Author: Susie Taylor

Kitchen

Hello….selfie Headshots

By

Today I decided it was time to start taking my new headshot. I had meant to have a freind who is amazing at taking them take them but as I thought on it I realized that being able to capture myself on camera has become an obsession with me so why not try a head shot.

I took a ton of shots and I know this is just the beginning…I was happily surprised that I was able to find myself through the lense and that in todays day and age of online images, I can easily upload and post them.

I am curious how much of a one man band I can be with my acting career this year.
I am planing on self submitting and not having an agent. I plant to work directly with my career and I am creating a website that is a daily dose of this proces..

It is amazing becoming a more honest version of myself. I am really convinced that my happiness has been equal to my ability to live honestly

THis is me- I am excited to see what I will become without baggage and bullshit and being in a place where I can say…this is enough for me…

I have gone through a lot and I am now interested in go through just enough..

These are my own headshot and I wil begin using them for my online submission for job.
What better way to learn to love yourself as you age than to celebrate yourself in a self portrait that is not retouched ..becasue no one can see me or love me more than I love myself and that my loves is the truth.

I sometimes think this whole experience is about learning to love yourself more and more each day…despite all of it. And in this journey of letting go of ALL my secrets thus ALL my hidden stories and thus my anger and my need for protection of distortion..fake boobs.

..i feel like I run on an underground river beneath all of Miami…I taste things and feel tings in my own way and it is based on my own rules and universe and in here..in this world..if I can manage to keep myself from belittling it becasue it is so sweet and soft and kind…if I can tame my own drama queen at least once a month then…

Then,,,,my truth gets stronger, my heart gets wider and I get more and more translucent.

NOTE ******* I just found out that if you take the photo without makeup and then use Microsoft selfie to add makeup…and I plan to

Kitchen

Hello….Kitchen

By

I have found that there is somethign about the KITCHEN that is symbolic. It represents a hold on the heart of the house and once it is relinquished it is both liberating and identity challenging.

If the kitchen is where the food is created then being able to stand STILL in the KITCHEN without hives has become my lives practice. We have an island in the middle of our kitchen and so in a way I am circling the kitchen…stirring up the energy each morning and I open the kitchen to my kids and my husband. I am not territorial about my kitchen. I have relinquished control and in that I have understood that the kitchen REPRESENT in some families Power.

Th kitchen is in Many ways a place where the NURTURUNG head of the household resides and creates and organizes and in that space – whomever runs it – sort of represents how the power of the fmaily goes.

If the person who runs it is a control freak then the fmaily is most likely run as a dictatorship where even to eat one must appease and please the gate keeper…clean and cook and create and they see fit.

If the person who “runs” the kitchen is Willing to let others cooks and clean to their own specifications then the house may be more delegative…and the person who could be the controller is more or a hands off overseeing.

This second version is who I am bc of several truth about my natural abilities and forced abilities and coming to grip with the one I rather support- my Natural ones..how’d you guess…

So I tend to allow more chaos in my home then others but in that each person has become more responsible for themselves and their food and their space then they were before..and with instacart..the idea of running out of something and not having it is less of a issue becasue if it is a MUST HAVE…innstacart can deliver if needs be.

Technology has made domesticity much easier and with Sunbasket the boys get to learn to cook dinners- healthy simply recipes that give them life skills

This letting other people run the kitchen has been how I have found a seance of freedom in the house..from the house…I know i need a home a safe place to relax but in the end it is not can not be somethign that demands me to control it or run it…

I do not RUN a home.. I offer up space to people to create a home and they do the same for me…as long as we are not trying to micromanage or aspect other people to do our clean up and basic life skills then in a way we are all free to be and act from our nature..

Raising kids who know who they are is what I can offer the world…they happen to be amazing and kind and smart and cute…so they are very lucky but my gift. As a mom…is to offer them freedom to make their own choices and follow their own dreams and not feel indebted to anyone…for anything…

THey are helping me live my life as much as I am helping them live theirs and we owe each other nothing but respect… They teach me how to have more of that every day and for that I am greatfull.

xo S

Kitchen

Hello…..critical eye

By

THe hardest thing for me about NOT doing BOTOX..is when a person I love who does do BOTOX comes over and looks at me and I think I know that all they are thinking is UGH..”why doesn’t Susie deal with those crazy ass lines on her face?”

I just got home from an audition where the guy said, as I walked in..you are beautiful…so the thing is we have to understand who we are going to listen to – Men, Women…ourselves… all of it! Many people have said that to me as I walk into a room. I think there is a vibe when I am in my actor role that I internally shine…I happened to do a wonderful audition and I was thrilled…I immediately put on music and drove away and let the character dissolve before i returned home…

Anyway..

