96 We the Songwriters
We're joined by Ami Yares (https://www.amiyares.com/) songwriter and Executive Director of Build a Bridge (https://buildabridge.org), a non-profit that focuses on transforming lives through art-making, and by Shannon, a User Experience designer with over 20 years experience including time across 3 Federal agencies. We'll talk about their initiative called We the Songwriters (https://www.wethesongwriters.org), which connects federal employees with songwriters to share their stories.<br><br>Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- Friends of USAID Playlist (https://open.spotify.com/artist/33NtIX8ae3eovd3AQtMEKO?si=S2IhqKRHSFqAA1xKH3Ts8Q&nd=1&dlsi=54817e06c5dd427b)<br>- Song: USAID (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlFaXtVW4VM)<br><br>Music Credit: Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. Before we get started, I do wanna let you all know that we've started a Discord for the podcast. There will be a link with an invite down in the episode description. Do feel free to go check that out. It's a small community right now, but hoping to grow it. It's a great way to reach out to me and let me know things that you might want us to cover or to just hang out and talk about Civic Tech. Hello, folks. Welcome to this episode of Civic Tech Chat. We've got a couple of really fantastic guests here. Could each of you introduce yourselves and tell us all a bit about what you do?
Hi. Hi. My name is Shannon, and I'm a user experience designer. That means I make products and services easier for people to use based on how they actually want to use them. I've done this for over twenty years, and I've worked for three federal agencies in the last seven years.
And my name is Ami Yaris. I'm a singer songwriter and teaching artist, and I run a arts and education nonprofit called Build A Bridge that focuses on well-being and mental health for underserved youth through the power of art making.
And for each of you, what would you say is your personal why? That thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do what you do.
I'm interested in exploring our shared humanity. I wanna help improve services so that we can coexist as humans.
And for me, I really see the arts being leveraged as a stronger source of community cohesion and and well-being and mental health. I think the arts often gets caught up in in how good you can do it and how much money you can make off of it and anything else is extra and unworthy of attention. But science and and, research have shown us that the more you engaged with art and creating and imagination, the healthier you are. And if you're healthy, the people around you will also be healthier ultimately.
I think this is a good way to get us into our topic. I'm I'm rather excited to hear from you both as this is a very interesting mix of, well-being, arts, government experiences kinda all together in one, I think, really valuable initiative. And I believe what we're talking about today is called We the Songwriters. Can, y'all talk about what that is and why you've gotten involved with it? So I started We the Songwriters in
February, I think. I write songs on the side. Most of that songwriting started during the month long shutdown in 2019, has been a way to deal with, emotions related to working in the federal government. And I saw it as a way to get together, the people in my story write the story songwriting circles and my federal employee circles to tell the stories of federal employees who and and the people that the government serves. Because I think a lot of people right now don't know what the government does, what people they serve or the government serves. And I I was also seeing on the songwriter side a lot of people wanting to write protest songs, but this was a way to kind of channel that energy into something that wasn't being done before and telling stories that haven't been told.
Yeah. And I I heard about this word-of-mouth or, I guess, through Facebook through a mutual a mutual friend, Fred r, like, Fred r Kaleo, another singer songwriter based in New York. And I saw his post, and, it really struck me. I mean, this is something I've been involved with the idea of giving people the opportunity to or helping people realize their creativity through some artistic process. And a lot of the time, I would do songwriting for non songwriters, you know, or people who didn't who didn't know they were songwriters. I should say, again, going back to that previous point of, society doesn't want people or doesn't allow for people to, engage themselves creatively unless there's some economic value attached to it or there's space to be able to do that on their own. This is seeing that and then added with the added value of, like, let's bring voice to federal workers who who are canned by the the current federal government and and make people hear their story, help people hear their stories in in the name of empathy, in the name of of more communication and understanding. You know, the social media and the Internet make things very far away or very distant and unrelatable, or you're over inundated. And so this is another way to just personalize the experience of living and and make it make it more personable, you know, more more attached as opposed to detached.
Yeah. One other thing is I have hearing calls for people, federal employees, to talk to journalists so that they could have articles written about them. But a lot of the people whose minds need to be changed aren't gonna read those articles. And having songs is a way to kinda hit people in the fields. Hit people in the fields rather than having long form narrative that they're not going to read. It's a different format that can help with people who are more emotionally involved.
