hitchhiking through mexico for 14 hours taught me everything about writing music

i want to talk about something that sounds irresponsible on the surface and probably is. but it also gave me some of the best material i've ever written, so here we are.

this is about hitchhiking as a creative practice. not because it's romantic or because some indie artist told you to disconnect. but because something genuinely strange happens to your brain when you have no choice but to be present with a complete stranger in a moving car for hours at a time.

i've done it in the US, across parts of europe, and twice now in mexico. the mexico one is the one i keep coming back to.

it started outside oaxaca. i was trying to get north, didn't have a plan, didn't speak enough spanish to be confident about anything. a truck pulled over -- a big commercial hauler, the kind of thing i normally wouldn't get into -- and the driver, a guy named gerardo, waved me in.

i don't know exactly why i got in. instinct, maybe. something about the way he looked at me felt like he was just a guy who was bored of driving alone.

we drove for 14 hours. through mountain roads that genuinly scared me, past small towns i'll never find again on a map. gerardo didn't speak english. i barely spoke spanish. we communicated in a kind of pidgeon language of hand gestures, laughter, and one shared phone that we took turns using google translate on when something felt important enough to actually say.

at some point, maybe four or five hours in, i stopped trying to figure out what to do next. i just started writing. not on a laptop. in a small notebook i carry specifically because there's no temptation to edit yourself mid-sentence when you're writing by hand.

by the time we reached his dropoff point, just before sunrise, i had written almost the entire skeleton of a song. not lyrics exactly. more like the feeling of a song. the melody came from watching the road markings pass in the headlights. the tempo came from the engine.

gerardo and i shook hands. he gave me half a tamale from a bag in the back seat. i haven't seen him since and probably never will. i think about that ride at least once a week.

i know how this sounds. "go be a wandering artist and the muse will find you." i'm not saying that.

what i'm saying is more specific. hitchhiking removes the three things that kill creativity fastest:

control. you have no idea where you're going to sleep. you can't schedule the inspiration. that helplessness forces your brain into a different gear -- one where it stops planning and starts noticing.

distraction. when you're in a car with a stranger and no cell service, there's nothing to scroll. there's nothing to check. there's just the window, the road, and whatever is happening inside your head. most people find this terrifying. i found it was the first time in years i could actually hear myself think.

the familiar. you can't write new things from inside the same four walls. that sounds obvious but most of us spend years trying anyway. putting yourself in an environment where literally everything is unfamiliar -- the language, the landscape, the person next to you -- is like rebooting your perception. things that would've been invisible to you at home become visible.

i did a stretch across the southwest a few years ago. texas to california, mostly truckers. what i noticed: truckers talk. a lot. they've been alone with their thoughts for so many miles that when someone gets in the cab they don't stop. i heard stories that felt like albums. a guy from amarillo who had been driving for twenty years and had never told his wife he'd once wanted to be a painter. a woman outside phoenix who played me a voicemail from her daughter, just because she wanted someone else to hear it.

i wrote down everything. not their stories exactly -- those belong to them. but the emotional shape of those conversations. the way someone sounds when they're telling you the thing they've been holding.

that's source material. that's what makes songs feel like they come from somewhere real.

in europe it's different. the distances are shorter, people are warier in some countries, more open in others. portugal and spain are good for it. parts of eastern europe surprised me. i spent two hours in a car in romania with a family of four who had packed into a tiny hatchback and somehow had room for me and my guitar case and still seemed happy about it.

what strikes you most when you hitchhike internationally isn't the danger, though the danger is there. it's the realization that people everywhere are doing the same things. loving people, worrying about money, trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing. that sounds like a platitude. being in a car with strangers in places where nothing is familiar makes it feel like a fact.

i'm going to be direct because i think people who write about hitchhiking usually aren't:

it is not safe. i have had things happen on the road that i won't go into here, situations where i had to get out of a car quickly, a night in mexico in particular that i don't write about. i've been lucky. i've also been careful in ways that took years to learn.

if you're going to do it anyway -- and i understand if you are -- here are the actual things that have kept me safer than i had any right to be:

trust your first instinct about a car before you get in. once you're in, it's harder. your gut knows things before your brain catches up. if something feels off while you're still on the side of the road, keep your thumb down.

tell someone your general route even if you don't know it exactly. a rough direction. a check-in window.

sit in the back when you can. it's a small thing but it matters.

learn a few phrases in the local language -- not to be fluent, just to signal that you're paying attention and not completely helpless. people treat you differently.

know where the door handle is before the car starts moving. this sounds paranoid. it has been relevant.

i am not advising you to do this. i'm saying i've done it and i know the real version of it, which is not the instagram version. do it at your own risk. i mean that seriously.

the best things i've written came from states of mild discomfort. not crisis -- crisis shuts you down. but the particular alertness that comes from being slightly outside your depth, in an unfamiliar place, with no safety net, is some of the most alive i ever feel.

creativity, for me, is mostly about being awake. most of the time we're sleepwalking through our own lives -- the same coffee shop, the same playlist, the same conversations. hitchhiking is extreme but the underlying thing isn't. it's just: go somewhere your brain doesn't already have a map for. let the unfamiliarity do the work.

the song i wrote in gerardo's truck is one of the ones i'm most proud of. it doesn't have a name yet. it might be the next thing i release after immortelle. or it might be the thing after that. but it exists because a stranger let me into his vehicle at a rest stop outside oaxaca and drove north for fourteen hours without asking for anything in return.

i keep thinking about that economy. what you can recieve when you put yourself somewhere with nothing to offer except presence.

do you just stand on the side of the road with your thumb out like in the movies?

yes. exactly like that. the cardboard sign helps. writing a city name on it instead of "anywhere" helps more. people respond to specificity. "anywhere" is existentially unsettling as a destination.

isn't hitchhiking illegal in some US states?

technically in a few, yes. nobody has ever said anything to me about it. i'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. i'm also not going to pretend i've checked the statutes.

what do you do when someone is playing bad music in their car?

you listen to it. with curiosity. i've had genuinely terrible music from a stranger's phone make it into a song i was working on because i was paying enough attention to hear what made it work underneath the bad production. everything is research if you're in the right mode.

did gerardo seem weird at all when you got in?

not particularly. he seemed tired and hungry and like someone who drove trucks for a living. he gave me tamales. i remain convinced that people who give you food are usually fine.

how do you write a song in a moving car without a mic or equipment?

you don't, technically. you write the song. you record the song later. the car is where the song comes from, not where it gets made. the notebook is the instrument at that stage.

has anything actually bad happened to you?

yes. i'm not going to detail it because it's mine to hold for now. i will say: the bad things didn't make me stop. they made me more careful. there's a version of being careful that's actually compatible with this. it just takes time to find it.

are you okay?

yeah. i'm good. making music. see you on the other side.