Hey Ladies: Being A Woman Musican Today

An interesting music interview I found today on NPR:

We asked hundreds of women working as musicians today to tell us what it's like right now: the good, the bad and the same as it ever was. Read their responses, find new music and join the discussion.
Hey Ladies


Miranda Lee Richards:
"I have received so much advice, but some of the best advice had to do with learning to do what was right for me. It's important to know somethings about the business so you can make educated decisions, but even then, you will have to be in touch with yourself to know when a situation feels right, when someone has your best interest at heart, or when an opportunity feels exciting or just the opposite. Very rarely do you feel good about things that turn out bad. I have felt cautious about things that ended up turning out great, but I've never felt bad about something that turned out good, does that make sense?"

After a lovely homemade breakfast of pancakes and coffee with Laura Graham this morning, talking dreams, talking film making and music making, I began seriously thinking about the lifestyle and decision makings and potential of the creative artistic woman. I think I wanna make music...Stumbling across this little vignette today of all days was very interesting.

Happy August Leos,
xo ac

OURS...

I took this photo last week while I was walking about Old City with my best friend. The Bourse sign with letters out...






XO AC

The Element of Freedom

Alicia Keys begins her album, "The Element of Freedom" with a reading of one of the strongest and most prevalent quotes ever by Anaïs Nin:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

xo ac

Window Seat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hVp47f5YZg

xo ac

High Heels

Mr. Alexander McQueen's pieces of art...

xo ac

Rouge

xo ac

Girls, Girls, Girls...

After going to Wendy Williams on Thursday and having to almost ask a question about my art during the Ask Wendy segment and being freaked out to do so, and then seeing myself on TV, I started to think about the vibrancy, the energy, the voice of the highly publicized, highly outgoing, famous women in POP culture...and how I sometimes fantasize about being one...it's probably a wild, wild ride.

xoxoxo
AC

how you doin'?

Oscar..

Every woman is a rebel,
and usually in wild revolt against herself.

-OSCAR WILDE

It hasn't been this beautiful out in a long, long while. I want to swallow it up and never go inside.

XOXOXOXO AC

A Single Man and The Valley of The Dolls

A Single Man, an Interview with Colin Firth

Within a day of each other, I finished reading Jacqueline Susann's The Valley of the Dolls and saw Tom Ford's film rendition of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man with a friend. I'm fascinated by 1960's America and by the way these two character stories were told. There is a strange parallel between that time and our current. The way people acted and lived was very different back then and yet somehow strangely similar to today...and the distant thoughts, the inner conflict of the characters in these two stories resonated with me, felt somewhat familiar. The juiciness of the tales, the subtlety of the characters' pain, the longing, all these felt familiar. But I guess that parallel can be made with many other time periods and today. And I guess these attributes are those to be coveted for good story telling. Susann's novel was maybe not as cohesive or full as one may hope for, but it sure was a page turner. I read someone called it their guilty pleasure. I found it to be just that for me with it being my many a late night companion. And Tom Ford's film had very distinctly beautiful moments, and visual gems so epitomizing of the impeccable taste of the talented, classic fashion designer. Parts quietly screamed fashion. I loved that about it. The subtlety conveyed in Colin Firth's performance was very real and heartbreaking and quite relative. The subtlety in general in certain parts was very beautiful.

xo ac

Zef Side

XO AC

Be my Valentine

In Honor of Valentine's Day...




<3
XO AC

En Vogue

I really feel like the soul of The Other Woman parallels that of En Vogue.

XO AC

The Swell Season

The Swell Season featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova


The cat's out of the bag, LG...this is it.
Ticket with your name on it.
Tuesday night, 8pm.
Radio City Music Hall.

XO AC

MMXoxo

Miss Olivia Rae
New Year's Weekend, OC, NJ


From me to you,
Happy New Year.
Let 2010 be the year of LOVE.

with 2,010 xoxoxo's
love love love ac

Through the Keyhole...

Through The Keyhole,
a window installation by Yours Truly

This week marks the unveiling of my new window installation for the competition Windows Throughout old City, an event that is part of Design Philadelphia 2009. Please stroll by (and stop in!) Three Sirens Boutique at 134 N. 3rd St to see it live!

Keep strolling around Old City to see the 50 other window displays scattered about like little secret surprises in the windows...

You can read more about Design Philadelphia @ www.designphiladelphia.org.

And pretty please with sugar on top vote for my window if you like it at www.discoveroldcity.org
or text 4040 TO 267-582-2521.