Both dimension of empathy and hitting people in the fields, that's a great, great line, are really relevant to the tagline I saw on your website that I wanted to ask you about, which is building empathy one song at a time. When you hear that or read that, what does it mean for each of you?
Yes. The idea is that we as a society are lacking empathy, and that's how we've gotten to where we are, which is a lot of what Ami was just talking about. The tagline was written before a certain person so that empathy is a flaw in humans, so it's taken kind of a new meaning on since then. And we wanna build bridges between humans so we can get everyone on the page of supporting other humans and understanding how the government supports us as human beings.
Yeah. I think I think Shannon said it spot on. There's not much I have to add to that. You know?
For each of you, how's your involvement in this We The Songwriters initiative affected you personally?
It's been overwhelming to see the outpouring of interest in this project. It started as a crazy idea where a couple of us made a website, overnight, in a Google form for people to sign up. We've got 17 pairs that have been made. We've got a bunch of songwriters that are still waiting to be matched with federal employees. So it's crazy that that there's been this much interest in it.
I imagine myself being more involved, but due to limits on on my, abilities on a day to day, I haven't been able to do as much as I'd like. But, you know, being inundated with the changes taking place, in our domestic and foreign policy, I'm left extremely overwhelmed on a regular basis. Like, having to put down the news after reading it for a couple minutes being like, this is just too much today. But, you know, having a background in in social change and public policy and the arts, like, what am I gonna do about it? And so we, the songwriters, became a viable outlet for me to to contribute, really where my skill set is, you know, and calling my senators and representatives. Yeah. That's also a part of the two. But, you know, my charge as an artist is not just to be on a stage and and perform or teach people, but it's also to relate to people and have conversations. And this act of of bringing people's words and thoughts to life just, like, hits so many, important points of my being, and of my of my of my professional, you know, instincts. So I'm really happy to be a part of it in that way.
Shannon, the way you answered, kinda gave me the sense that you were you kind of were surprised
to see that, this much interest happened, that it became this successful. Kind of at what point were you like, oh, crap. Like, this thing we built, we might be on to something. Like, we've touched something important. I mean, I think we've the outpouring from songwriters has been bigger than the, the the number of federal employees interested in participating. So I think it's definitely we we've hit a critical mass there. Most of the federal employees are people I know personally, and I asked one on one to participate. And I think with everybody being in various states of limbo in in their federal employment that that might be a sticking point for federal employees. They're also the ones being asked to be vulnerable. So, just seeing the the number of people respond was kind of realizing that there was some traction here.
Speaking of traction, as you get that, what sort of goals do you have with with the songwriters kinda going to the future?
Yeah. We wanna spread the message to what the government does and the people affected by recent changes in in a way that builds empathy and might change their minds. There are a lot of news articles being written on the topic, but those are mostly preaching to the choir. In Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind, it talks about how half the electorate votes based on emotion. If we wanna change those minds, we need an emotional approach, and songs are a way to hit people in the fields. We also wanna provide mean meaningful work for federal employees to be doing while they're lining up their next gig. So a lot of us are ending up on admin leave. This gives us something to do. It's been designed and built entirely by current and former federal employees. It uses The US web design system that was built by, eighteen f in The U US digital service. It gives us something positive to focus on. Another goal is to help federal employees and others with the stories, the stories to tell to process their trauma. Talking to the songwriter about their story and seeing it put into song can be a very powerful way to process emotions. Actually, the first song that I was involved with, I didn't write, but I had talked to a friend about, my divorce being stuck in Maine for, fourteen years. And then he wrote he's like, that sounds like a country song. He went and wrote the song. That was the first time I saw a song with my my emotions attached to a song that was very powerful and led me into songwriting. So it's a way like, being able to see your emotions is a way to process trauma.
And, throughout the answer so far, I've I've heard this, desire for folks to effectively see like, for example, you mentioned folks at eighteen f or folks that worked on the web design system. Like, they're not in a per like a nameless person somewhere. They're potentially your neighbor down the street. And I think you're trying to transform folks' perspective away from faceless bureaucratic technologist to, hey. That's potentially a friend I could have one day or someone who just lives in my community. Am I kinda picking up that that theme correctly? Yeah. And actually,
Fred who posted on Facebook that Ami saw, he actually was like, I wanna go find the feds in my circles and then bring you back a song because he wanted to see who in his world he didn't know was a federal employee.
Literally song catching. I love it. Yeah.
Oh, that's fantastic.
