Dance First. Think Later. was created during a two week solo motorcycle trip through my home country, Perú, in August 2022. I traveled from Lima to Pucallpa and back with a small backpack filled with very impractical things, mostly cigarettes and journals. If you’re a Kevin Morby or Samuel Beckett fan, you might recognize where I got some of my inspiration during the trip. Right before my departure, I had watched Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, which also served as a source of inspiration— I felt particularly pulled by River Phoenix’s character, who I saw myself in, to put it lightly (during this trip is when I began writing him letters that I would never send— one, because it seemed to be more of a personal matter— a way to understand myself through him and his processes, and two, because I would later that summer find out he had actually overdosed and died in 1993. The following line from the film set the tone for this trip, and many to follow, “I’ve been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world.”