Interview: Elizabeth Pepin SIlva

Interview Transcript

Maia: My name is Maia Dery. This episode impart of a series called the Waves to Wisdom Interviews. The project is a simple one. I seek out people I admire, surfers with what look to me to be ocean centered wisdom practices. I ask them if they’d be willing to share a surf session or two and then, after we’ve ridden some waves together, talk to me about their oceanic habits: about surfing, work, meaning, anything that comes up.

Elizabeth Pepin Silva (EPS): I think that increasingly as more and more women take to the water we are demanding that we are looked at differently than we have been in the past that we are athletes that we are courageous and confident and that that carries over into our everyday life. When I leave the water I don’t leave those things on the beach I take them with me every day and it has given me strength in my everyday life that I don’t think I had before I surfed, that’s a profound thing, to be able to just be your, your own person, to just be you and be okay with it.

My conversation with photographer, filmmaker, and writer Elizabeth Pepin Silva took place over two crystal clear California days. We spent time with her friends and family in her hometown of Ojai and had a chance to explore a couple of the nearby surf breaks. Elizabeth’s work as a photographer and filmmaker has heavily influenced my view of surfing and, more importantly, how I see my own place in that world. No surprise at all after seeing her films, her ability to articulate the story of her life’s work and the way it’s been fueled by what we generally think of as play as remarkable. I hope you enjoy her wise words.

Maia: if you are comfortable with it would you tell us your name your age and how long you been surfing.

EPS: I am Elizabeth Pepin Silva and I am almost 52 I will be 52 July 30th and I’ve been surfing for 31 years.

Maia: So, you are a photographer and filmmaker…

EPS: And writer

Maia: and writer. Can you talk a little bit about your work and the focus of it?

EPS: Most of my work has been focused on Ocean and water related things. I, excuse me, all of my personal work is always ocean related and often time of ocean -related and women and I’m really interested in that intersection between humans and nature and how that plays out in people’s lives and also the impact that we have on nature but also the way that nature impacts us in the and definitely that’s the case in oceans and coastlines around the world.

Maia and you are a surfer currently active

EPS: yeah I started surfing in 1980, I thought it was 86, but then when I actually this year I finally come about as I was my 30th anniversary I gotta like figure this out and then I realize that actually I had started surfing in the fall of 1985 and when my friend moved into this house in Marin, I wanted to serve before that but I had no, I didn’t have any money so I couldn’t go buy a board there wasn’t places anywhere to rent boards at that time. I didn’t know anyone who surfed so it was something I wanted to do but had no idea how to go about doing it and so when my friend moved into this house in Marin and the guy that had lived there before and had left a bunch of stuff in the storage space in the back of the house there was a board and she’s like oh you always want to do this, here have it. There was a pool, I put it in the pool and I paddle it around and I’m like, this is so cool! And as I was driving home it was sticking out of this Toyota Corolla, I had this little Toyota Corolla and it was sticking out cause I didn’t have a rack, it, I was at a stoplight in the Castro and this hippie walks up to my car cause it was open cause the board was sticking out, he was like, Hey I want, I wanna go to The Dead at the Oakland Auditorium or Coliseum or something you want to buy my wetsuit” And he had this bag and I was like, okay, so I pulled over, it was the same size as me I couldn’t believe it, it was like it was meant to be, it was so wild [what a story] that’s how I figured out when I started surfing cause I looked up when the Dead played in Oakland and they didn’t play that, do that in the spring of 86, it was in the fall of 85 so that’s how I figured out when I started.

Maia: You know exactly

EPS: Yeah, because of that Dead Head guy. So he gave me a bag, a wetsuit, a little vest ,and some trashed booties, which didn’t fit. And so that weekend I was like okay here we go.

Maia: What an incredible San Francisco tale [yeah] okay so can you let me just give a little background, I found your work because I have been incorporating surfing into a couple of the academic classes that I teach at this  small college and woman, an academic name Krista Comer wrote a book called Surfer Girls in the New World Order in which you and your photographs are featured and I was I and many of my students were deeply inspired by your focus on women and your recent film La Maestra. Can you tell us a little bit about that film and how that came about?

EPS: Well La Maestra is my second surf film, I did a film before that with Sally Limburg called One Winter Story which is about the first woman to surf Mavericks, and then did some water-related film, educational films for the state of California and I wanted to make another surf film but Sally and I decided not to work together anymore because she lives in Hawaii and it was just too complicated and um, I just wasn’t finding anyone that was really, whose story was really grabbing. I’m not interested in most professional women surfers, because to me it’s obvious why they surf, that’s their job and they get paid to do it. And I just wasn’t finding a story that resonated with me.