I also wanna bring up that point that Shannon mentioned about the idea of trauma. And, like, part of my background running this nonprofit Build A Bridge is understanding how how trauma manifests and and what we do with trauma. And, again, like, the power of the arts is to, you know, put words to feelings and and literally and metaphorically to to push outside what has been stirring on the inside. And, like, you you know, potentially people who aren't dealing with this and these huge lifestyle changes that have existed into unemployment uncertainty, As a result of that, that that can alter people's health outcomes. You know? And if their health outcomes are altering, then then the people around them are also being affected by that. So, like, this isn't just about writing songs for people to have them on the airwaves and do something cute. This is really, like, the people who are experiencing this are experiencing relief by going through this process. I'm a 100% sure about that. And then the added value of it is that other people are exposed to it as well. And, like, oh, maybe these words are resonating with me, and I feel like I'm not alone anymore. Or maybe I'm I'm activated to do something that the the the potential results of this are exponential.
As folks are seeking maybe to to process the trauma you mentioned and they interact with the process, how how does that kind of work, when they've mentioned that interest that they wanna get paired up with a songwriter to kinda share their story?
Yeah. So people who are interested can sign up on wethesongwriters.org. There's a simple Google form that you fill out to say whether you're a saw storyteller, a songwriter, a songwriter, or both. We've got people who are involved in both camps. It also talks about topic areas you're interested in, so that we can match people with similar interests. We also ask for physical location in case we compare people who can meet in real life, though that hasn't happened yet. So we've got people across the country. And then we review the spreadsheet of people who sign up, look at their interests, and make matches. Once you're matched, you get an email introducing you to your partner, and you can take it from there. We let it we leave it up to you how you wanna communicate. We've seen a few different models emerging. Some are having conversations over a video call. Sometimes the storyteller's emailing a story to the songwriter, and we even have a couple situations where we have feds who are also songwriters who are doing cowrites with their songwriter. We're basically making the connections, and then you can do what works for you. We have a couple of really cool partnerships going on. One is a cowrite with two people who said they wanted their songs available to be sung by anyone at protests. Another is a theme song for USAID that Amin wrote, which we will talk about later. And we're making some really cool connections be between people who want to be human with each other. It's all about the humanity. I just wanna point out the storytellers or the federal employees, can choose to be anonymous so their names aren't tied to their songs. We don't wanna put people in a place where they're putting themselves at risk, so this is a good way to get the story out there without having your name attached to it unless you want it to be. Do you wanna talk about your process for when, when you were matched?
Yeah. So, you know, matched with a USAID, worker and, got in touch with each other, And and my first job is to listen, and and for me, it's just to listen, and taking as much notes as possible. And, you know, the the the one hand I'm listening to it just to listen, the other hand is the songwriter listening to, like, what kind of sentences or word structure might come from just them talking and thinking about how does this manifest artistically. I believe we might have had one more conversation after that. And then, I got to work. And they had suggested listening to, this song Labor by, Paloma. I'm trying to think of her full name. But it's a tomb called labor. And the USAID worker was like, I kinda like divide with this, and it actually had been used in some memes to talk about what's going on. And so that was in the back of my head. And so also read the USAID substack, Friends of USAID substack, which is also some really, really powerful narrative there. And so I kinda just filled myself up, but then also I have some past experiences with the USAID and and person to person diplomacy from when I was living in Israel and Palestine, having also been the recipient of government funding to run, a music program that that was person to person diplomacy and being part of other conflict transformation projects. And so, you know, conflict transformation really, depends on on engaging with people. And so I I engaged with this USAID worker as much as humanly possible and then and then went to work and had one of those serendipitous experiences that, like, you dream of as a songwriter and, like, the words literally spilled forth, you know. And what you hear is, like, maybe 85% of what was written originally and then a feedback session with the USAID worker, once or two no. Two two or three times going back and forth. How does this sound? And they actually added a lot of words to it as well. And, once I I played it a bunch of times, let it sit for a few weeks, you know, sat down one night and belted it out a few times until it was right, and then got the blessing from the USAID worker. And here we are with, the USAID song, which really doesn't have a title yet. I think it's just, we are USAID for the for the time being. But, yeah, I'm I'm extremely proud of it.
Yeah. And that was one where they randomly found us and reached out. It wasn't somebody I knew. One of the few instances where a federal employee reached out to us.