Thank you to the beautiful Laura Graham for being the watched woman in my piece....


xo ac

Tilt-a-whirl

I'm, well, depressed.
The summer is nearly over, I have three jobs but no said career, I need to drop a few (15) pounds, I had to buy cellulite cream online, I'm boyfriendless, I'm aimless, I'm back at home with my parents, I spend 50% of my time in my car driving all over the state of New Jersey from the Jersey shore to Philadelphia (in my beloved chariot of course, Star Jones), I'm not in my studio, I'm behind on projects, the world is all crazy and shady, I'm scared, I'm weird. I'm freakin' out! WTF.

I know, I know. I said I was going to stop complaining...

...but in times like these, there's really only one thing that can make me happy....























I must go on my favorite ride ever...The Tilt-a-whirl.

Who's with me?

I'm not bs-ing here.

Gillian's Wonderland Pier.

Ocean City, NJ

6th and Boardwalk.

Any day of the week.

Holla.

xo ac

Love Letter

From the series Love Letter by Stephen Powers and the Mural Arts Program

A passage by Randy Kennedy of The New York Times from the August 28, 2009 article Art to make you Laugh (and Cry). Mr. Kennedy had a rendezvous with bits of the Philly art scene on a recent trip to Philadelphia and reported on his findings. This one sparked my interest and an adventure ensued...

"The final stop on my tour actually ended up being many stops, as I stared out the window of an elevated-subway train in West Philadelphia, where the Mural Arts Program has been working for weeks with the artist Stephen Powers, a West Philadelphia native, and many local painters to create a series of more than 30 huge, text-based murals, collectively called “Love Letter,” along a sometimes blighted stretch of Market Street.

The project, painted in consultation with business and building owners, is in part Mr. Powers’s homage to Darryl McCray, known as Cornbread, a legendary Philadelphia graffiti artist who began painting messages of love on walls in the late 1960s to impress his girlfriend. (Mr. McCray also once managed to tag the Jackson Five’s private jet, and painted “Cornbread Lives” on the side of an elephant at the Philadelphia Zoo to dispel rumors that he had died.)

Jane Golden, the executive director of the Mural Arts Program, said she remembered Mr. Powers as a teenager, when he was a prolific and notorious graffiti writer known as Espo who couldn't be persuaded to “come over to the other side” and paint legally. So there is a “wonderful irony,” she said, to the fact that now, as an established gallery artist living in New York, he has returned to Philadelphia to mount an ambitious urban beautification project, one whose odd, affectionate messages — like “Forever Starts When You Say Yes” and “Pre-pay is on/Let’s talk/Till my minutes are gone” — are about love and reconciliation. (The project will be unveiled officially on Sept. 10, though most of the signs are now visible for the price of a $2 subway token.)

Mr. Powers said the idea was to create a single, serial urban work whose hopeful messages might resonate with a kind of universality in a neighborhood in need of hopeful messages. And as a fringe benefit, he said the murals might even help in a more practical way.

“Hopefully, there will be a few sly guys out there who say to their girl: ‘Hey, Baby, I wrote that up there for you.’ ” "

I hopped on the el after work with a boy that will always have my heart. From 2nd and Arch we walked over to Market to go underground together. I missed him and he missed me too I think. It just seemed right and appropriate...doing this trek together, seeing this Espo project. I was intrigued by the inspiration for the project and the scale. He was intrigued by the project because of historical ties to the Philadelphia graffiti world. It was a beautiful day on Sunday and it just felt right and sorta magical to hop on the el with nowhere to go, nothing to do, but sit back with a true confidant and friend and watch the world and the art go by outside the window. We rode to 69th Street. When we got above ground, past 46th street, adrenaline pumped through me when I was hit with the first piece. I felt like an excited little kid. Dotted in unexpected places on roofs and walls, with impeccable and intentional timing, the murals came into view.. They brought us to our feet to see them as we looked from one side of the train to the other. It became a sort of treasure hunt. Who can find the next one? Did you catch that one? Did you see the one hidden in the cut? Wow!...We oo-ed and ah-ed our way to the last stop, rode it back to 46th St and hopped on a train up to Millbourne to catch a glimpse of the murals one last time....They were beautiful. They read like 1950s ads but with a vibrancy of color unmistakably "today". I've dreamed of having the know-how and the perseverance and the drive, the clarity, the directness, the appropriateness that I found in this work. The language was of today, of Philly. The quality of the painting was unlike any Philadelphia mural I have seen before. The cleverness of how these ads could fool your eye into seeing them as relics of a 1950s ad campaign was so fascinating. It's almost like your eye tried to scan through them like any other advertisement but just couldn't once you read what one said. The old timey quality was captivating on its own because it had that graphic look of the past with a subtle show of the hand and the fact that this old fashioned looking ad was not faded and worn brought on another level of interest hard to ignore. It felt like I was riding the train in a different era, seeing the old tricks of the advertising world. But my eyes were really captivated by the of-the-moment language. How simple and effective using regular young folk words can be...we live in city and a time of distinct language, slang. Sometimes only young people can understand it...or maybe just people exposed to the city can understand...