I really wanted to do a story about a woman in Mexico but because my Spanish is poor there was barriers to that and I felt it was extremely important to tell the story of in the person’s own language and so it took a while. One Winter Story came out in 2006, October 2006 and Paul Farraris, who is a friend of mine, surf photographer from San Francisco called me in the end of 2013 telling me that he got this grant for teachers, art, art and media teachers he is a media teacher at a low-income high school in San Francisco. The grant allows that art or film teacher to hire a mentor, do a small project that will teach the teacher how, a new skill that they can then pass on to their students.

EPS: I worked at PBS for 14 years as a producer and so Paul wanted to learn how to make a PBS style documentary and then in turn teach his students and so his idea was to, he wanted to make a film in Baja. He is half Mexican American and his mother’s from Baja and so Paul speaks pretty solid Spanish and he loves going to Baja. My husband and I also love going down to Baja to surf and camp, and he wanted to feature these 2 ex-professional surfers, gringos from California who had moved to this very tiny surf community in southern Baja and I know who, I knew who they were and I just like I’m not interested at all.

That is not a story I want to tell. I don’t think they’re worthy of the story and I am just so tired of watching surf films about white people who go to other people’s countries and they tell the story of that country and you never get to hear from the locals that actually live there you rarely get to see locals surfing in these surf movies. It feels really colonial to me and condescending and I’m not interested in participating in that at all and site but I said I really want to make a film about a Mexican surfer in Baja! That completely interests me and you have the skills, Dude and let’s do this. And by the way I have the this woman that I think would be really cool.

In 2012 my husband and I‘d gone to this little fishing surfing village and I was shooting photos when this Mexican, young Mexican woman paddled out and I was immediately like. “Woah, who is that because that was the first time I’d ever seen a Mexican woman paddle out on a board. not only did she paddle out then she just completely starts ripping, like, holy cow who is this person and I’m taking pictures and I just used just beautiful, beautiful surfer and my friend who lives there, a gringo, pulled up, I’m like “Who is that woman?” She’s like “That’s Myra she’s a local teacher, she’s taught herself to surf, she’s good, huh? I’m like, “Yeah!” So Myra gets out while Karen was still on the shore and I was introduced, “Hi, Hi.” Just got some photos of you. “Oh, cool, great.” That that was our entire like one minute interaction.

So I told Paul about her and sent him the pictures, he’s like “Oh my God, of course. [of course] This court actually is so cool, we gotta do this.” So I said okay I’ll email Karen and see if she can contact Myra because that town is so small there’s no phone or cell phone service. People have, there’s a community grocery store for lack of a better way to put it, also like a community space at the same time, and they have a community phone and there’s a phrase in Spanish, I can think of it right now, what these phones are called but it’s basically a way for people in these tiny communities to be able to communicate with the outside world. And there is Internet service there. It’s poor, it’s through satellite.

So Karen went talk to Myra, Myra said she was open to it so we were emailing back and forth but she never really, besides that one minute, didn’t meet us until the day we arrived eight months later and said, “Hi, we’re the film crew. We’re here to film you.” and they were just amazing, her, she lives with her mom and dad and they completely open their lives and their house up to us and were, were game to do whatever we wanted them to do and we, like, “We don’t want you to do anything that you wouldn’t already be doing, can we just… We want to just film your life from the time you wake up until the time go to bed.” They’re like, “Okay come back tomorrow. I get up at this time, go for it.”

Maia: Such an act of the trust on their part [huge] it must feel like a big responsibility.

EPS: It does, it’s a huge responsibility and one that I, I try and respect I mean you are telling someone’s story and they are giving you the gift of their story and, I, in my films I like to let my subjects tell that story and sometimes and I try not to have an agenda. And of course there’s no such thing as a as a film maker that doesn’t have an agenda, I mean you put your stamp on it by your editing decisions by the, your questions to the person by the things that you film in that community, of course, you’re putting your mark on it and maybe someone else would’ve ask different questions, would’ve filmed different things, so there’s no getting around that but I try really hard to just let this film be told as the person wants to tell it. That’s why I’m not a big fan of narration um an you know sometimes, like in the case of Myra, whose kind of quiet and you know can make for a little bit of a slower film, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impact is any less valuable than some big splashy film with a character that’s very excitable and boisterous.