Oh, that that's really interesting. I have a I have a couple of follow ups for that. Ami, to you first. It sounds like you've done this kind of, like, person to person work in both, like, a diplomatic context as well as an artistic context before. As you were working with this person, was there anything that surprised you about how things went and you ultimately end up kind of cocreating something together?
I mean, the the openness and willingness to receive, like, isn't something I take for granted. Like, sometimes there's pushback. Sometimes there's there's deeper rifts that open up as a result of this. It's a very tender process. You know? But this would this person was so, was full of so much gratitude of having this attention being given to USAID that, it really it really went smoothly. The the hardest thing was just navigating time differences, honestly. And not not not the time differences in the song. I'd be just straight up, like, where this person was located. So this was really, it was really wonderful. You know? I can't I can't say there's anything negative or even constructive feedback about this. This is this is how it should go. You know? Like, it it was it was a pleasure.
And, Janet, you mentioned that this person just kind of happened to to find you all. Did did you get a sense from them for how they wound up kinda your way? Or
I don't know. Ami, did you ask when you talked to them?
You know, I just assumed that they had reached out to you. You know, that was I didn't even realize it was a a a random occurrence and stuff. I would I wish I'd asked about that more. Like, what were you putting into the search engine? What were you looking for? Like, that that's a really interesting context.
They probably saw it on our social media, so it's probably blue sky or there is a signal chat that I mentioned it in that that could have come from. Yeah.
I guess, somebody you don't know showing up is may maybe a good signal for your your current outreach efforts. But, I guess, maybe, hopefully, the podcast will add to that as as we get this out as well. Alright. Folks, we have the benefit of, being able to listen to one of these songs. Ami, who's obviously here with us, has given us permission to play what they worked on with the USAID person that we've been talking about. So I'm gonna go ahead and play it for y'all, and then we'll talk about it a bit afterwards. So here we go.
Read while facing down some disease you saw from your TV screen. Sixty four years of open and hours, some game that we play, we stand, we fight, we give so others can live, and we never walk away. We are the people of, we are the people of USA, USA. We are the people of, we are the people of USA. And I see you've gone through me, saying something about liberty and how America first somehow preserves our worth, cutting ties to humanity. But the lies at stake, but you're taking root the pie, got smoke in your eyes, you're fanning the fire, well, you're the blameless, rolls up in flames. Sixty four years of opening our hearts. Lifting love voices, building bridges to a better world. You don't know how much we gain. This ain't some game that we play. We stand, we fight, we give so others can live, and we never walk away. We are the people love. We are the people love. We are the people love. USA. We are the people of USA. Jose, can't you see? Until all of us are free until all of us are free. We are the people of
Living moment to kinda let that flow over us. But now that we've each had a chance to listen to it together, how do you feel? Like, what's your reaction to hearing the song?
I mean, I I want the words to stick. You know? It's like, I write a song. We write a song. Anybody writes a song, and it's it's like going off a diving board. Right? You know? I'm I'm running. I'm running. I'm running, and I jump off that three meter diving board. I'm in the air, and, I feel good. I feel good, and I I feel like I'm in the air with it right now. Like, I I know I got off. I've there's good momentum for the song, and it's flying through the air. And the question is, like, is it gonna stick the landing? You know? And so I'm I'm hoping the words stick. I'm hoping the words resonate. I'm hoping the words like, there's a couple, like, you know, zingers in there about about, you know, taking taking people to the pyre and stuff and the sacrifice that's taking place for the sake of this American First policy and, you know, the sixty four years of USAID. And, you know, of course, like, things things need to change in every federal organization, but this is this is unacceptable the way it went down. And so just to really to put it in words and to frame it as such that there's there's much more at stake than than, what the the federal government seems to frame this as. Much, much more at stake. And that we take for granted.
Yeah. And I would say having heard this song a handful of times now that they are the the lyrics are sticking in my head. They they come out in in in my brain all the time. And I I really like how you took the the individual stories that you heard and made it broader and about how it ties into the whole country and freedom. And, I mean, even the chorus, the USAID could be taken as USAID. Like, it it's the local and the global coming together. I I really like that.
I I also heard that USAID is, like, USAID kind of connection there. I'm imagining that was intentional. I thought that was a very clever device.
You know, it wasn't it it wasn't it wasn't. Like, it was one of those things I heard I heard it, and then I'm just I was gonna it's funny. Like, I have friends who use homonyms in their songs. Right? And then sometimes they don't reveal what the homonym is. And so, you know, yeah, if you look at the lyrics online, that's what it says. But what you hear, like, I'm I'm more than happy with both of those takeaways.
