Lots of Text and Lots of Context; or, What I've Been Up To

Once again I’ve stayed up into the wee hours of the morning. How do I always end up doing that? At this point I might as well stay awake since I’m already three hours into Saturday.

I suppose my lack of sleep could be due to a number of things. It could be that I’m in the middle of packing up my mother’s house so it can be put on the market. It could also be that I’ve put myself into isolation to work on my album.
How silly do I sound? “My album”? I don’t think I’m at that level of accomplishment yet to speak like that. I know it’s a statement of fact, but describing it makes it sound so professional and I’ve only been performing since July. I suppose this is part of the problem with why I haven’t been doing more since then.
Recently, my friend Bryan Bruchman (who I mention by full name because you may Google him and see he is awesome at photography and blogging among other things) took some photos of me that I could use for promotional use. He was, as he generally is, all about the idea that my music aspirations are worth pursuing. We took photos, they look awesome, and I’ve been using them everywhere, most recently on the main page of my new website layout:



I’ve become a bit agoraphobic while cleaning out mom’s house. I spend my days up my to elbows in bad memories as I sort and throw away and pack over a decade’s worth of things. It’s exhausting and I can’t muster enough energy to go to the grocery store most days, let alone drive into Portland. So when Bryan recently had an evening birthday party at a bar on the East End it took a lot of my energy to haul myself out of the house and into the rainy night to drive over there. I sat there, nodded off every once in a while, and eventually people filtered out until there was a handful of partiers left milling around. Bryan was, by then, quite drunk; I was, myself, sober but exhausted, which amounts to being drunk after a certain point. Somehow this created the perfect conditions for a twenty minute one-on-one chat about my future. Basically, to put it crudely, he verbally kicked my ass about not doing more with my music. And he’s right—I’m really not pushing it and considering it’s what I want to do with my life and I know I wouldn’t really be good at anything else I should be trying harder to put myself out there. So this is my way of doing it—by locking myself up in a suburban home and recording take after take of every song until I feel it’s ready (something I never did before, which is why all previously released songs had lead vocals that were done in one take, which doesn’t always turn out the best). It sucks and it’s lonely, but I have faith the final product will be gorgeous.

On a similar note, I’ve been invited back to perform as Lady Gaga with the For Your Pleasure Burlesque in May. I’m thankful for the opportunity for a few reasons but mainly because of this fact about Portland: Absolutely no one who goes to a show will criticize the performance that they see.
It’s a strange and somewhat unsettling thing, actually. How can an artist of any sort grow without seeing the reactions of others to their art? There may be variations, genres, etc. that go into what form the art takes, but within that category there are good and bad examples. I job shadowed a music critic once and he told me that the way you write a review is that you determine which category/genre the artist is putting themselves in and then you measure them by the standards of that genre. It’s really that simple.
My genre is more or less punk cabaret, so I look to theater of various styles and artists like Amanda Palmer, Meow Meow, and Marcella Puppini to see if I’m on track with my music and performance. I don’t expect the audience who accidently stumbles upon my shows to know who any of those people are, but I know my own genre well enough to know if someone’s critique is valid or is trying to conform what I’m doing to something outside of my goal. If you’re curious, here are examples of each other people above:
Amanda Palmer:

Meow Meow:

Marcella Puppini:

So far I have not, by the standards of my genre, put on a good show in either my Lady Gaga or Aubin performances. I think other people know this but are too nice to tell me, which is frustrating, even though it would be painful to hear it (I’m still young enough to more than occasionally blur the lines between personal attack and artistic criticism. In art school, I developed a facial twitch that came around whenever my drawings were critiqued, but then again I’m pretty high strung anyway). So, to combat this, I’ve watched videos of my performances and decided that my problems are actually just one problem: I have no idea what to do with myself other than sing. I just stand there and look awkward. I’m pretty fortunate, actually, because that problem can be solved by planning the hell out of however much time I’ve been allotted.
To return to my point about my Lady Gaga performance, the last one, while impressive to people who can’t see themselves donning a wig and singing Gaga, was waaaaaay below my standards. I did the bare minimum of everything and it’s my own damn fault. Which is why I’m taking the two months I have left before the show to choreograph like there’s no tomorrow. I want a resulting performance that Gaga herself would be impressed with. Wish me luck—I’m no dancer, but I’ll try my best.
Well, that was an awful lot of text. I haven’t got many photo or video links to upload, but if you care to, you may check out my new song “(You’re A) Backstabber,” which is now up on my MySpace here:
www.myspace.com/aubinthomas

Until the next blog (which will hopefully be about my alum being done) I hope you’re all doing well and I look forward to meeting you in the world outside this house in about a month.