Maia: I’ve seen the film and shown it to students and it’s beautiful, it’s just it’s eloquent and it it’s really quite succinct I didn’t find it slow in the least and her surfing, even if there were no words, her surfing is just remarkable and at the fact that she is, my understanding, I’ve never been to Baja or even to Mexico but my understanding from books is that it’s actually rare for young Mexican women [yes] to surf and that that is changing but gradually and only in some places.

EPS: Yes

Maia: so for this to unfold in this very rural place is notable

EPS: and she got quite a bit of shit for it at first, some people were like like “That’s for gringo women not for Mexican women and why are you doing this” and “You’re wasting your time.” and most women her age were getting married and having children and you know in her little town she’s a rare woman that is has a college degree and a life of her own and interests of her own and no husband or kids at that time that she had to worry about. And so I think that, and in fact the people in the community said she was an inspiration especially to young girls of in opening up the possibilities. They’ve realized through their teacher, la maestra, that there was a world beyond that tiny fishing village. That they weren’t just restricted to being a mom and a wife and what else could there be? And there’s definitely, last time we went back down there to show the film a year later after was finished I couldn’t believe how many young girls were in the water.

Maia: Oh my goodness

EPS: It was cool [wow] really cool.

Maia: So, you were there at that moment and you saw that influence beginning to unfold.

EPS: Totally yeah yeah

Maia: What a gift!

EPS: Yeah, it was really neat, is really neat to watch the young boys and how, you know, there wasn’t any separation they were surfing together, the boys were helping some of the girls that weren’t as competent as some of the other girls and it to me seemed like a really healthy relationship between the sexes while

Maia: Wow, such a great story and a great story well told I think we’re all lucky you were down there to get it.

EPS: Oh, thank you

Maia: So, so this project, this Waves to Wisdom project is in its first phase and in the sort of prompt the creative prompt is that it appears to me that there are some surfers and certainly not all and I think you you know many surfers who don’t appear to be inspired to do things that are particularly wiser, or that seem particularly wise but the Waves to Wisdom project is based on my working theory that there are some surfers and ocean centered people whose regular contact with the ocean inspires and guides them and helps them do incredible and positive things in the world and you seem to me like an embodiment of that proposition. Would you think that is an accurate characterization? Is that an accurate characterization?

EPS: Totally I mean ever since I can remember I’ve been going to the beach and to the ocean and I think that it is a place that grounds me that allows me when I go into the ocean to clear my mind, and find my center and balance in my life, I think that it allows me to expand my creative side of me often when I’m stuck in my work I go there and my let my mind just go and I come out with ideas that I then, come back to my house and execute. I come from a long line of anxious women. My mom has pretty bad mental health issues I think it is a way for me to, not go, you know not not follow in the footsteps of the other women in my family, you know it’s definitely better than Prozac, that’s for sure.

Maia: we share that history in common, I have a history of anxiety in my family as well and I’m a completely fear driven person and it’s it’s interesting when I say that to people sometimes they, they find it bemusing that I chose surfing because it sounds like such a scary thing in and in fact it can be [right] but but it does help. Can you talk a little bit more about why you think it helps or how it helps?

EPS: It’s been proven over and over in studies that exercise helps people with mental health issues and I don’t suffer from that thank God, but I do think that if I don’t go surfing I definitely feel like I’m more anxious I get grouchier, I find it harder to be creative.

So, you know if I hadn’t found surfing when I did in late 85 I mean I definitely was on a somewhat self-destructive path and surfing I think steered me away from, you know, getting more into the whole sex drugs and rock ‘n roll thing. I was really into the music scene I was the day manager at the Fillmore Auditorium, you know, so I was staying up late and partying a lot and although there’s many, many surfers that have been hard-core drug addicts [absolutely] I found it challenging to be that kind of surfer I, I needed to go to bed. I needed to not drink and not do drugs if I wanted to surf and I was so taken with surfing from the very first time that I stood up, I was lucky, it was the first time I went surfing I stood up, that I wanted it, I wanted it badly and so that whole partying side fell away because I wanted to surf so much and so that healthy, you know, it led me to be much more to take care of myself a lot more which is cool.

So I think that also being in the ocean and specially surfing if your anxiety, filled with anxiety or anger it is really hard to surf I mean it it comes through in your body you’re stiff, you’re going to fall a lot, get frustrated and so again you kinda have to like let that go if you’re going to you decent surfer. So it forces you and there is nothing more like being in the moment than having like a five wave over head set coming at you and you better be only thinking about what’s going on right in that moment and not like you know worried about bills or you know freaking out about this or that, cause you gotta focus on what you’re doing make sure you gonna be safe and get through that five wave set. (23:20)

Maia: If you are a surfer who for whatever reason doesn’t surf big waves does it still help with that ability to be present you think?

