EPISODE ONE
JOSHUA TREE,
CALIFORNIA
SAMIR’S REFLECTIONS
REFLECTIONS FROM
MAKING MUSIC
This past year has been about reinvention for me. After the fires, I realized life had quietly gotten complicated. Mortgage, employees, projects. Somewhere in all that, creativity got buried. I wanted simplicity.
So I went back to music. It’s what I did as a kid, and to me it’s the simplest form of creativity. It’s irrational. You’re just chasing a feeling.
Right after the fire, a friend gave me a guitar. It became one of my few possessions, and I played it every night. Found some chords I liked, sent them to my friend AJ as a voice note.
We talked about making it a real song. Then, as it does, life got in the way.
When this opportunity with Lexus came around, I had an idea: drive to the desert, take one day, and finish the song.
Making music is a series of small moves. It starts with one note. Then someone says, what about this sound? What about claps? What about drums?
You keep exploring until something appears. That’s the lesson.
Creativity works best when you’re chasing a feeling, not an outcome. I never could have guessed where this song would end up. I just knew I liked where it started.
The path to reinvention is about chasing the feeling. Taking small steps. And getting comfortable exploring without knowing where you’ll end up.
—Samir