-Aubin

Aubin (Ah ah ah); or, Post-Gaga wrap-up.

My life recently can be described in one phrase that I dearly love but rarely have occasion to use: it’s swings and roundabouts.

I had a dream at the end of December where someone I hold close to my heart who has since died told me that this year would be a very busy one for me and so far that seems to be true. I performed as Lady Gaga with the For Your Pleasure Burlesque on the 21st and it went….well, it went fairly alright considering the little time I had to put the major choreography together (thanks to snow the girl that I was dancing to Bad Romance with couldn’t practice with me until two hours before the performance):


Jon Donnell, one-time Aubin boyfriend and more importantly current Aubin friend, took photos of the event (as he usually does. The first time I saw him was at the same venue as he photographed Gin Circus’s first performance). Here are some of my favorite from the set. The rest can be found here (and if you explore the photo stream a bit more you’ll see me from July in black and white): http://www.flickr.com/photos/photos-by-jondonnell/sets/72157600086406884/









I'm a bit too fat to be a truly convincing Lady Gaga, not to mention my outfits lack a zany sort of style, but no matter.

I’ve also just been asked to sing at a benefit for Haiti earthquake relief called Rising Voices Raising Consciousness. It’s April 11, so I’m not thinking about it just yet. But I have to keep it in mind coming up.

My other thing that I’m trying to work on is making note cards out of some of my comics. Here's my favorite one, a portrait of my roommate's cat, Girl Walter, listening to NPR like she does when my roommate is away:



I'm also hopefully doing a photo shoot with my friend Bryan Bruchman sometime soon. He's a busy B so who knows when, but he had me email him a list of things that creatively influence me (which mean me gathering lots of youtube videos and pictures) so hopefully it'll be a great shoot. He took this photo, you may remember:



Alright. Enough of me for now. I shall leave you with what has become one of my favorite pictures lately. It's me playing the Lie Down Game near a Smoot mark on a certain bridge in the Boston area. Look up Smoots, for they are interesting units of measure. This photo is by the lovely Ms. Elisha Clarke:



-Aubin

To Get Him Out of Your Head, v.1

I was told the other day that someone reads this blog so I’ll update it. While there was no use in updating if I was talking to myself I can’t pass up a chance for conversation. In other words, if you read this, comment somehow and talk with me—I do music/art/videos to say things I can’t say in my speaking voice so it’s important to me to know I’m making a connection even if it’s a tiny one.

Anyway…

Back in 2005 I saw The Dresden Dolls for the first time. I had heard Coin Operated Boy on WCYY’s Top 5 at 5 and nearly had a brain aneurism when I discovered that it wasn’t just a one-off foray into cabaret sound land. As a pretty socially isolated teenager who found solace in Judy Garland movies and Tori Amos and they seemed to be the magical bridge I was looking for between the two. I saw them at the Bullmoose Warehouse in Scarborough and was blown away by their acoustic set and was then moved to tears by their full set at SPACE Gallery. For your “old school” pleasure, here is a poorly lit picture from that day:



That’s also the day I decided I shouldn’t use a disposable camera without flash for documenting important events like concerts.
I remember one clear thought during the SPACE concert, where I looked at Amanda and thought: “I want to do that.” That’s what got me into this silly little mess that I’m in right now with my music—seeing her pour her soul out on stage (if you’ll forgive the cliché) turned on a switch on my head (another cliché) that suddenly connected how I could get my frustrations out, how I could communicate things to people that I couldn’t find the attention span to speak (those who know me and interact with me on a daily basis will know that I speak like Neil Gaiman’s Delirium a lot of the time in terms of conversational content).
Either way, it gave me the courage to take a step and perform Tori Amos’s “Pretty Good Year” at the senior talent show in 2005:


At the time I thought I was awesome, but seeing the video it’s almost painful to me how not-awesome I am. I’ve learned a lot about stage performance since and I know I still have a hell of a long way to go but….yeah. Kind of embarrassing.