EPS: Oh completely! I don’t surf big waves. I don’t like big waves I think there’s this really kind of over-the-top obsession right now with mainstream media about big wave surfing and I, believe me, I think it’s great, I have friends that are big wave surfers I made a film about a big wave surfer One Winter Story and I ,they get, they deserve all the credit because that is something that most people cannot do but I don’t think it makes you any less of a surfer or I don’t think you are a better surfer just because you can surf big waves the way you connect with nature and the ocean and that dance between you and the water gives you that release and that pleasure no matter if it’s 2 feet or 50 feet.

Maia: You’re a filmmaker photographer and writer and you focus on water and surfing. That sounds like a lot of people’s dream job. Can you talk a little bit about how you got to where you are? How you arrived here?

EPS: Well, it’s a dream job if you don’t like making a lot of money [ah, there’s a catch] I’m broke but I’m happy! Thank God for my husband! Yeah, it is a challenging way to make a living as far as supporting oneself but it is incredibly rewarding and being able to, to because of what I have the way I’ve chosen to express myself in my photos and my filmmaking, you know, I didn’t choose a traditional surf photographer filmmaker Path

Maia: and in what is that because the primary audience I would imagine for these interviews is going to be non-surfers so what is a traditional path?

EPS: So, a traditional surf photographer and filmmaker would be photographing mainly male, white male professional surfers and getting those photographs into magazines, the front and back covers, or magazines or the two-page spread are where the money shots are and always being on the lookout for the next big surfer because you want to set up your relationship with that surfer early on as their careers build they will carry you as a photographer and film maker along with them and then their sponsors will pay you to go on these trips to go film and photograph them and you’ll get paid again by the surf magazines for covering them.

But that whole scene does not interest me at all in the least. And I did photograph some professional women surfers but even then I wasn’t all that excited and so my path was I came out it first of all not because I wanted to makes surf photography or surf filmmaking for making a career, I came at it, I’d already, was already shooting photos and making films, and I was surfing and when I first started surfing in the 80s there in Northern California there were very very few women surfers but around 1994 I began to see a lot of women get in the water.

But the surf magazines in the surf media and surf industry would not reflect those changes in their editorial and visual content and the focus continued to be on white male surfers and the photographs you did see with, of women were them, blonde haired blue-eyed, skinny teenage girls standing on, excuse me standing on the beach watching men surf, you didn’t see them in the water and I started get really frustrated like, “Hey there’s a whole new group of people getting in the water. Why are you addressing their needs? Why aren’t you reflecting this change?” and I definitely think that’s because the makeup of the staff of these, these companies in these surf magazines were all white dudes from Southern California, you know?

Maia: Narrow vision

EPS: Very narrow vision and very narrow definition of what and who is a surfer. So, I brought, started bringing my still camera to the beach. And after I would surf I’d go and photograph the women that I met on the beach. And I was very influenced, again, unlike most surf photographers who shoot color and are influenced by recent surf photographers. I was influenced by the early surf photographer’s like Doc Baldy Leroy Grannis and my most favorite Ron Church who was Jacques Ceausteau’s photographer as well as being a surf photographer.

Maia: There’s a dream job!

EPS: Yeah, he was amazing, I really, his work, everyone should know about his were just beautiful, beautiful shots black-and-white, primarily. And so I was shooting black and white and of course this is film, this is before digital cameras and so from there I moved on to shooting, actually shot in the water before I shot with a long lens so I got a water housing then I started renting big lenses and got a big lens, but I was just doing it. It wasn’t like I was even sending them in to the surf magazines. Cause I didn’t think they’d be interested.

And I was just kind of teaching myself. I met, I saw a few surf photographers when I would go on road trips I saw them on the beach and would try to talk to them. They were all men they weren’t interested in speaking with me. I finally connected with two surf photographers in Northern California, Thomas Campbell and Patrick Trefz who are amazingly nice and answered all my questions whenever I had them and really helped guide me and I thank them profusely for that.

I just kind of found my own voice. And then soon after women’s, finally, although the mainstream surf magazines were not showing women surfing, women’s surf magazines started to appear. Wahine was the first. It was created by two women surfers in Southern California and so that I had a outlet for my work. And I also was, I was getting gallery shows that turned into museum shows. I had friends who were pretty who were pretty famous artists and so they kind of, Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen and really helped champion my work. So I actually started making money from it. And people were buying and it was lovely. It was lovely that people understood what I was trying to do, that I was trying to provide a different way of looking at women surfers than what was being fed to them by the surf media.

