“Live” the BAND and how much things have NOT changed.- FOR VETERANS DAY!
Right now I am listening to one of my favorite bands and remembering why the music was written, why and when. It is the band “Live” and their album “Metal Jewelry.” It was written at the time of the first conflict in IRAQ. You know the one that a Bush started. The songs are all about freedom, peace, about living in the now, and how we are all not that different and should love each other. One can interpret the music many ways, but I hear an anthem in the form of music with rhythms and melodies of a mix of Seattle style grunge and euro indie rock reflected in the music of this band from PA, USA. It is a cry for change and a cry for the world to live in the now because there is too much pain. As I listen to the music, I wonder underneath it all, how much has changed. Is the war over? Are all the terrorists gone? Do I feel safe and free to be me? I’ve been to that place, but then it seems that something in this life made too any mistakes. We still worry too much about what is in the bank account, and not enough about what it means to be, and people still get lost in some form of misery. At the same time I know I am not the same person who listened to this song when that first war was going on.
Have a listen to Live’s anthem to brotherhood:
In the past two decades I have lost my breasts. I fought to walk after a guy ran a stop sign and smashed into my car. I finished my first life education, found myself, my inner strength and fought to start my true profession (though I think my maker would call it my calling). I finished a MASTERs in performing arts I feel like I am not allowed now to use. I feel trapped as though there is nothing for tomorrow. Just this stress and pain. If I had been left alone, I would have networked my way into a job where I could be where I want to be, on sets. IF someone were using me as an example of how you should not work on sets, I would point out that I was successful at it and liked. It seems though that is not acceptable in this life. Two decades ago, I rallied against war, and that has not changed. Well now I no longer want to take any form of life. I gave up red meat when I was 16. Now the only meat product I eat are eggs from chickens raised range free/ cruelty free and un-fertilized. I also prefer that they not be fed meat. I also have discovered that I can’t eat wheat. Sorry, I gave up being completely Vegan for health reasons. I body was not healing when I got a cut until I added eggs back into my diet. My body has a hard time digesting protein and it needed help, so I made a choice. Again I only want to eat cruelty free eggs. I also missed real bread and I can’t find a reasonable gluten free bread that does not have eggs in it that actually tastes also like bread. I am on what I call the “ERAGON” diet. Read the book and you will understand what I mean.
I love change. I do. I knew as a kid I needed a great deal of improvement. I used to try to put myself on exercise routines to make myself stronger. I remember particularly one summer I was determined to do a basketball work out, tennis work out, and run every day. I would do one of these activities a day, mind you. I got about half way through the summer and then the tennis dropped out. I hurt my wrist. I tried though. I would take my racket and ball and go up to the middle school up the street and pound the ball against a wall. I was not very good though so maybe fate was trying to tell me Tennis was not in my future. Now basketball I did eventually get the hang of, at least enough that by college and even law school I could do basic pick up games with the boys. Yes you read right. I liked to play with the boys. Girls can be nurturing but I found more vicious in sports, or maybe it was just that the boys did not want to feel guilty if they hurt me. I read statistics now of how many rapes happen in this country to women and now wonder how and why this country has become a non-safe place. I felt the opposite growing up. I was safe in school, my terrors were at home. As to running, I ended up the co-captain of the cross country team, but I was never the fastest. I was always determined though. I think that is why I liked running though. I never considered it a competitive thing to do. My goal was always to get better and stronger, but not to beat anyone. Same was kind of true for basketball on some level. I wanted to enjoy the activity and not beat anyone down. Maybe that is the true reason I never excelled at sports. The core of who you are, even if others don’t see it, is there with you and if lucky you realize your truth. Now looking back, I wonder if the reason I could never get as strong as I wanted was because of my allergy to wheat. Regardless sometimes strength is not in how far you can run, or how hard you can lift, but on how much you can take when you refuse to quit.