Oh, that's really cool. It's maybe that's, like, some of the fun with art is those discovery of the things of the like, the unintended things people find in your in your work. Another line that kinda stuck with me immediately, I've only heard this, like, a couple of times, so it's a little fresh for me still, is, I think it was something online. It's like, you don't know what we gave the same a game we play. I think it's like something I might be paraphrasing a little bit. That that was, like, very catchy and stuck with me. And I think as a, like, a pretty strong punch, like, that got me, like, in the chest. I imagine, like, somebody yeah. Hit me in the feels. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's it. That's the empathy piece right there. You know? Like, you know, somebody clearly looked at the budget of USAID and saw it as a line a line item and just scratched it off. You know? But right now, the transfer to like, that that transforms for you. It transforms for all of us in that, you know, not to get too poetic, but, like, you know, it's not just a line, but it's a it's a it's an IV. It's a it's a I don't know. It's a it's a conduit for energy and food and experience and all these things that that that gets detached by the way the way the federal government has handled this.
Ami is, you know, part of the you know, as the creator of this, I imagine you've heard it many, many times at at this point. Do you still find kind of elements in in your creation that maybe, come up to the surface that you weren't thinking of earlier in the process?
I mean, this it takes me much longer to write songs, generally. They don't come this quickly. You know? I'm I'm my self critic is is wicked loud and a big, big, big thing that often gets in the way of my process. But it it minimizes itself when it comes into places like this. And so, honestly, like, this song I haven't sat with this song for a long time, it feels like. It's been been six weeks or something like that, not six years. And so, yeah, it's still fresh and, things might come up soon also of, like, oh, I should change this. I should do this. You know? And but on the other hand, like, I'm I'm happy where it is and happy to, again, to to wax poetic, like, to set it free to let the bird, you know, leave the nest and see where it flies off to. You know?
And since we're dipping the into process a little bit, I mean, can can you tell us a bit about the process you went through in in writing the song?
Yeah. So I'm, I'm a religious note taker. And, you know, people ask, did you come with the melody work or or come up with the words first and stuff? And I, like, just have, like, pages pages pages of this Google Doc of of stuff that was discussed and things that I wanted to add and other sources and things like that. And I read through it and internalize as much as possible. And then, then I went to that song, that, labor song by Paris Paloma and listened to that a bunch of times. Like, what's that vibe? What's that drive? What's that anthemic, like, feel? How do I how do I get to that? And I, one of the things I teach when I song write is, like, to to go from speaking to chanting to musifying to adding adding music to words, you know, and then changing the length of of a word and maybe the pitch of it and kinda just working with that and, you know, I think I started working on it, like, 11:30 at night, 11:45 at night in my kitchen by myself. My kids were asleep. And, like, again, a spiritual moment. Like, I surrendered myself. Like, that self criticism, like, I I let go away and just let myself go down every path, every curve, every turn that my ideas were giving giving me until, like, the the the journey became a little bit more, less foggy, more clear. And then and then, yeah, the proverbial, the song started writing itself. And especially when those verses come in with that, like, kind of rap rhythmic, syncopated feel to it, it became a little bit easier to drop words into that. And the the words you're seeing on the on that pre course were actually a little bit different. And those were most half of those were written by the the USAID worker when she was like, oh, let's let's switch this around because I it was originally a much more of an attack song. It was, I was I was, I was a little angry, honestly, like and then having the conversation also reframe the context of it as let's let's bring people in as opposed to make it a little bit polarizing, you know. And so I think the song is is good at speaking truth to power while also, like, galvanizing the public to understand what's happening and to to to to make the tent larger of of people who wanna support this.
I I think that is maybe an example of you were talking earlier in our conversation about kind of that processing of these strong feelings of of trauma along the way. Maybe the song starting off as this, like, attack song and kind of changing in your process is, like, a great example of that.
Yeah. No. Absolutely. I mean, it's it's funny. We're, you know, we're we're the I love using this line. We're, like, the president of the hair club for men, but we're also the client. You know? If you remember that if you remember that commercial from the eighties where it's like, if we're going to to preach this and expect other people to do it, we also have to go through this as well. And, like, you know, there's so much I can learn from someone who doesn't call themselves a songwriter and vice versa and, like, that's that's the place I put myself in. And, like, it it also relates to, like, how we should be talking about and relating to people. Everyone everyone's lived experience of their lived experience, and we need to hear their lived experience for what it is to be able to process it and be careful about putting our judgments and our characterizations of it on somebody else unless we we we cooperate and we we consent to go into that place. You know? And that's what's so important about this process is that it's putting myself out of body and understanding someone else's experience from their perspective and then adding my perspective to it. You know? It's a really beautiful, synergy that results from from something like this.