So it was good as I was really I was thrilled that people understood that beauty can come in all different forms and that we should be celebrating these women surfers as athletes not as objects that unfortunately still to this day continues, to that continues to be perpetuated that these women are being sexualized and there the focus is on their brief beauty rather than their surfing ability.

Maia: It’s one of the sometimes it feels to me like disastrous side disastrous side effects of the mainstream representations of surfing and and I think this is driven mostly by the surf industry, the big companies that dominate it, is that, as I’ve tried to encourage many young people and this is some men to be primarily women, to learn to surf they don’t think that they can because they don’t look like that. I mean that they wouldn’t use those words but fundamentally it’s it’s that’s that they don’t feel like they’re “athletic enough” or they have good enough balance but if you dig just a little bit beneath the surface it’s that they know what surfers look like and they know they don’t look like that.

So I think the work that you’re doing and others who are trying to represent surfers of all ethnic backgrounds and all shapes and sizes is so crucial not just to make a statement but to communicate to younger people that this is that this is a form of of and are participatory joy and embodied wisdom that’s open to every single person, varying abilities, varying physical abilities, all different kinds of people. Speaking of varying physical abilities can you tell us how you learned he is a dark room have had no funny because people where I learned to use a dark room?

EPS: That’s kind of funny because, where I learned to use a darkroom  was at a camp for blind and deaf, actually was all ages, we had to each, it was two weeks and was varying ages, each session. So I, in high school, I didn’t really have much to do in the summer except for have summer jobs and so my counselor at school in eighth grade, her son was blind and she ran this camp called Enchanted Hills Camp for the Blind in Napa during the summer months between school sessions and she told me about it and asked if I’d want to come up and volunteer. So I said sure!

So from eighth grade to 11th grade each summer I volunteered up there and I was allowed to choose what departments of the camp I would work in, so I was an avid horse fiend so horses were a natural fit for me but then I was getting interested in photography and so I volunteered for the photography department. Which surprises a lot of people that you know why would there be a photography department at a camp for blind people? But in fact most blind people have some of sort of vision whether they can see shadows are light or dark or sometimes even outlines of people or fuzziness, most of them are not completely and totally, only see black and so I volunteered in the photo department and the college kid who was running the photo department taught me and the campers that chose to take that elective, photography, how to not only shoot but also develop our own work so that’s how I learned how to work in a darkroom.

Maia: Great story so that  and how are the pictures from the blind campers?

EPS: The blind cameras actually took really interesting, cool pictures.

Maia: I bet

EPS: it was it was amazing to see what they were seeing because you know as a sighted person this is what I see but for someone that has limited sight like how are they, how they see the world and so this was a window into what they were seeing I thought it was a really really neat experience.

Maia: what it seems as though not only a neat experience but what an influential time for you to have that experience and to understand something fundamental about vision that maybe couldn’t you get I mean I’ve been a photography teacher this will be my 16th year and one of the things that I noticed is very similar to the to the surf media story we are all so heavily influenced by media that when most photography students go out and take pictures they’re trying to emulate the billions of pictures that they see and so if you were cut off from those influences it might in some ways be visually freeing.

EPS: Yes well it also open my eyes as to what as if it what is a photograph you know and what makes a good photograph versus what you bad photograph and of course that’s in a way subjective and but my friend Margaret Kilgallan the artist, who sadly has passed away, she said something to me once that I will I will I think about always probably till I die and she said that there is perfection in the imperfection and she’s absolutely right. I think that you can find beauty in almost anything if you look at it in the certain way and allowing your mind to be open rather than narrowly defined by the rest of the world. and you know I think the technique in photography is important but if you’re if you’re going to make mistakes and still print that photograph you better have a reason why like why is that mistake in there? And but I think that those mistakes can be effectively used in your imagery.

Maia: One my favorite photographers working and alive today is Sally Mann who has you know in her recent work just completely embraced these serendipitous quote mistakes and such evocative powerful expressive work comes out of it.

EPS: I love her work I think it’s it’s wonderful and I do the same in my work as a I mean I’m not equating myself with Sally Mann, believe me, in any way shape or form but what I what I mean by that is that I used to in my early surf photography chuck out all the ones that I didn’t, I thought weren’t perfect and you, luckily I was shooting on film so the negatives are still there and I, after few years started going back and looking again and realizing that I actually had some pretty beautiful photographs, they, if I just looked at them differently.