Change happens even when it is the nature of man to not want it to happen and to fight it. Maybe the world will find real peace when we, man, learn just to let go. I changed, though in truth, the real me has just come out. I never wanted a guy in my life, though I had crushes on guys. I did not want what my parents have. I wanted better. I wanted peace. I wanted a lack of greed and need for things. I wanted peace and creativity and something I was not allowed to have when I was young- FUN This does not mean irresponsibility. I filled taxes from the time I was 16 until 2008, because I worked hard. I know hard work, but I also know that pushing someone just to make money and to survive and give a person nothing to enjoy about life, is no way to make someone really achieve anything. I am an actress, but there is only so long any human being can live real life and fake a smile. I met a guy at a film festival when I was volunteering who told me I was lucky when I told him I was pursuing work in the industry. He told me “Most people go through life pretending to like what they do and the people in their life. You don’t have to.”
So many times I hear said- people who succeed do what they love. Well that is what I want to do. I need to be me and no amount of PSYCOLOGY (and I am for psychology by the way if properly used and not used to cover up the truth) will change the nature of a person. You can’t make someone drink your own reality or view. You can’t make someone be someone God did not intend. You can not make me give up what I want to achieve. If you do, you will not get what you want from me, unless my souls hope and destruction is your goal for me. “TALK TO ME.” Fear of control has hurt me so much, the fear of another who wants to own everything that is me. I did not do anything wrong in my life, not enough to be left with no way of getting a job I really would want to work hard at, but that is exactly where I am today. I am proud I worked on sets. I will never let a lie stand. And I will not give up on being me, honest, determined to act and be on sets, and NOT TO SETTLE DOWN. I would want a man, if I knew I could still be free to fight to achieve and fly the world free without a chain locking me to one place, one country, or one community. The world is a small place, but it is filled with way to much for me to experience and see still. It is an intellectual emotional lovely place and I want to desperately be allowed to open up my soul, be vulnerable and express the real. You see I don’t cheat, ever. I Have a moral ground. It is just not tied to that old fashioned belief that a woman’s worth is in her skirts and her ability to cook.
I am also an ACTRESS and I have fought my entire life for people to see me as an actor and I LOVE ACTING. My father growing up would tell me that I had to be a lawyer every time I would say I want to act. Well my quest to act is not over UNTIL my life is. I am not doing it for make quick cash, or get a glamorous life in the Hollywood hills. I’ve been around the industry for 10 years and the truth is it is not glamorous at all. It is long hours and sometimes a great deal of getting somewhere only to wait and be patient until it is your turn to do your part and then move on. I am sick of the people who want to abuse the LOVE I have of life out of me. It is SICK. I am good at acting and I WILL NEVER EVER WANT TO QUIT. Someone once asked me, a psychiatrist actually, why I would want to go somewhere that I felt antagonized. But I will feel antagonized my entire life if I am forced to quit. I will never feel good about myself or a country that claims to be free, if I can not fight to do what truly does make me happy. I’ve never been happy at any job before I found acting and the idea of having to take pills for the rest of myself so I can lie to the world and say I am happy working at a job with a steady pay check and no hope for a future where I really will have fun again- well that to me is true insanity, something out of some science fiction movie. I don’t connect with people who don’t have things in common with me. Friendship is about similar beliefs and needs. I would never bond with someone whose entire life was about making money and not have any respect or love for art or music or creative emotions. I can’t bond with my family because of their need to be stuck in the fear of living outside of a conservative white republican America, where women are teachers, nurses and are defined by their men. I don’t want to be on TV to be just seen. I want to be part of a team. My way of connecting to life is to celebrate it through my craft. I LOVE TO create characters. I love to use my imagination and I love to express the greatest gift God gave man- the ability to feel. I love to explore what it is to see the world through the eyes of a character. I like to play with my voice and make it sound like someone else. And I like the high speed rush of having to be quick on your feet and not have weeks and weeks to rehearse and learn lines. I like change. I relish in being stimulated by new ideas and emotional challenges. To me being on sets was the greatest adrenaline rush.
Here is to CHANGE and women leading the world to PEACE ON EARTH. I have put this into my Acting Truth Category because as an Actor I find that finding my truth helps me create. It is important when you are acting to know who you are so you don’t lose yourself in a role and so you know your own range and limitations.
Have a listen:
By the way- I did not make the above videos. Go out and support the band that made the music and BUY their album.
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