Permission to Build Again

On curiosity, evolving dreams, and the beginning of PERMISSION WRLD

When I started DJing in 2018, I was still relatively new to the city of LA. Having moved here only 2 years prior, there was a limitless sort of energy that seemed to fuel my daily existence. A complete openness to anything and everything, wherever the next social escapade might take me to - which was increasingly and ever more inevitably an after hours warehouse followed by an after-after hours house party somewhere. I was game for all of it.

In many ways, this was the exact energetic and mental space in which I began daydreaming about, then eventually pursuing, this beautiful adventure that has been SOHMI. Perhaps others might relate, but DJing for me was born from a very pure need to express myself again musically after a 4-5 year period of trying to do the ‘responsible’ career thing in tech. Then there was the thrill and challenge of stumbling upon something so radically unprecedented in any version of my life I had previously imagined, at an age when most people would agree that starting over to become a producer and DJ seems a bit risky. Me being me, I just couldn’t seem to walk away from the madness of it.

I had to see if it could be done.

This too, I think, describes how many of us eventually make a career of this pursuit. One “let’s see” becomes another, then yet another, and we just keep seeing how far we can take things until one day we look around and realize we’ve somehow made this our life. One record, one label signing, one show at a time.

Some of the best and most rewarding moments of these last 8 years have come from simply following that magical little light (the “let’s see” of it all) and allowing it to illuminate the path just a bit further each day. Before things started to get more serious. Before it started to feel like maybe I was supposed to be doing certain things with more specific outcomes in mind, even if I wasn’t always sure what I wanted those outcomes to be or what it might actually take to have them.

I know that I’ve been blessed and extremely fortunate to have had moments where things became so busy, I stopped feeling like there was room left anymore to just follow my curiosities and “just see”. Yet it can feel really confusing to recognize how lucky you are and that you are in many big ways living out a version of ‘the dream’ - but maybe in other important ways, also feeling a bit lost.

I’ve done a fair bit of reflecting these past couple years and think I now understand what eventually became the central tension for me: the pursuit of an artistic life had gradually become confused with constantly producing evidence that I was living one. As a result, I’d started to lose contact with the very instincts this pursuit had first awakened. My ability to notice the hidden magic in things that others might miss. My curiosity and artistic instincts. And as these things became harder and harder to access, the career around me started to feel flatter. Life became flatter.

Over the past two years, time and space have allowed me to find my way back to these artistic inclinations.

I’ve found myself wanting to write longer and more honestly.

To think deeply about DJ craft and how I might keep pushing the limits of what I’m capable of.

To design custom garments.

To make music that doesn’t fit any neat boxes.

To prioritize atmosphere over algorithm.

To follow ideas before knowing what exactly they might become.

And to make things without immediately asking what they prove.

I used to think these were separate impulses, but now I understand they’re all parts of the same inner world. Some are newly discovered, and others were perhaps there all along, waiting to be recognized and given the chance to become.

What’s important is that we’re here now, and this next chapter of becoming will be PERMISSION WRLD.

A place where I can follow the full range of my artistic curiosity and allow the entire shimmery spectrum of my inner world to take form over time.

I don’t know everything that PERMISSION WRLD will become yet.

But the magical little lights have become visible again, beckoning me back on the adventure and illuminating what feels good and true to me.

So let’s see together 🦋

The world is more magical than it first appears…
And through everything I make… I want to help you feel some of that magic.

That’s the dream now.

x

SOHMI