Emily Robyn Clark’s Stories, Lessons & Insights

We recently had the chance to connect with Emily Robyn Clark and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Before we jump into your intro and the heart of the interview, let’s start with a bit of an ice breaker: What are you being called to do now, that you may have been afraid of before?
More fully and intentionally living the art life. David Lynch talks about it in his book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.

Throughout my life, I’ve been creating. There’s a palace in my mind of beautiful ideas. I would say there’s an entire world there, too, but it’s harder to access as I get older.

One of the most beautiful things a human brings with them into this world is an imagination. Children naturally engage with the inner world of their imaginations and the outside world in a kind of meditative way. This is, unfortunately, something that many adults have forgotten how to do.

Children with vibrant imaginations don’t take the outside world more seriously than their inner world. Both are just as real. Both carry equal weight, and sometimes the inner world may carry more. It depends on the child.

When the inner world of the imagination merely observes the outer world without letting it sway or change it, both can thrive separately in harmony and duality. The outer world is important, too, and the inner world can use it as fuel and input for inspiration, growth, maturity, and understanding.

Just as a person might live inside a house with four walls and a roof and be protected from the elements, they wouldn’t thrive if they never experienced sunlight on their skin, wind in their hair, heard the sound of rain, or felt a rocky trail under their feet.
The exposure to the outside world is necessary. We need it to grow. But balance between the two is key.

As an artist navigating the adult world of taxes, bills, chores, and responsibilities to our employers, families, friends, and communities, the challenge for me is often not being able to return to my imagination as often. This absence brings deep feelings of sadness, disconnection, hollowness, and purposeless wandering. Without the regular return to my inner world, I often feel like a robot—going through the motions, unable to purposefully engage with my own emotions or spirit in a profound way.

I believe that my imagination is my own private utopia. It’s where dreams and desires live, and where ideas take shape and come alive. This inner sanctuary is where the divine, like a bird, swoops down to commune with me and sup on the sweet waters of my soul.

If there is one takeaway for you, it is this: your inner world, like a garden, must be regularly visited and maintained. It can’t be ignored or neglected. If it wants to share wisdom with you, let it. This is why listening to your inner voice—your conscience, your heart, your gut feeling—is so important. If you ignore it, especially as a creative person, you’re going to run into real trouble, and the well will be consistently dry when you’re in need of deep nourishment.
One of my favorite authors talks a lot about some of these ideas, but through a different framework, in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves. In this intelligent, mythical book, she uncovers the idea of the wild, feral self, and how it must be nurtured.

In Chapter 14, La Selva Subterránea: Initiation in the Underground Forest, a chapter devoted to the mythic quest to the underworld in mythological narratives, ancient archetypes, and modern psychological understandings of the subconscious, she offers vital wisdom about engaging with the deep places inside us. “If we listen to dream voices, to images, to stories—especially those from our own lives, and to our art, to those who have gone before, and to each other, something will be handed out to us, even several somethings that are ritual, personal psychological rites.”

I believe that what she’s referring to is making sense of the world by communing with our own deep self.
The moment we lose that connection—if it becomes untethered—that’s the moment we truly feel lost and directionless.
So, to find our true north, we must come back to ourselves, and that begins with meditating on our inner world, trusting it, and believing that it’s real—as real and present as the world outside our own front door.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Emily Robyn Clark: award-winning writer/director, poet, singer-songwriter, and founder of Modern Mythic Productions, a woman-led company devoted to mythic, archetypal storytelling that honors the fierce female spirit.

As a filmmaker, I describe myself as an auteur, a director whose work is deeply personal and recognizable by its voice, imagery, and themes. My films, poetry, and songs are all part of a mythic and growing universe I’ve been dreaming up over my lifetime, rooted in ancestral lands, in archetypes of the divine feminine, cycles of death and rebirth, and the tension between beauty and horror, death and life.

I’ve coined a new definition for my work, and hopefully an artistic movement people can use. I’m calling it Nouveau Romantic.
It is a renaissance and reimagining of the Gothic and Romantic traditions for today.

In historic Romanticism, nature, passion, and the sublime were illuminated and celebrated, while the Gothic gave us a lens to explore ruins, shadow, and decay, and to appreciate what is neglected, grotesque, and misunderstood in humans and nature.
Today, Nouveau Romanticism brings these traditions back with equal fierceness to explore contemporary subjects: the evolving nature of humanity and civilization, the rise of artificial technology, transhumanism, queerness, environmentalism, spirituality, paganism, the esoteric and occult, and the nature of desire.

Nouveau Romanticism is a renaissance of Gothic and Romantic traditions, reimagined to confront today’s spiritual, social, and technological frontiers.

Communing with the wild Self these past several years, I’ve sheltered, living and working in that deep, instinctual place; excavating creative energy from untilled earth, listening to the wind, the water, and the voice of my own untamed spirit. I left the noise of society for solitude before and after the pandemic years, and in those conditions, I wrote my first books, made my first films, and penned my first songs. Like Persephone plunging into the underworld in search of a soul marriage, I emerged nourished with the soil-rich fruit of the Tree of Life and Knowledge.

I’ve lived all over the country and drawn inspiration from the timeless, sun-baked landscapes of the Western U.S. to the haunting, curvaceous greenery of the Southeast. Now, as if emerging from a cocoon, I’m ready to share new work with the world: stories nurtured in that soul-rich place.

My poetry chapbook Morning Comes Roaring Down the Mountain, from Finishing Line Press, wrestles with themes of grief, longing, and the power of place to transform.

“[These poems] will provoke you with striking paradoxes of alarm and seduction, beauty and pain, death and life, and they will leave you tingling in ‘the siren of silence.’” — Kristin Zimet, author of Take in My Arms the Dark.

My first single “Country Girls” released under the stage name Emma Dream, recorded at Magic Square Recording Studio in Nashville and featured on top Spotify playlists, was a finalist at the Zepstone International Film & Music Festival in 2025. The music video, filmed in historic Alabama sites, will release worldwide this Fall.

As a writer/director, the award-winning film LOVE SPELL and the award-nominated OUROBOROS, explore feminine power, myth, death and transformation. LOVE SPELL is now on streaming platforms worldwide and available to watch for free.
In 2025, I began producing Asheville-based director April Lane’s original film, NIGHTBLOOMER, inspired by The Divine Comedy and classic visionary cinema, the story follows Maia, a soulful young woman who journeys through surreal dimensions, guided by cosmic guardians, before awakening into a paradise world.

One of my specialties is taking a project from concept to completion: writing, producing, directing, shooting, and even editing when needed. Whether I’m crafting my own films or working with clients, my goal is always the same: to create cinematic experiences that feel timeless and transformative.

What makes my work unique is the way I blur myth and memory, working with ancestral landscapes, Gothic atmosphere, and feminine archetypes to craft cinema that’s both intimate and timeless. I see myself as a weaver, threading together new myths for our time: stories of longing and grief transmuted through the fires of becoming.

Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I think one of the best ways to see the world is to read, and the second best way to see the world is to travel alone and without expectations. The third and connected tissue between the first two, is to listen to music both ancient and modern, and to expose oneself to myths and storytelling, art, language, religion, culture, and the customs and traditions of Earth’s people.

Reading opens us up to many worlds; it is the single way in which humanity has been able to communicate intimately with one another since the advent of the written word. If today we knew how to read the symbols and carved writings of all ancient humans, and had familiarity with and access to what was destroyed in the passage of time, we would realize that they were more like us than we ever supposed.

Traveling alone forces the traveler to focus their attention on their individual experience while making an effort to being completely open and receptive to everyone and everything they encounter, despite how challenging it might be. Learning to see the world from the perspective of other people is a powerful gift and a path to wisdom and understanding.
Listening to music awakens the senses and stirs deep emotions. With music, one can listen and understand immediately what another person is feeling or trying to say without the need for translation or introduction. It provides intimate access to a person’s perspective on the human experience. Like reading, time is removed from the equation: the musician does not need to be living for their listener to receive their message.

Exploring the diverse multiplicity of the world’s myths and storytelling, art, languages, religions, cultures, and traditions allows a person to feel connected at a deep, fundamental level. When we feel connected to others, no matter how different they seem, we are fostering a world of empathy, respect, compassion, and community that transcends the bounds of geography, space and time.

When did you last change your mind about something important?
I think we’re always changing our minds. The self is an ever-evolving, ever-growing thing. Finding clarity means going within and seeking answers.

The Divine, God, Universe, Higher Self—whatever word you prefer—knows us best. This is my belief. When we are in need of a shift in perspective, or a spiritual or even physical relocation, consulting the Divine will help us gain the clarity we need to move forward and make a decision.

I’ve felt called back to Los Angeles, California, for years. For me, the path to Los Angeles has been less about logistics and more about timing, preparation, and purpose.

While I don’t yet have a set date for when I plan to move there permanently, I believe it is part of my soul purpose and life path to be rooted there.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I’m committed to consistently finishing and refining my own projects, and finding a way to tell the stories closest to my heart. This includes: completing my first album, finishing the screenplays I’ve started, transforming them into feature films, turning my short fiction into a collection, finishing my first full-length poetry collection, and continuing to help other artists refine, complete, and release their work out into the world.

A bigger part of the realization of these dreams is the desire to expand and pour more into what Modern Mythic Productions will become: an epic studio for mythic dreamers. This work feels less like a career and more like destiny, so I’m willing to carry it for as long as it takes.

I’ve always known the importance of community, especially artistic community. From an early age, I was thrust into religious communities that never felt like home. Finding your kin, the people who share your values and beliefs, is essential. I’ve even dreamt of building a retreat center in Europe someday, maybe on land with a chateau in France, where artists, writers, and filmmakers could come to stay, teach, and create. I’ve always thought, “I don’t want to end up alone.”

Whether or not I marry, I imagine myself surrounded by a community of artists who love their craft as much as I do. That vision of community, of building spaces where artists can thrive together, is what keeps me moving forward.

Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope people say I was revolutionary, courageous, and inventive: a woman who helped shape history. I want to be remembered as someone who left a recognizable stamp on the world, who made people feel less alone, and who created opportunities for women artists and for the vulnerable and voiceless to feel safe sharing their voices and truth with the world. Most of all, I want to be remembered as someone who helped make the world a kinder, more loving, and more tolerant place.

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Image Credits
Adrian Sierkowski

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