We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erynn M. a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Erynn , so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
I’ve always been an exceedingly existential person, even when I was extremely young, and the purpose of life is something I’ve pondered a lot. I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school for a temporary time. However, I couldn’t find a purpose within it. As a young child, I vividly remember swearing off of Catholicism after reading about Moses at Meribah. I decided I could not find purpose through such a harsh God and found the story incredibly offensive. On one hand, I’ve grown to believe our purpose is to experience all that being human is. But it’s harder to embrace that than it seems, and I don’t know if I feel that way anymore. I’ve been surrounded by a lot of death in my personal life this year. It’s been a metaphorical death for all the relationships I’ve had to go “no contact” with, including limiting contact with my parents. Death this year has been literal as well. My grandfather, who is more of a parental figure to me, has ALS and is currently in hospice. He spent his whole life working hard for others, and his purpose to serve was chosen for him by life circumstances. He was drafted into Vietnam and forced to go to war. In 1981, he was one of many air traffic controllers Regan fired during the air traffic control strike for standing up for worker’s rights. He spent long hours working and working and working. When he got a chance to make his creativity and self-expression his purpose after his retirement, his time was cut short due to his ALS, which he obtained during his service to the country. In October, one of my closest mentors, with whom I had an extremely complicated relationship in the end, passed away. All I can say right now about him is that I think a lot about everything he still wanted to do and how the next round of dreams he had for his life is now lost to time. I don’t know if I feel confident declaring a purpose anymore in a life that is so painful and cruel. My social media has been flooded with devastating videos from Palestine. I know how hard it’s been to be touched by death on such a small scale, but to see people lose their entire families is a whole other level of pain I will never understand. The most haunting video I saw was a rescue of a little girl, so young she had bows in her hair, who was screaming through the rubble that her family was trapped and that the rescuers needed to save them. I will never forget how this child, barely older than a toddler, screamed at them with the strength of an adult woman to rescue her family first, to leave her for last so she could make sure her loved ones were okay. I’ve been encouraging people to purchase e-sims for Palestine through Connecting Humanity, run by author Mirna El Helbawi. They provide e-sims to medical personnel, journalists, and people in Palestine to help them communicate, and I think it’s crucial to support the people there. After this year, I don’t know how to find my purpose. I spend a lot of time thinking about what my eighty or ninety-year-old self would think of my choices and how I live, and perhaps that is how I am finding my purpose in everything.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I just graduated with my M.F.A from USC School of Cinematic Arts and I am so excited to be transitioning into indie film. One of my closest friends and collaborators, Rob Bowen (WHATSABUDGET Films), applied to be a part of the Steven King Dollar Baby program to adapt the short story Luckey Quarter. His version is called E Is For Expiation. The story follows a single mother of two named Darlene, who is tipped a magic quarter during her shift as a maid in a casino. As of this December, the program was discontinued, so I am honored to be a part of one of the projects produced for this final run of an extraordinary program that supported so many filmmakers and storytellers.
I am originally from Colorado, and artists there tend to have a strong identity tied to the Wild West and its aesthetics and history. We are shooting the film in one of the most striking historic towns in Colorado, Cripple Creek. It started as a mining town during the gold rush and is now a tiny gambling town, so the layers of identity we have been able to explore historically in the project have been exciting. I first met Rob when we were at school in Colorado Springs. In the center of downtown Colorado Springs is a mural of a modern Indigenous woman painted by artist Gregg Deal from Peyton, Colorado, to bring awareness to missing and murdered Indigenous women. Rob is an incredibly vocal ally of the No More Stolen Sisters movement. In his adaptation, he takes a surreal Lynchian look at the small mountain town and how those spaces still prey on vulnerable Native women. I am grateful for Rob’s open, collaborative style as a director because he has given me a lot of room to develop Darlene so I can explore my own Native identity. Sadly, I grew up incredibly distanced from it in my daily life. I am a part-Latin, part-Native, and part-Spanish person, and all of those intersecting ancestral identities have been challenging to navigate my entire life. Through Darlene, I have been able to start unpacking my ancestral trauma and my part-Native/part-Spanish identity in the grander context of colonization. It’s been hard and painful at times, but it’s been essential to reclaim and honor these vastly different worlds that exist within me and how they have shaped my family’s history.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I will keep this short and sweet because these three guiding principals are all I preach in my life.
Firstly, always trust yourself and go with your gut. You can get better at this by developing a relationship with yourself. Be more mindful and have empathy about what your interests, decisions, and emotions teach you about yourself. If you don’t know who you are, it’s hard to trust yourself.
Second, don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from, and don’t take advice from someone you wouldn’t want to switch places with.
Third, be in the middle; everything around you is noise. On a grand scale, someone is always doing better, and someone is always doing worse. There is never competition; it’s an illusion. On a personal level, an overreliance on positive feedback will lead to more earth-shattering reactions to negative feedback.
Or don’t do any of that if it’s irrelevant to you. All I know is that I know nothing.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
I recently read The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. It’s already a classic, and it has been extremely popular. This passage stood out to me: “Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice, or you’re not. It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk, or you’re not. We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The artist’s real work is a way of being in the world.” I highly recommend the entire book to everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://erynnerynnerynn.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erynnerynnerynn/
- Other: https://www.whatsabudget.com
Image Credits
Photo Credit: Rob Bowen
