantage of). While these traits often lead to us feeling alienated and like we lack life purpose and a sense of where we belong. And autistic women, like most women, often end up struggling to find our voice because on top of our communication difficulties, women are rarely taken seriously, viewed with respect and equality, and even down right silenced. We all know that the world drastically needs change, but it often seems to be an impossible feat to accomplish, especially with a flawed system that hasn't worked for a long time and is severely corrupted and led by politicians who are motivated and influenced by what they can gain than by any morally driven intention. On top of that, despite the progress with women's rights, it's still very much a patriarchal world. And autistic people struggle with similar issues of us being limited by stereotypes and assumptions about our capacity for intellectual competency. But, I believe with the sensationalism of awareness around human rights and autism, this could actually be an opportunity to take advantage of to initiate a movement that would not only benefit both women and those with autism by giving us both an opportunity to teach everyone that we are far more than our stereotypes, but also possibly finally create a way that autistic people can finally belong and have a purpose utilizing the very traits that isolated them into strengths that could be uniquely successful in facilitating the kind of change that our system and world needs. I think that both women and autistic/neurodivergents have remained too passive and pressured into compliance for far too long and that it's time to be more assertive and bold in pursuit of ensuring that we have more inclusion and involvement/influence in areas of authority that effect our society. It was discovered that the autistic brain is literally physically wired differently than neurotypical people (those who aren't neurodivergents). Neurotypical doctors did a study comparing neurodivergents and neurotypicals on the subject of morals, and it was interesting to learn that when these doctors discovered that neurotypicals were more likely to do something immoral than neurodivergents, they labeled neurodivergents as "too morally strict". Maybe part of the reason why the system is so flawed is because it is controlled by neurotypicals who fail to have moral outlooks or practices. And considering that it's literally scientifically been proven that neurodivergents are wired to have a higher sense of justice and morality. They may have flaws in their ability to socialize and communicate at times, but they also have traits that may be an invaluable contribution towards finding ways to facilitate actually feasible solutions to effect the positive changes in the world we so desperately need. I'm not sure how educated you are about autism, but another very common aspect about autism is how detrimental music often is for us. In some ways, we can sometimes feel more connected to music than anything else, because it can often have the words to express the things we may not know how to say ourselves verbally. I'm not sure if this bio comes off as too intense or as weird (a lot of times we don't realize that what we're doing may be off-putting to others), but we are also known to experience a lot of things in life more intensely than neurotypicals, including our passion for the subjects that we feel strongly about. I'll admit that being autistic, I've been through more trauma than most, a lot of times as a result of me not even realizing or understanding how dangerous a situation was, coupled with the fact that I'm a remotely attractive woman. I spent 18 years raising my 4 younger brothers for our physically abusive mom who didn't deal with my autistic meltdowns very well. And I've had over 6 SAs, half of which was from family, and the one that was the most devastating was when I was raped by my uncle 8 years ago, which led to my husband to cheat and divorce me, leaving me with no stability to continue co-parenting my kids with their father, and what made it all worse is that I ended up basically homeless and couch surfing because everyone in my family (even the brothers I sacrificed my childhood and took beatings for trying to protect) bailed and avoided me. None of them showed up when it happened and no one was willing to help me get back on my feet so I could be with my kids again. I ended up missing years of their childhood, had 4 failed suicide attempts, and was forced to stay in a physically abusive ex because with muscle damage from and accident with my legs, there was no way I would have been able to survive out on the streets. I eventually managed to get on disability and it wasn't until Feb of this year that I finally found stability with a family member on my dad's side that was actually safe. And as a kicker, after fighting for 8 years to get the stability and safety I needed, their father now refuses to even let me talk to them on the phone much less see them. And other than the fact that my presence in their lives wasn't consistent because of the conditions of my life until now, I'd never given him any reason to validate a decision to keep them from me. If it wasn't for the fact that despite him being a dick to me, he's a good dad that's given them the kind of childhood I never had, if it wasn't for the fact that involving law enforcement would ruin our kids relationship and view of him, I'd have done anything to get them back. But I feel like putting them through that would cause them unnecessary harm and they deserve better. My daughter is basically a clone of me without all the damage from Trauma. She even got tested for autism as well. So when I remember everything I've seen and been put through and knowing that there's a huge chance that my daughter could be taken advantage of and treated the way I had been makes me terrified for her. And that's why I began to become obsessed with trying to focus on how I could find a way to contribute to making the world the kind of place that my kids deserve. I actually have some ideas that I had tried to find others to possibly take interest into trying to make happen, ideas that could have helped our society in more large scale ways. But I don't have resources or connections to people who might consider collaborating for any of it. I had one friend with a relatively large following on tick tock who has experience working with politicians and he mentioned that one of my ideas was actually feasible if I was able to find others who wanted to be involved. But honestly, I've never been very comfortable with trying to self promote and I usually just end up making a long winded attempt like this one lol. And I realize that there's a high probability that part of the reason I haven't been successful in any of it is because of my tendency to use such a lengthy message when a lot of people aren't really motivated to put in that much reading effort. But I'm not sure how to shorten and simplify the way I communicate something that has complexity. But lately I've been having a lot more of an intense struggle with my depression over a lack of purpose because I'm just tired of feeling like my life will never end up finding a way to have made enough of a positive difference in the world for my kids, to have made everything I've been through worth enduring. So I guess this is my attempt to try and keep myself focused on something more positive to avoid lingering on more negative ones. I'm not sure if any of this will even come of anything, but it doesn't hurt to try.