And, Shannon, as someone who's done a lot of organizing work, trying to get this sort of partnership thing together, what's your kind of reaction and feeling kinda hearing about this kind of firsthand experience with the idea?
I think it's great that this is happening. And we were so lucky to get Omni involved because he's done this before. And then so when we got the USAID, the person that I was like, oh, I'm giving them Omni because he's done this before. He knows what he's doing. This is a high stakes. So
Yeah. And actually so, apparently, USAID has, like, an in house songwriter composer. If you go to Spotify, there's a Friends of USAID, like, playlist of, like I don't know where these songs are from yet. I'm willing to hear back from the person who's responsible for it, but there's also a lot of tunes out there. Like, I recommend looking it up, the USAID Friends of USAID playlist on Spotify. And there's some really, like, well produced tunes that also, like, really powerful statements about what's going on. So there's something happening there. And, I mean, I think out of all the organizations that that I've heard from, like, you know, there's obviously local issues and the arts organizations that are being attacked right now. But the USAID one was a hit, was a massive, massive hit because it stretches globally. No one was untouched by that. You know?
Oh, and worry not, folks. I will endeavor to seek out that link to that playlist as I know there's probably folks out there like, wait. They have a playlist? I need to, like, I need, like, open Spotify and get there. And I would be one of those people if I weren't in front of microphone and it was instead listening. So we'll get that into the show notes. Cool. For folks out there listening, maybe that, you know, they're hearing our conversation and they're getting excited and they're like, you know, maybe I have a story or I wanna volunteer. I just in some way wanna get involved in this important work y'all are doing. How can they go about doing that?
So you can go to wethesongwriters.org and fill out the sign up form. We have a shortage of federal plays and other storytellers at the moment. We have songwriters waiting to tell your story. So if you are interested, please sign up. We also need someone who's good with social media and, the other ways of getting our stuff out there. We don't have anyone who's super good at it right now, and our social media posts are very sad because I do them. So if anyone's interested in helping with that, there is an option on the forum to get involved without writing a song. And, yeah, that's how you get involved.
And, if there are folks that, say they can't get directly involved for one reason or another, whether it's because of their work, you know, things being of a sensitive nature for the personal situation, or what other other constraints there might be, are there other ways they can
help you out? Yeah. If you could share songs far and wide. The the getting the the word out is a big part of this. So they're on waythesongwriters.org, and there's links to our social pages on the website. There's also a YouTube playlist. Right now, we're collecting all the songs in YouTube because that's kind of the fastest way to get them out there. And so sharing, following essential social media, all of that is good.
And then as we, get kinda close to our our close here, is there anything else either of you wanna share for folks in the audience that are, you know, curious about this work y'all have been doing?
I would I mean, I would just say that whether you become a part of we are the songwriters or not, that if you're someone who's being affected by the the events taking place today, that to find the time to do something creative, to be able to process those feelings both physically and emotionally that you're holding inside of your body and process that outward. You know? If you're taking care of yourself, you'll be much much more of a of an asset to what's taking place in the community. And so it might sound selfish to be like, oh, you need you time right now, but it's not. Like, self care is is so essential, to be able to to navigate this world right now because, you know, once you start interacting with people and bouncing off of them, you know, they're gonna feel you being dysregulated or upset and hurt, and, you know, they're gonna feel that too. And so if we can reverse that trend and to to change how our our chemistry is reacting to do some things that make us feel good and feel better, it'll make us much more apt to, to put up the fight to to to change what's taking place in the world and in society. So moral of the story is take care of yourself so you can take care of others, and we can take care of you.
Yeah. I've been going to yoga three to four times a week, and it's helped.
Shannon, Ami, thank you both for coming on and telling your stories as well as telling the story of this fantastic initiative we, the songwriters. I've I've no doubt folks are gonna be interested to to go out and explore and see what's being created and also maybe help build some empathy together. So, again, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much. Visit us on the web at civictech.chat, or subscribe to us for content updates wherever it is you download your podcasts.