There was an effectiveness about this work. The fact that it was done by an iconic graffiti artist made it, I dunno, more real or prevalent. In recent years, I've gotten mad at the graffiti world, at hip hop...I've wanted a culture so influentional on my generation and the one before to say something meaningful to me, to say something more than it's original intentions, to break beyond the act of "getting up" into the act of getting up to say something from the depths of the heart. I feel like this Mural Arts Project did that. Though Espo did it legally, the murals still resonated to me as secret pieces done in the night. Because of the freshness of the project I felt like I was catching the moment they were seeing the first light of day the next morning. They had the newness and energy of freshly done, beautifully crafted graffiti pieces, vibrant against the industrial walls of the city, but with a pleasant offness due to the messages of life and love. Simple phrases made important, prominent, elevated.

It's unique and alive and romantic and special, Espo's work....it gave me courage to pursue the things i want to pursue in my art and in myself and in love....it made me wanna fall in love...It allowed me to remember the jewels of love... there is such a complexity to it. All the ups and the downs. But this work let me remember the most fun part of love...the romance. I definitely fell in love on the el that day and had the perfect road dawg with me...what a magical afternoon...

See it as the sun sets.

xo ac

Don't Complain

Huseyin Alptekin, "Don't Complain"

I got this email from my best friend, Beth:


Friday, August 14, 2009 8:56 AM
From: "beth King"
To: "Aubrie Costello"

I'm intrigued by this, thought you may be too......

http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/reinvent-your-life/articlegh.aspx?cp-documentid=20985140&GT1=32036






Do You Complain Too Much?

Author Valerie Frankel tests the popular program outlined in the book A Complaint Free World and tries to curb negativity, one gripe at a time.

By Valerie Frankel

Times are tough. I'd been saying that a lot lately. On the phone with my sister, I was refining the theme in detail, whining about the economy and free-floating anxiety along with the usual daily snafus. Annoyingly, she refused to join in my gripefest. It was so unlike her.

Then she told me she wasn't allowing herself to complain. In fact, the congregation at her temple, inspired by the book A Complaint Free World by Missouri minister Will Bowen, was attempting to stop griping, moaning, and whining en masse.

"For God's sake, why?" I asked.

"No need to put more negative energy out there," she told me. "It does more harm than good." As she continued to explain, and as I later read in the book, Bowen's theory was that complaining only exacerbates problems, individually and collectively.

"When we complain," he writes, "we are using our words to focus on things that are not as we would like. Our thoughts create our lives, and our words indicate what we are thinking. It is vital that we control our minds in order to re-create our lives."

The first step in controlling your mind? Become aware of what comes out of your mouth. By Bowen's logic, once you notice your complaints, you'll start to notice your negative thoughts and can learn to reframe them with more positive ones. Then you'll be happier, healthier, and wealthier.

It sounded ridiculous to me. Complaining was the glue that held my emotional life together. I didn't call it complaining, anyway. It was bonding, commiserating, friendship-building. Sure, I might veer toward the negative, but that was just my personality — and the personality of everyone I knew. Besides, the very concept of doing away with complaints was preposterous. Would not griping about the economy help pay the bills?

Then again, complaining wouldn't pay the bills, either. My sister, not complaining for only one day thus far, hadn't yet noticed a new serenity. Which, I pointed out, was technically a complaint. "You're right," she said, "I have to switch my bracelet now." The wrists-on component of Bowen's prescription: Each time you griped, you had to move a rubber bracelet* from one wrist to the other. The physical reminder focused your consciousness on the quest. On his first day of taking the no-complaint pledge, Bowen switched his bracelet so many times his hands got tired. A few months later, he'd achieved his goal of going 21 consecutive days without complaining.

I doubted I could go 21 minutes.

But I was willing to try — especially since not complaining was free. I'd give it a week, and then assess whether I felt less stressed. My husband, Steve, and daughters — Maggie, 13, and Lucy, 10 — agreed to join the fun (see? more positive already). I had to bribe the kids, offering them $100 at the end of the week, minus one dollar for each complaint. To my ears, all they ever did was complain, so I felt sure I wouldn't owe them a dime.

*A bracelet can be ordered for $1 at acomplaintfreeworld.org — so far, nearly six million have been sent out.