Work experience

  • Content Creator
  • 15 years roughly
  • Photo and video editor, model (I stated this and my photo editing back then), horror/fantasy author, poetry/lyrics writer, actor, singer, and I've been a Tiktok content creator of a variety of things, though my main focus has been making lip syncing fan based music videos, lip syncing skits, and every now and then I'll record and post me singing both male and female vocals.

Keisha's Skills

Art
  • Content Creator
  • Graphic Design
Business
  • Digital Streaming
  • Publishing
Live
  • Singer
Venue Type Experience
  • Theatre/PAC
Musician
  • Singer
Photo
  • Photographer
Songwriting
  • Lyricist
  • Songwriter
Video
  • Music Video Director
  • Video Editor
Visuals
  • Music Video Director

Keisha's Genres

  • Alternative Rock
  • Country
  • Grunge
  • Indie Rock
  • Metal
  • Pop

Keisha's Experience

So I’ve always loved singing and writing. I began writing poetry and lyrics, but eventually around 26 yrs old, I wrote and self published my over 100 k word long horror/fantasy novel first through Lulu, which had posted it to Amazon kindle, but a few months back, I realized that I wasn’t able to access any payments from my book, so I self published it again directly on the Amazon website this time. From 18 til 25, I was pretty much a nomad. I spent a year as a theater major at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La, but with my autism and ADHD, I just couldn’t manage to hack it. I lived in Florida for nearly 3 years where this band asked if they could have their guitarist teach me their songs on the bass and I actually learned 8 of them within a week. But I do tend to learn everything a little better when I can visually and hands on observe the way something works on my own most times, as long as the interest is there. But unfortunately we moved over an hour away before I got the chance to play a show with them. I also briefly played the piano during highschool, but I haven’t played either instrument in years. I’m autistic (more than likely Asperger’s) with good pattern recognition and those with autism tend to observe a lot more detail than neurotypicals do, which is what can lead us to have sensory overload meltdowns if there’s too much to process than normal. Eventually I ended up living in Louisville, KY where I modeled and my photographer was the one who taught me how to edit my own photos. I also worked as a paid haunted house actor for 2 years while living there. After that I ended up back in Louisiana and it wasn’t long after that when I first self published my book. My mom has also put me in pageants as a kid, so between that and doing make up at the haunted house and for my own modeling, I’ve always done my own make up, hair, and outfit combinations. For a while, I didn’t do much else other than singing and photo editing(other than karaoke and posting videos of me practicing, I’ve never sang professionally). But after I started Tiktok, this one local band did ask me to try out and they seemed excited by my audition when I sang Aenima by Tool and they and told me that so far I had been the best audition, but unfortunately I didn’t have my own vehicle (still don’t at the moment) and I was living with a physically abusive ex at the time and I didn’t want to disrespect the band by risking him pulling something stupid at our practices, so I explained the situation and apologized for having to back out on them. Now my content on Tiktok is probably the thing that I feel the most pride in because it was one of my lipsyncing fan music video creations using the song “Whore” by In This Moment (one of my favorite bands other than Maynard James Keenan’s work) that first got positive feedback from their guitarist Randy Weitzel on it. It had really surprised me because any time I post my work, one both reels and stories, I tag the band itself or the singer if it’s and individual artist. Now I did always tag Maria just because in all honesty, having been through a lot of SA trauma myself and given her own traumatic past, I just had a lot more respect for her having not allowed her abuser and the circumstances hold her back from becoming the bad ass she is today. But anyway, I didn’t even have Randy’s profile followed, so I’ll admit I was a bit stunned and giddy, especially when he started positively reacting to other ones too. So I stated tagging him along with Maria after that lol. I did start to get a boost in high follower verified accounts veiwing my stories (this all happened on Instagram), and I even saw one of them had as many as over a million followers. Most of them seemed to be DJs and stuff. I have had a few of the artists I tagged in videos I did with their songs and some of them seemed to like them and one of the artists named Aviva actually shared I think maybe two of the videos I did of her work to her own stories, which was