Although I love my botoxed friends and think they mostly look amazing and young…I have to remember that I am answering to a higher authority..the film and theater world that creates stories and the story I want to tell or at the the perspective of the story I want to tell is from a person who has learned -eventually -to accept her age and yes…there are porcelen faces all around me and yet I look great frozenish too but

I am somehow here to say…THe breast were enough of a falsehood for a lifetime…Lesson is that “Lies and Susie” don’t go well. I tend to confuse them for fact and build a world on those lies and then I end up in a false version of myself…a FAKE reality and when I am in acting the most important thing I need to have is a REAL HOME WITH REAL PEOPLE AND REAL STORIES

I am MUCH more honest now and in my honesty I have to admit I am growing older everyday and I will be looking more and more like my elders everyday and although I want to try and stop time from time to time the only way to stop it is to end it and that…that is not my desire.

I love looking at my children and seeing them age and I hope the same for them to me. Steve is not into fake and he now has a sense for is so it kind of works out for both of us for me to stay honest

On that note I am going to double down on my hood and build on to my house and release any desire to upgrade becasue as the end of the day I am just interested in being me and doing me and this is where i am growing…

I literally just had an audition with a women who I met at my gym a few years ago. I am in the right city- it is all going to evolve and I want to evolve with it.And again in order to evolve I am going to have to allow myself to gracefully kindly grow older.

Susie.

Kitchen

Hello….nips

By

I am starting to think that nipples are very distracting to people. I used to never wear a bra when I was in high school and never considered the distraction I was..they were..

I am now again with little bookies and I am finding that the nipple may be just as powerful as the boob itself…powerful..meanings the ability to avert a persons eyes form my face and mouth and when I am talking.

Maybe I should give up the wife beaters…maybe I should tone it down…maybe I should stop sexualizing my thoughts about what other people think of me..

Maybe the hypersexuality of the world I was and am living in has a great deal to do with the thoughts I put into peoples minds.

I am remembering a class in New World.

It was about auditioning and the look for the audition was FFL.
The teacher then explained to us HIGHSCHOOL students that FFL meant…Freshly Fucked Look-
He told me to mess up my hair and I was good to go.

Ha- the sexuality of creativity is within all of me
—-best accept it and flow with it as it didn’t go away from remeoving my fake boobs.
It just become about the nipples now or again.

S

Kitchen

Home …with boys

By

I am a mother and wife and I have three boys plus a male dog in my house. And all i want really is the scense of flow-

My freinds and some family in the Latin side of my life claim time is limited…the family on the Jewish side is a more go and be free mentality and time…is not limited..or limiting..

But i feel AT times that these differences in culture slice thorugh me…compromise me and confuse me.

I don’t want to be a mother hen watching over and taking temp- I rather they cook for me and clean their rooms and wonder if I can do one thing for them and NOT WONDER why I don’t do everything…

I am not sure how others move but I won’t clean your kitchen in a thousand years and yet that is what I pretended to do for Steve…when we met and I set the stage the conversation and ever since I have been dragged into an amazing life….more than what I expected..a free dove surrounded by constant love and at peace in my little piece of Miami.

Kitchen

Hello….N.W.S.A.

By

I sat at a table last night after a play reading and what came to me was that many of the people I was sitting with and the one who organized the reading had all been part of New World School of the Art. A school I graduated from WAAAAAYYYY back in the day.

So basically, I was sitting at a table of like minded artist becasue they were all put through the same training.We connected and were on the same page instantly becasue we knew where we came from. Be it good or bad…it was the same and in that there was a familiarity to us all. We all had a touchstone…a commonality of trainers that we could compare notes on and in that I realized what I had been searching for all along was here…a family. Independent of each other we are all actresses all trained at one point at the base point…alike.

I felt at home..in my way, in this really soft way. I don’t know these women very well but we are all still sisters. We were raised by the teachers and went through the same mini-dramas that built us to be exactly who we turned out to be.

IT was a great night and to remember that no matter what…I am an actress and I can never undue it.

S

Kitchen

Goodbye ….Borders

By

If you aren’t speaking with your friends of family over different political, religious, gender, health issues than what the president is saying is true.

We are all angry and upset and unwilling to accept “immigrants” in our land.

Our land being our home our mind our heart…We put up our own walls everyday because we don’t want to know or hear about their ideas because that would mean we’d have to walk a few inches from our own.

And yet it is only in walking a few inches from our own we actually begin to trust ourselves. So when you CAN’t listen and learn or hold a calm conversation you are not secure in yourself beyond your opinions. And the thing is…your ideas are not you. Your beliefs are only bumpers that help you stay in this lane and the truth is when you switch lanes…your bumpers might switch and the only reason you even need bumpers is to protect YOURSELF from going over the edge.

Your beliefs are fluid and change…maybe drastically or minutely but they alter and shift and if you can’t abandon them and walk to the center to gather intel you will never be able to change the world…because you have no idea what the other people need, want, yearn for, are scared of.

