Today we’d like to introduce you to Inaiah Lujan.
Hi Inaiah, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve always been someone who makes things. I started with music, writing songs and playing in bands, and for a long time that was the center of my creative life. I spent about fifteen years with the Haunted Windchimes, touring, recording, and learning how to build a life around making art.
A lot of everything else grew out of necessity. I learned to record and produce because I wanted to make records. I learned graphic design because bands needed posters and album artwork. Photography became another way of documenting the world around me. Most of what I know has come from being curious, experimenting, and figuring things out as I go.
Over time, those different practices started bleeding into each other. I realized I wasn’t particularly interested in staying inside one medium. Music taught me rhythm and collaboration. Photography taught me how to look at light and composition. Design taught me how to communicate an idea quickly. All of that eventually led me toward filmmaking.
Film feels like a place where a lot of those interests can exist at once. I recently wrote and directed FEMICIDE, a narrative music video for the band GUNK!, which we’ve begun submitting to film festivals. I’m also writing longer narrative work and continuing to make music, photographs, and visual art.
I don’t really see any of those things as separate anymore. They’re different ways of following the same impulse I’ve had since I was young: make something with whatever is available, learn what I don’t know, and keep following the work wherever it leads.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. I had serious health troubles beginning in my late teens and early twenties. I spent a lot of that time in and out of hospitals, undergoing surgeries, blood transfusions, you name it. Illness had started to define my life at an age when I was still trying to figure out who I was.
At a certain point, I challenged myself to hitchhike across the country. It was partly an adventure and partly an attempt to reclaim my life outside of illness. I wanted to know that my body and my circumstances didn’t get to decide the boundaries of my life for me. That experience changed me. It introduced me to people, places, music, and ways of living that I never would have encountered otherwise, and a lot of those experiences still find their way into my work today.
There were other struggles ahead. I later dealt with alcoholism and an opiate addiction. This December, I’ll celebrate seven years sober. I also live with bipolar disorder, and learning how to care for my mental health has become an important part of both my life and my creative practice.
These days, I’m a huge advocate for good mental health practices, creative wellness, and clean living. I’ve learned that making art and taking care of myself aren’t opposing forces. For me, they depend on each other. I want to keep making things for a long time, and that means taking care of the person who makes them.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Right now, I’m most excited about filmmaking. It feels like I’ve found a medium where so many of the things I’ve spent my life learning can finally come together. Music, photography, design, writing, performance, editing, they all have a place in it.
I recently wrote and directed FEMICIDE, a narrative music video for the band GUNK!, and I’m currently submitting it to film festivals. Making that film really solidified something for me. I love directing, but I’ve become equally excited about writing screenplays and building stories from the ground up. I’m interested in characters who don’t fit neatly into the worlds around them, and in the tension between beauty and ugliness, nostalgia and unease, sincerity and absurdity. I like taking something familiar and making it feel a little strange.
I’m largely self-taught, and I think that has shaped the way I work. I’m not afraid to experiment, learn something because a project requires it, or make something with the resources I have rather than waiting for ideal circumstances. I also bring the instincts of a musician into filmmaking. Rhythm, pacing, sound, performance, and knowing when to leave space are all a big part of how I think about a scene.
Music is still very much a part of my life too. I’m currently playing with my sister Chela in The Hardly Nevers, which has been incredibly fun. After so many years of carrying the responsibilities that come with leading my own projects, there’s something really refreshing about getting to show up, play music with people I love, and just be a member of the band.
I think what I’m most proud of right now is that I still feel like a beginner. Filmmaking and screenwriting have opened up this enormous new world for me, and I’m genuinely excited by how much I don’t know yet. I want to keep that sense of discovery for as long as I can.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I’m currently reading *In the Blink of an Eye* by Walter Murch. It’s a book about film editing, but really it’s about how we experience images, emotion, rhythm, and story. Murch explores why we cut when we do and how editing can follow something as instinctive and human as the way we blink. As someone coming to filmmaking with a background in music, I really connect with the idea of editing as rhythm and feeling rather than simply a technical process.
I also love educational podcasts. I’m probably happiest when I’m learning something, so I tend to bounce around depending on whatever I’m curious about at the moment. Film, science, history, art, psychology, music, it could really be anything. If I finish an episode knowing something I didn’t know an hour earlier, I’m happy.
I also make a point of reading and supporting the blogs and Substacks my friends create. I think it’s important for artists to show up for one another. We’re all trying to remain curious, disciplined, and true to our craft, and I love being surrounded by people who encourage each other to keep making things.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.inaiahlujan.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/inaiahlujan
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/inaiahlujanmusic