cool. I mean, I’m sure none of that is very impressive compared to what you guys get to experience, but it was just nice knowing that something I put effort into artistically creating was appreciated, you know? I do have a few other things that I’ve got skill in like I’ve been a self taught spiritual practitioner since I was 12 and mostly work with elder futhark runes, was actually a cross country truck driver for 6 months til I was forced to get in disability, and I have a knack for being naturally pretty good with combat and weapons practice mostly projectile weapons like guns, bbguns, compound bow, and throwing knives, though the knives I’m a bit rusty with, but on the other hand, I can’t decapitate a toy army man with a BB gun at a pretty decent distance and was able to even beat my career military brother with them when he was on leave. 🤣 But neither of those are really relevant to music or art at all, so the mention of it I guess is just tooting my own horn a little lol. But being autistic, basically anything that ends up turning into an obsessive hyper focus, is usually the stuff that ends up just coming naturually to learn for me. It tends to like to keep myself learning new things, because I just really enjoy the feeling of discovery and seeing my own self improvement the more I practice. I feel like I may have forgotten something, but I just can’t think of anything else at the moment and I’m pretty sure this was probably bit too long winded, so I’ll end it here lol. Oh, one last thing. I’ll go ahead and give you the links to the social media platforms that I post my work on, if you wanted to take a look at my work I’ve done. I do have singing videos posted, but it may be a little easier to find the singing practice videos on my Tiktok profile, since I try to keep them saved into organized favorite folders based on what kind of video it is. So there is a folder in my Tiktok favorites labeled singing practice I believe. I’ve tried to organize most of them, but I know there are older ones that I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ve sung a variety of songs, Billie Eillish, Tool, A Perfect Circle, The Cranberries, Adele, even Corey Taylor (I think it may have been Wicked Games and Through the Glass by him), mostly those artists, though I’m sure I’ve got a couple of others I’ve sang that I can’t think of at the moment. Here are the links (Edit: I actually remembered that I can get a link to the individual to videos, So what I’ll do is post some of my favorite work I’ve done first and then I’ll keep the profile links at the bottom after the videos): Singing Videos: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRHQa2/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRq5Qv/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRCG34/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRscyS/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmR9aKm/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRxhY6/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRn1CP/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRyPRE/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRqVAW/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRGqgW/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRQs8q/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmR4Sub/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRn1L4/ Fan Made Music Videos (the first one is the one that Randy Weitzel responded to): https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm86QPG/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8RmY1/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8dVDY/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRcgP1/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRThxs/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8NDx1/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRvhv9/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8rFMs/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8LRM3/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRc6WV/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8Fuo6/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8MSqS/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8FHtk/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8MmCE/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmR3dgP/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFmRE8JV/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8eypL/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8eNHp/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8JH61/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFm8NYu2/ Social Media links: Tiktok: @nehmahati Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KaterinaKerosna?mibextid=ZbWKwL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyrakaterinakerosna/profilecard/?igsh=bTE5bWF5amIyZ2U1