ANYWAY! My point is that Amanda Palmer, by virtue of being older and more ambitious, tends to do cool things because the idea for similar things is even fully incubated in my mind. For example, I’d been taking dead photographs of myself for about 6 months before she announced what would become the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book. I love that, though—it shows me I’m on the right track and it gives me a challenege to deviate in my own little ways to keep things interesting.
Such is the case with what I’m doing right now.

I’m sure you remember I was in a band this past summer, right? Gin Circus? No? Well, here’s a video of us to remind you:


It was a tough summer for me for a lot of reasons. I booked our first show the night that Michael Jackson died and considering Michael Jackson was my first hero I saw that as a good sign for the musical future that my first performance of my adult life was booked as he did the “off this mortal coil” shuffle. I don’t deny I learned a lot about myself between then and now, but I also ended up going through various levels of emotional hell that I’m only now beginning to genuinely get over. However, as I’m getting over things I’m not angry enough any more to go into detail. Suffice to say that a bunch of things led to me writing a handful of songs that for many reasons could never be Gin Circus songs. Months after, though, it’s proving good therapy to polish off recordings of them and put them out there, to be done with them.

So that’s what I’m doing here:



I like that cover as well. I took it outside Alex’s house before practice one day. Apparently it had run into a window pretty fast because it didn’t have a head left, just a disintegrating body. It’s gross now, but I was in a morbid mood at the time and took a bunch of pictures of it. It made sense to make it the cover considering the location and the title, which was from one of our songs, “Clementine.” The line being: “I’d crush your little skull in, girl, to get him out of your head.”

The nice thing about my constantly having my camera with me is that I have an image that corresponds to each song within the timespan of a week. In other words, the album art that’s on my fan page on facebook right now is a picture I took within the same time as when I wrote the song. You can see what I looked like, what I was doing, and, by inference, what influenced the song.
This one is my favorite because it encompasses the downfall of everything I thought was stable back then. The post-crash car, the person looking at the car, the house it’s in front of—they all ended up in songs and I think twenty years from now, when people no longer hate each other and these things are simply documents relating to a few months in the lives of a few people, it’ll be a beautiful connection:



But none of that is ready to remotely release yet. Other than a rough draft CD to my friend Mary.
But here is the question of the day: If I went to all the effort to release this fabled CD in some form, would you buy it? Would you see me perform it?

While you answer that I’ll go bake some more cupcakes:

-Aubin

Lady Gaga rules my life; AKA- a wig is an instant confidence builder.

Oh, heavens help me. I feel like I’m complaining an awful lot lately. The main topics of complaint are:
1)Money and Job, of which there’s never any of either
2)Friends, who I feel I don’t see enough of despite feeling like I’m not too busy
3)Lack of musical talent, specifically instrumental talent.

The money and job are being vaguely solved by finding money in odd places and my internship at a newspaper (although it’s an unpaid internship).
Friends are…well, maintaining friendships is always a bit tough for me. I’m a loner but I crave hanging out with friends. Anyway my loner tendencies come from my feeling socially awkward because I inevitably have at least two unintentional social faux pas moments per hanging out session. Things I think are funny or clever or interesting sometimes strike people as perhaps stupid or embarrassing so it leads to odd situations.

Lack of musical talent is and has been a huge problem for me. I can sing and that’s about it. As far as doing anything manually I am completely useless. I played saxophone for three years and was very good at it, but I can’t do that and sing at the same time. I want to play piano with both hands instead of one at a time, and I want to play bass on more than just the lowest string and left handed. It makes me so angry that I can only do the bare minimum on every thing that I want to do so badly.