EPS: And in fact some of my best sellers were ones that I initially didn’t print

Maia: Isn’t that fascinating [yeah] So your vision about your own work, even work that you’ve already done has evolved over time?

EPS: Completely

Maia: So you are not formally trained as a photographer?

EPS: No I’ve never taken, I’ve tried a couple times to take classes I lasted like two or three classes and then I just I just got bored, I mean, I just wasn’t you my goal still before I die is to get it I’d like to get a degree in photography. I mean I do have a degree I just got my degree in journalism with an emphasis on magazine writing I think cause at the time when I was in school I just felt like I had I was pretty solid in my basic photography skills and I was a good writer but not in the way, not in the journalistic way so that’s I wanted that the skills to be honed so that I could go out and get jobs.

Maia: And I don’t know if this had any part to do in motivation but you certainly learned how to be a masterful storyteller comes through in your work and your still images and your and your videos your documentary.

EPS: Well, thank you.

Maia: I think that journalism degree must’ve played into that on some level.

EPS: Yeah, maybe. yeah

Maia: So our alarm just went off- yesterday we were just so fortunate to go to Rincon yesterday with a beautiful, what would you call that knee—knee to maybe waste at the most? Yeah, knee to waste although the outside sets people were getting like chest high waves.

Maia: it was now and you know I’m from North Carolina where everything is a beach break and those long point break waves are just magical it is going to take a force of will to get me on that plane back to beach breaks but we will, we’re going to go surfing now because the conditions are probably to be good soon you tides coming up soon going to get her but the student will pick this up afterwards.

Maia: OK, so we’re back from our surf at Rincon [yes] another really fun longboard.

EPS: It was quite lovely

Maia: With a relatively friendly crowd and not too many of us.

EPS: Yeah

Maia: Yeah it was good. Lots of women out today…

EPS: Yes, lots of young women I loved the mom with her two sons teaching them how to surf that was really cool

Maia: Absolutely

EPS: It was a good day.

Maia: It was a very good day. So one thing that that I’ve noticed in the last couple of days I’ve have been lucky enough to spend can hanging around and see how you do your work is how generous you are with other, other artists and documentarians. Can you talk just briefly about the documentary that I saw the other night that you put on for some friends?

EPS: So that was a film called The Great Highway and it’s done by two friends of mine from San Francisco, Mark Gunson and Krista Howell and I think that was Kris’s first time as a filmmaker and the reason it took them so long is that, one, as with most independent filmmakers it’s always money, trying to find it to pay for production costs which, although the equipment has gotten easier, it really hasn’t reduced the cost of making a film all that much and so finding that money is challenging, especially for surf films and especially for films that don’t focus on some surf rock star that a surf company would want to help promote through a film and helping pay for that film.

So, I have, when I learned to make documentaries I had some mentors who literally taught me everything. Peter Stein and Joan Saffa, both Peabody award-winning filmmakers at PBS who took me under their wing and taught me everything they know and I was very grateful for that. I didn’t go to film school. I have a degree in journalism, print write… magazine writing, print so while many of those skills are transferable to documentary filmmaking there still is the actual nuts and bolts, how do you make a film? How do you put together? And there are many more moving parts than when you’re writing the story. You have the visuals, you have the music, the sound mix, um sound sweetening, which is, like, like you know birds chirping, adding the ocean sounds or whatever you need and so they taught me that for free.

I mean it well not even for free I was getting paid, it was a job so with that generous spirit in mind I’ve always felt that I need to do the same thing and help other filmmakers with the knowledge that I’ve gathered over the years. And to me also with it’s a selfish thing, I guess, because not only does it bring me great joy to help other people see, help bring their creative endeavors to fruition but selfish in the way that I want more voices telling stories in the surf world and I’m not able to do everything myself so I wanted to help other people to be able to gather these important stories before they’re lost. Cause once these people pass and their, their stories go with them, we’re screwed. So, you know that’s that’s my way of giving back to people.

Maia: Do I remember correctly that that film took 12 years to…

EPS: Yes it took 12 years to complete for a variety of reasons

Maia: And how long have your two One Winter’s Tale?

EPS: One Winter’s Story [One Winter’s Story] One Winter’s Story took five years and La Maestra only took a year.

Maia: La Maestra only took a year?