This country has never been the ideal we wish is was. We are not the retouched versions of ourselves we put out to the world…real change has to deal with real truths that were at least for a moment true…until they aren’t.

The truth is we aren’t all always nice and we never have been. We have been human and protective and horrible when we felt we had to. We are all just exactly each other but at different times and in different places and somehow WE feel we are better than and in that moment of entitlement ..in all our moments is where we can truly affect change…when we realize we are no better and would be no better if we were in those situations …and to hold court because you happen to be born X and not Y… well let’s just hope reincarnation isn’t true and you don’t come back as your worst nightmare.

Make peace with all those around you…just Incase..

Better safe than…

Kitchen

Hello…tollerance

By

It is funny. I know that my industry is probably not going to change that much in just the 7 months since HARVEYGATE…i am not even sure it is possible to fully change a system that has a systemic issue…I think what I can do is approach the system with an understanding of what I am going into.

I can move slower and with more respect in myself and manage my own choices and steps and allowing myself to choose my path.

I don’t think this awakening is going to change how women treat themselves, our daughters and each others…I think they will stop being quiet and stop keeping secrets but I am not sure they will stop objectifying themselves..

The reason I say this as one who has and struggles not to is that it would mean to go intirely against a culture that you maneuvered through and which created your station.

We were born into adjusting ourselves to attain the beauty and sex powers and we have thus used them…either for our own feeling of value or to create it for others to value us by but in the end the players…me and other women in similar games stayed in maneuvered through…for a reason…

That reason doesn’t make them less or more it makes then a reaction to
Their situation
The society around them
The internal value of worth placed on them at a young age
The external power they and their fellow woman place on Sexual Beauty
THe commercial content they digest daily
And
The numbers of women in power who don’t feel threatened by them

I go back to my piece about the Male Gaze-

If that is what you are charging on then your value is external
The way the world sees women has to begin with how women see women. How mothers accept daughters
How sisters support sisters and how children treat their mothers…
If we can get conversation set. Make it between us first then we can move forward but
From my own experience…
If you hold a grudge against your own female family don’t expexct the neighbors or the working arenas to be any different for you.

Objectifying ourselves is a massive businesses becasue there is a need for it.
How we have all chosen to see sex, use sex, and become the object rather than the desire itself….that’s a conversation I would like to have..

PS..BOTOX commercials for men make me sad….it is the beginning of the end of raw masculine power – which I love and desire and never want to see go away..
This is not about how they treat women..it is about how they move through the world with the most amazing confidence that is makes me aspire to NOT GIVE A SHIT as well..

S

Kitchen

Goodbye…agent..and cat

By

Yesterday I spent some time on Backstage. I had started my membership again and in the three days since this little tingle from deep within me started to awaken… an excitement about acting that had tried to return but I wasn’t ready…yet.

So I began to submit myself for auditions and even learned that a theater company I’ve worked with is holding auditions and in just a text, a click, I began to remember…

I Am An Actress

Acting seems to have been revealed in the past few years as the business it really is. In that I feel free to renter without this veil of BS I was having to play. Pretending to NOT NOTICE and then when I did take offense when my agent didn’t respond the way i wanted her to ..defend who I felt needed her protection.

Now I can audition for work I want to do and for the price I want to get paid and all becasue I removed my REPRESENTATION in my online profile from agent to NONE>
Becasue in the end I desire to represent myself and I have no need for middle people –

Also It asked me on my profile if I still have a calico cat. I had forgotten that backstage and casting network asks these questions in case the piece you are auditioning for needs one.

My cat Kito died in December and so I erased the information and replaced it with a DOG…which at that very moment ended up getting out our back fence and when I left my desk to retrieve him he was poking his head under my house…

He found four baby kittens..

Funny how letting go really often means saying hello.

I am currently talking directly to casting directors, producers and writers about auditions and parts and I have to tell you… I love it..

Being my own agent, manager and publicist is going to be a joy becasue the only thing I have learned I can control is how I HANDLE myself.

My son has begun taking care of the kittens…he is a sweet boy and it is amazing that out of all the houses in the block…the momma cat chose ours.

Kitchen

Hello …crow to headstand to backbend

By

This vacation I had a vision of myself dancing in the grass. Doing many things I at this moment have never done. I. Was inspired to create a combination of movement and practice it over my travels these past two weeks.

It was a cartwheel on the right then on the left a body roll then roll down into a crow then head stand hold then into back bend and GET UP.

I have not yet gotten up but through videoing myself and watching it back I was able to adjust my movement from the external eye and and I completed all the others..

I am able to get up from a mid height…like a ottoman or bed but not the floor exactly…

But this inspired me and kept my mind fluid….and gave it something to PLAY with.

I am thinking this is what the new movement work I will be studying will continue to do.

Monotony is the death of me! SKT

S