I also feel like if I don’t have a creative outlet soon my head will explode. I’m playing Lady Gaga (again) on the 21st with the For Your Pleasure burlesque at Geno’s here in Portland. I’m learning choreography and it’s alright, but a cold has me on some restriction as far as vocals are concerned so recording backing vocals will have to wait. In related news, my video for Paparazzi reached over 400 views recently:


In studying the choreography/video for Bad Romance I’ve thought about a few things. They’re connected thoughts, really—1)It must be nice to be paid to look and be fabulous and 2) I’m glad I’m not as deep into anorexia as I used to be or watching that video would be quite triggering. I figured I couldn’t be the only one who connected the vertebrae-showing video fashion with anorexia so I googled around and found this article which, though I know nothing of the site before this, seems to agree with some of my thoughts about it: http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/music/reviews/Lady+GaGa+Bad+Romance+Video+What+Do+You+Think-9731.html

Choice quote being: “I can’t say I’m overly sold on the whole ‘eating Disorder Gaga’ either I mean, who’s decision was it to put that it there? Surely showing many a girls’ hero looking unhealthily thin is going to send the wrong message to fans?”
Case in point:



But then I looked up the ideas behind the video and, if Wikipedia can be trusted, which it occasionally can, the idea is filled with different “monsters” that haunted her during the tour. I’d read an interview a while back with her where she was asked how she stayed thin and said “It’s all about starvation! Pop stars don’t eat.” That leads me to believe the whole exaggerated anorexia in the video is a representation of yet another on-tour monster. Regardless, I’m ashamed to say it does stoke the dying embers of my own disorder and make me want to touch my ribs and collar bones.

Nothing’s real, though, is it? No one’s ever thin enough and no one is ever what they seem. Although Masha Tyelna could give Bad Romance Gaga a run for her money in the eye department:


Even though I feel like I’m 20 pounds too heavy to play Lady Gaga, I’m doing just that this coming 21st, as I said before. I’ll let you know how it goes. I went to a party last night in my Gaga outfit, full wig/make-up/outfit. I stood against a wall with my Gaga glasses on and it's weird how wearing those wig and glasses gave me a boost of confidence. Someone could've insulted me horribly and I would've just shrugged it off as long as I was wearing that outfit. No wonder nothing seems to bother Gaga. Well, there's probably some lost neurons contributing to that too for her, but whatever. It helps and could mean something important for future performance to know the power of a costume.


-Aubin

You are every broken bottle, you are every parking meter: minor creativity in the final two weeks of college

I’m coming up on the end of my college career now—as of December 17th, 2009 I will officially be done with my academic career. That is utterly terrifying. It’s the same feeling I get when a new relationship proves particularly promising. I feel like I’ve been climbing this very steep hill full of stress and tough obstacles and I’m so used to climbing that now that I’m at the top I have no clue what to do with myself and my body wants to keep going on in the manner it’s become accustomed to. However, while it’s easy to keep running through relationships I can’t really go for more school. I’m $25,000 in debt already and wouldn’t have use for graduate school anyway in terms of a career.

It's also the end of my newswriting career for now. I may write for a blog or two, I can't honestly say. My news article are located here if you're curious (I'm particularly proud of the one on Ben Bishop): http://arthomaswriting.blogspot.com/

I got to pretend I was a punk singer last night for about an hour. That was fun and sketchy, since it was with two of the Grownups at Prime Artist, a creepy practice space behind an eerily dark and vacant bus station. It came right after I had something upsetting happen and had decided to deal with my emotions by doing the stupid Alex thing of punching a parking meter (not to say he does that regularly, but I saw him do it one evening). It wasn’t the meter’s fault, really. The whiskey in my system stopped me from feeling it too badly, but it’s kind of hard to type with both hands at the moment. I think this might mean I’m turning into my dad, who once broke his hand hitting a countertop in anger and then was too stubborn to have it set or to take pain reliever. The guys were nice to me, though, and gave me a megaphone to scream my frustration into:



Other than that there’s not much to report (yet) possible collaboration with Racer Boy 2 coming up in the spring but if it doesn’t happen I don’t want to feel bad for hyping it up.

I filmed a video for “I Have a Theory” today with the wonderful Mr. Jon Donnell. He was the first person to photograph Gin Circus (at our first show) and I’m fortunate enough now to count him as one of my friends. Here are some stills, but keep checking up on the youtube page for the video: http://www.youtube.com/user/madopheliamusic









-Aubin

Aubin Thomas and Too Much Birthday.