After my initial reading, my response:


Friday, August 14, 2009 12:14 PM
From: "Aubrie Costello"
To: "beth king"

this is amazing....can we do this though.....the writer put it perfectly... it is the glue, complaining. it does bring people together... but i know that the stiffest my neck gets is during complaining sessions. damn. crazy. i honestly feel like i'd loose a piece of me if I gave up complaining. I do it all the time. i can't even count how many times I do it during the day..or think it...i think complaints....wtf.
this is a challenge. especially if i have to work with my father....like how do you control it if you're surrounded by people who are complaining to you. won't it be awkward if you don't join in w/ empathy or sympathy for their complaints...I seriously cannot imagine my life without bitching ha.
i need to find a rubberband here at work...







All this talk about complaining brought me back to '07 and The Pavilion of Turkey at the 52nd Venice Biennale....http://www.biennale07-turkey.org/giris_en.asp?m1=ana






xo ac

24

I'm 24 today.






from wikipedia:

In other fields

Astronomical clock in Prague

24 is also:

* The number of bits a computer needs to represent truecolour images (for a maximum of 16,777,216 colours). (But greater numbers of bits provide more accurate colors. "Truecolor" is one of many possible color representations.)
* The number of a broadcast television channel
* The number of Carats representing 100% pure gold.
* The number of cycles in the Chinese solar year.
* The number of frames per second at which motion picture film is usually projected.
* The number of hours in a day.
* The number of letters in both the modern and classical Greek alphabet. For the latter reason, also the number of chapters or "books" into which Homer's Odyssey and Iliad came to be divided
* 24, television series starring Kiefer Sutherland. Each episode covers one hour, with 24 episodes making up one entire "day".
* The number of points on a backgammon board.
* When pronounced "two-four", a 24-pack of beer (Canadianism).
* A children's mathematical game involving the use of any of the 4 standard operations on 4 numbers on a card to get 24 (see Math 24)
* "24", a song by Welsh musician Jem
* The maximum number of Knight Companions in the Order of the Garter
* The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is one of the Civil Rights-era amendments, abolishing poll tax requirements in federal elections.
* The designation of US Interstate 24, a freeway that runs from Tennessee to Illinois. Also many other roads called Route 24
* 24 is considered an unlucky number in Cantonese culture because its pronunciation is similar to that of "easy to die". For this reason, many buildings skip this floor number. The same goes for 13, 34, 44, etc.
* #24 is a recurring character on The Venture Bros.
* A Straight Edge symbol, for X is the 24th letter of the alphabet.
* The number of the French department Dordogne.
* In Brazil the number is associated with homosexuals due to the number representing the deer in the gambling game Jogo do Bicho and the word viado (a misspelling of veado, deer in Portuguese) being a slang for homosexuals.








..to a new year. I hope it's filled with unfamiliar adventures. And I like it.

























photos courtesy of Laura Graham
cupcakes courtesy of Beth King
what a lovely birthday with great friends.




xo ac

Playing Possum

Maxwell's Playing Possum on Black Summer's Night:

Come back from the dead
You left my, my heart here
Say what you will and won't forget
Express disappointment, speak your regrets, yeah
Or baby call out my name, I'll be where you are
I'll be very still, step down to my heart

Amend this broken
If only you'd wake up from your constant possum playing
If only you'd wake up

I'm begging you sugar, have some leniency
Call the President and ask him baby, to pardon me and bring you
back to me
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oooooh

And mend this broken
If only you'd quit this nonsense of you possum playing
If only you'd wake up, would you wake up, would you wake up baby

I used to love musicians. On a private level I'd daydream of them writing songs for me.. not telling me until I heard them perform a set somewhere added to the fantasy of it all. There's an intimacy in real song writing. I'd like to think that lyrics come from the depths of the mind revealing secrets not always shared between two people. There's just something about it, secrets about you being sang from the lips of a lover over the mesmerizing sounds of an instrument. Those lyrics sang on stage in front of a room of people, unraveling thoughts, unearthed secrets, storytelling about you and him so intimate its like you're making love in front of them. So uncomfortable, so sexy, so labyrinthine, so thick all at once.
I guess it felt like it authenticated something...a song about you...that someone finally saw you were something else, different.. off enough from the monotony that you inspired thoughts worthy of becoming a song to share.

Like a possum I've played dead for years. For fear of feeling too much. Of letting in the wave. The wave of love with its changing tides. To feel normal I've felt like I needed the waters to be still. If, in a song, he told me to wake up, would I be hypnotized to wake up, mesmerized by the combination of his voice, his words, and the sounds of the band of instruments? Or would I fall paralyzed to his honesty? Would I be knocked over by the tidal wave, floudering and blind in the exotic water? Would I drown...

The Wading Room no.8

I sit thinking, what if someone wrote a song about you and you never knew it?





xo ac



p.s.
Playing Possum
and
Baby I'm a Fool

..Melody Gardot. I went to school with her. And she made it. She's striking. I think we should collaborate...and sometimes I want to be a singer.

a final xo.
AC