EPS: But that was kind of self-imposed because we only had the small grant that Paul received plus we raised some money through Indi go-go so we had the money to go once to Myra’s hometown for a week and that was it. (4:29) What we got was what we got and I recognize that it probably would’ve been a richer story had we been able to go back a few times. There’s definitely things that I will wish could we could’ve included. I would like to have interviewed for example the principle of her school. We did try to interview some of the kids they just could not say anything on camera that did work out [okay] but I would like to have interviewed her parents. We just didn’t have the time for it [right] So it is what it is and you know that monetary restraint for most independent filmmakers is always a factor and so how do you get as much as you can with the money that you, money and the time that you have.

Maia: So let me just say this one more time since I got it wrong, One Winter’s Story.

EPS: Yes, it’s One Winter’s Story

Maia: So you are surfing regularly right? Almost every week?

EPS: I surf every, at least once a week and I try to surf 3 to 5 times a week. I usually don’t surf on the weekends the crowds are to large and I don’t have very much fun when that happens so I tend not to surf on the weekends but if it’s really good I know some spots that have fewer people and I will go out.

Maia: Can you say anything more about ways that you think surfing or ocean activities might be different from other kinds of sports.

EPS: waves are this incredible force of nature unto themselves and no wave is the same as the next even when there’s a swell and it’s coming from a particular direction and you are at a point break, so it’s breaking in the exact same spot every time nonetheless each wave is unique and unto itself and while that can be true of like I guess skiing, snow changes as the day progresses and gets warmer and then colder again, it’s not actively, it’s not actively moving what’s under your feet, the snow under your feet is not actively moving and you don’t have to react to it in a way like a wave, which is actively moving and you are trying to become one with that movement, um and connect with nature in that way that it’s up I think it’s pretty unique to most sports and I think it is that connection that you have with the wave that is profound in a way that doesn’t occur in in other sports.

It’s profound for me that’s for sure. I think the surfing is a pretty difficult thing to explain to anyone that doesn’t surf and even if you talk to a surfer right after they’ve surfed like maybe one of the best waves of their life or at least the best wave of that day when they try to describe it, it’s it really impossible and even recall the, what has just occurred in your own mind is almost impossible because it’s just so happening in the moment and then it’s gone and the wave’s gone and there’s nothing, maybe someone saw you on it maybe someone took a picture but really it’s just vanished you know and I’m not sure why, why that lends itself to being so impossible to describe but it is I think it, it unless, you can describe it but it comes off something little cheesy and you know cliché.

Maia: So you’re you have many creative outlets and endeavors if undertaken in your life your musician no I wouldn’t call myself a musician like lately as a way to play music took early see you play music and you photograph and you make films great books you write books and that I wonder about because I’m not a musically person much less musically inclined almost any other person I’ve ever met and music to me when you are a musician when you play music it looks from the outside very similar to surfing in some ways it’s ephemeral if you’re playing with other people there’s always this other force that you’re in concert with literally if it’s going well you must have to be powerfully focused for it to go well and can get to be utterly different from surfing can you talk to me a little bit and struck me as somebody who knows how to surf but knows almost nothing about music from a primary participant.

EPS: So, I don’t know that I’m a good enough musician to be able to answer that question I mean I don’t I played in one punk rock band when I was 17 in other than that I just play by myself for the most part we had these jam sessions in our backyard and I’ll be playing along but definitely as with surfing and with my playing if I start thinking about too much it doesn’t go as well as if I empty my mind and I just let it unfold and let my body and my emotion just take over and that’s what I think one of the the plagues of the modern world is that we get so wound up in our own heads and then go on the Internet and look as of now everything has to be now now now instead of just relaxing and letting go, and letting what needs to happen come to you. And when you are able to do that when you’re surfing, you’re definitely surfing a lot better, when you’re able to do that, I find, in the creative process, you create a lot better.

Maia: Do you think surfing has made you happier person?

EPS: Oh I’m definitely a happier person because I surf, without a doubt. As I said right, I come from a rather troubled family and, that continues to have issues to this day and I wonder what it would be like if I didn’t have surfing. It brings me enormous joy and even in those moments of sorrow like when my friend Zeuf Hesson passed away and I was profoundly sad and would just be gardening and suddenly be moved to tears at missing her so much, I was still able to go to the ocean and because she was also a surfer there was that connection as well but just felt like the ocean was there for me in a way and that I could just sit in that space and just be. And I didn’t even have to be surfing a wave, like I could just be bobbing around on my board and just kind of letting myself do what I needed to do to mourn the passing of my friend or to get through some heavy crap that was going on in my family and I always come out of the ocean feeling a lot better than I went in. Yesterday we surfed I was freaking exhausted I really, to be honest, didn’t want to go I just wanted to be by myself, it’s just I felt like I had people overload and I was just like, just wanted to take a nap and read my book and not talk to anyone for a while and I was actually very grateful that it’s like, we’re going to go and we did and I actually you know we went to a place that was small and mellow and I came out of the water feeling a lot better because of it. So it’s funny though sometimes you gotta fight those tendencies to just not want to do anything and sit on your butt even though you know that once you get in that water you’re gonna come out of it 1 million times better than you were.

Maia: I’ve never regretted going surfing.

EPS: Even when there’s like 10,000 people in the water, as long as they don’t hit me right I, you know it’s good.

Maia: It’s good, it’s good. Is there anything else that you would like to add anything that you have to say or that you’ve notices about having this regular contact with the ocean in your life about being a surfer.

EPS: While I don’t think that for everyone surfing is going be that thing you know but what I have found, part of what my relationship the ocean has taught me what I have found from surfing but if you are able to find that one thing whether it be the connection of the ocean and surfing, or hiking mountains, or gardening or what ever it is if you have that one thing that you are able to do that connects you with nature and allows you to be in the moment, I think you’re much happier person for it and in this, in our world that is ever becoming more technologically connected and less connected to the natural world I think it is evermore important to find that connection to the natural world because I think the world is suffering because of our increasing lack of connection. It’s it causes our human relationships suffering and it causes our relationships with the planet to suffer and I think we are seeing profound impacts because of that and so I hope that people find something that they can do that will bring them that connection because I think it is but it’ll make them far a more rounded I think it’ll make them a more rounded and happier person.

Maia: You’ve really focused your career as a surf documentarian on women. Do you have anything to say to women not just female server certainly female surfers but any women of any age that you like to pass on from what you noticed in this career?

EPS: well I would just encourage women to try and have a relationship with the ocean whether you sir for you simply wade around door you walk on the beach and collect shells or sit on a bench and stare out to sea. I think that there’s something about women in the ocean that, I’m not going be very eloquent about this.

Maia: You can take as many tries you want maybe the first time thought of it in those terms.

EPS: I don’t know why it would be different for a woman than a man, why a woman’s relationship to the water is different than a man’s but I have in my 31 years of surfing watched women who are struggling in one way or another develop a relationship with the ocean and their struggles have been minimized if not wiped away and I think that there is something very empowering about a woman’s connection to a powerful force of nature such as the ocean and you know it requires determination and strength and will and confidence in oneself that you can be in the ocean and not get hurt and that you also recognize your limits and keep yourself safe and not put yourself in situations that you could get hurt. And so in that way it allows women to test themselves in a way that may be other venues don’t offer.

Maia: Determination and strength and confidence are not necessarily attributes that the culture always encourages women to develop.

EPS: yeah but they should and I am not much for allowing I’m not much for having society dictate who or what you should be, I mean, I’ve always kind of rebelled against that perhaps too, at the sacrifice of monetary reward but I think that increasingly as more and more women take to the water we are demanding that we are looked at differently than we have been in the past that we are athletes that we are courageous and confident and that that carries over into our everyday life. When I leave the water I don’t leave those things on the beach I take them with me every day and it has given me strength in my everyday life that I don’t think I had before I surfed, that’s a profound thing, to be able to just be your, your own person, to just be you and be okay with it.

Maia: And unlike many people you’re part of a surfing couple.

EPS: Yeah, it’s it was it was it brought us together it was how our romance flourished I actually knew my husband since I was 18, he was just kind of part of the music scene that I was in but we weren’t like hanging out friends or anything like that I just knew who he was and we reconnected when I was 32 and he asked how I was staying fit and I told him that I had been surfing for a long while and so he said he wanted to go and learn so I took him and never got rid of him but it’s great I I honestly don’t see how for someone like myself the ocean and surfing is so much a part of who I am and what I do I don’t see how I could be partnered with somebody who didn’t have that same relationship to the ocean because otherwise I’d never see my partner so it’s good.

Maia: Having that kind of shared passion

EPS: Although we like different waves. He like big waves and I like small waves.

Maia: It likes seems like there’s some compromise in there somewhere.

EPS: You know we we find spots that have both.

Maia: That’s good will thank you so much for your generosity it’s it’s not just bestowed upon me but I’m particularly grateful.

Maia: Providing inspirational, transformative experiences is central to the mission of Waves to Wisdom. To learn more about our retreats where we use learning to surf as a means to guide you into a powerful capacity to envision and create, a more effective, fulfilled version of your self at work and in life visit wavestowisdom.com.