Oh, goodness, what a mess. I usually gauge what I should blog about by the photos newly uploaded into my iphoto library but there’s not much there, which is unusual. I did get a very nice kudos from Loren Coleman on his blog in response to my article that I wrote about his museum for the University newspaper. You can read it here:

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/the-first/

My birthday was last weekend and I’m now 23. I feel old but I honestly can’t voice that seriously—all of my friends are at least two years older than I am if not more and they, very rightly, tell me to hush when I say I feel ancient. I still feel like I haven’t accomplished anything, though. Lady Gaga and Lily Allen are my age and look at all they’ve done. But, as one of my friends pointed out, they were born having music industry connections. I was born with talent, which will hopefully count for something if I ever figure out exactly what to do with it.

My birthday weekend started out with a show at Slainte Wine Bar on Friday. About 50 people said they’d come and about 15 showed up. I’m thankful for the ones who showed up and am trying to not be hurt by the people who didn’t. The show was my absolute worst one I’d ever played and unfortunately the only one to be fully videotaped. I’ve talked with my friend who videotaped it, though, and made a request that she only put up the two songs I didn’t mess up on. I’m not sure why but I couldn’t remember lyrics, even to my own songs. I got so frustrated with myself for the way I am onstage too—I just stand there and it’s horrible. I’m not established enough that people would want to see me stand there like a cow stuck in the mud. I have good songs but it’s hard to show people that if they’re distracted by how boring I look. I had a cold among other things, so my voice is also pretty bad in the one video I do have so far. Here it is anyway, me singing in German with what I suspect is a pretty poor German accent. There’s a guest appearance by my two year old nephew, Max:



My favorite moment has yet to surface on the internet. I ended up dueting on “Voices Carry” by Til Tuesday with my friend Kate (Yes, that Kate). It felt epic at the time, but I won’t really believe it until I see the video. I also loved the moment where Jason and I sang Corrugated Racing Machine which is, as Jason said, the only performance of that song to ever occur live.
Unfortunately, My night was kind of….less than ideal. I was pleased to see two of my favorite bands (who happen to be my friends as well) Wood Burning Cat and Huak play after my set, though. My nephew adored Wood Burning Cat, which was nice since he sat with me for a little bit and watched the show. He grew to love Jason from the one family dinner Jason came with me to so my nephew kept running up right against the mic stands and standing there, sucking his thumb with his big noise-block headphones on. That’s the only reason why I wish my relationship with Jason had worked out—I’ve never seen him reenact so positively to someone. It was nice.



In the middle of Huak’s set I was already feeling a big down, letting my own thoughts eat away at me like I sometimes do. My friend Tara did a rockstar thing and walked across the low table in front of me to get to the stage area but the table wasn’t as steady as she thought and it tipped over and spilled two glasses of ice and a bit of liquid on me and my backpack. Everything happened super fast—I was sobbing, face in my hands bawling my eyes out and then there were people around me, and someone had their hands on my shoulders. Through my fingers I could see Tara and Kate going through my backpack and showing me how there was actually minimal damage and that my digital camera, phone, 35mm, ipod, etc. still worked fine, but I couldn’t stop crying. Jason brought me outside and we sat in his car until I calmed down. When I came back inside, Tara was pretty upset and was afraid I was angry with her, which I could never be—she had no way of knowing that would happen. When I got home I cried on the floor of my bedroom and felt pretty emo.

The next evening I watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure with Jason, David, Kate, and Derek. We ate cake made by my friend Mary (one of two Marys involved in my birthday weekend) and it was very delicious—vegan vanilla with a layer of homemade lemoncurd and butterless-buttercream frosting. The best part, however, was the decorations:



All artificial dye free and decorated with kitties. Perfect!
That Sunday (my actual birthday, the 22nd) was the best in some ways, though, if only for the morning. I made a video with Mary (not the one who made the cake, the other one) at her and her mom’s bar, the deliciously dive-y Mama’s Crowbar (or, according to the sign above the door, Awful Annie’s). Here’s the finished product and wait for the guest appearance of Mary’s Chihuahua Kiwi at the end of it:



I guess this is the end of my blog so it’s as good a time as any to say this (if anyone cares to notice, and I appreciate some people might not care about it) but I’m taking a hiatus from music for the next three months. That means you’d have to pretty much offer me a kitten to get me to sing WITH somebody and there’s no way in heck I’m orchaestrating a show of my own during that time. I still have a fair number of demos if anyone wants one (they’re generally free but a donation of a dollar or two is always nice) and I have a few pins with my logo on it (made by Mr. Bryan Bruchman as an awesome birthday gift to me) that I’ve been giving out when the mood strikes me. But yeah, no more Aubin shoving herself into the music scene in any capacity other than an observer for the next three months.

Until the next time I blog, here’s a picture of me as a baby to celebrate the fact that I’ve somehow lived 23 (wait, 24? Birthdays are counted strangely, I think) years on this planet. Please note that I used to basically have anime eye proportions:



-Aubin

Of AFP at PCMH and my love of dressing up in fancy clothes

Hello again. I've been equal parts busy and indifferent, which doesn't make for good blogging so I've not done any. I have spent an awful lot of time playing dress up, though. Case in point, a picture Kate Sullivan-Jones took of me during the "Paparazzi" photo shoot:



I also went 1920s for a while to film a video in yet another attempt of mine to sing a song that will impress Over a Cardboard Sea. Hot Diggity, what I wouldn't do to guest sing with them...but I digress:



I whipped up a mini culinary masterpiece (ok, so it was just biscuits, salad, and pasta) for Amanda Palmer and the Nervous Cabaret when they came through town. I mostly hung out with the Nervous Cabaret, which suits me fine since they're all nice guys and pretty funny. Case in point this particular gentleman who insisted on pictures with me on two seperate occasions. That's how I know my outfit looked awesome, I guess.



I also followed around my new friend Bryan Bruchman before the show started as he took photos of soundcheck. I've not known him for long, but he and his girlfriend are some of my favorite folks nowadays-- they're both doing fun, creative things with their lives and I admire that and hope to have such a life for myself someday. I'm also glad Bryan was there because when it came time to have my picture taken with Amanda Palmer post-show I had my hands full with trying to carry the leftover food around and couldn't get to my camera so he took a picture with his camera instead. I'm actually glad that happened because it's by far one of the better photographs taken of me, let alone of me with Amanda. The man knows what he's doin', alright.



Since I posted that picture I've heard a few different comments about it, especially about my facial expression. It's funny because I'm fairly sure my only thought at the exact moment the flash went off was "Aubin, don't smirk," as I sometimes have a habit of doing in pictures. No overwhelming fangirly-ness, no fear, no utter joy-- I'm thoroughly inspired by her as a musician and a creative woman, but I don't flail like kermit when I'm around her. I got my fangirl vibes out in that regard when I was 18 and saw the Dresden Dolls for the first time. It's always a pleasure to see her perform nonetheless.

Also, in case you ever doubted how diminutive I am, here's a shot Bryan took of me (most likely by accident) during the concert. I know the guy behind me is super tall, but I'm surrounded by normal heighted people otherwise:



I'm glad to know that I still look photogenic when I'm unaware my picture's being taken. It gives me hope for this Friday's show when, no doubt, there'll be tons of pictures of me being taken. To be fair, that's mostly by my request, since it's my birthday and I plan on getting too drunk to remember it so I'll need those photos later...I am, of course, kidding.

The week wrapped up with me interviewing Loren Coleman, the renowned Cryptozoologist. A very interesting and genuinly kind man with a passion for cryptids the likes of which I've never seen before. Here's me with him in front of the International Cryptozoology Museum's resident Bigfoot:



I did the interview for an article for the USM Free Press. The text and photos can be found cross posted on my writing blog over here:

http://arthomaswriting.blogspot.com/

On that note, I must return to writing this ten page paper and then go to bed, as I'm driving my roommate to the airport early tomorrow morning.
My final thought for the evening? If I were alive during WWII, I would like to think I would have somehow talked my way into being a morale-boosting singer like Vera Lynn was: