GM Farcaster special episode: Mental Health Action Day

adrian always says chic bangs no it was like it was an old childhood nickname thanks one time when i cut things and like an uncle called me bangs forever and so oh my gosh that's where my artist and dj name came from i love it what would be feminine

yeah thank you so much for having me first of all i'm so excited to chat with you too i'm sheik bangs i've been a working professional artist for fifteen years now i actually started before that working in retail doing visual displays like all the window displays and things like that i was a visual artist working like that which was really fun and then i met my partner in 02/2007 we got married in 02/2008 and i learned after we got married that he was a dj we were at a house party and the turntables were set up and he was like oh i'm i'm gonna hop on i was like what

never we did it really we were like really quick so so i will say but yeah it never came up i knew that he made music and that was about it and i was raised as a classically trained musician so it was like a great fit you know so we're at this house party and i was like sure i'll give it a whirl and i had an a knack for it and i absolutely loved it so i practiced and practiced at home he got his turntables out of storage i didn't even know he had turntables

and i practiced and then i had my debut like club gig the following winter like the following january in 02/2009 and then the two of us had a lot of club residencies together we were djing five six nights a week doing art galas runway shows in the club you know all kinds of things and then i became a mom in 02/2012 so when we became parents that didn't exactly fit with nightlife so we needed to reimagine it and just became more selective with what kind of gigs we would accept and you know if it's gonna take us away from our child then it needs to be something we're passionate about i was used to djs being undervalued and like oh you'll just come do this for free right right and so so i always kind of had that like sure i'll do that like i'll donate my time you know that's that's a great cause so that was already kind of built into my artistry anyway and we had been making music together since 02/2010 and after becoming a mom that was like my full focus was being a mom and making sure i was being the best version of myself that i could be and really working through a lot of things i didn't know that i needed to that came up in the process and i at that time i went back to get certified in a i did a six month immersion mindfulness and and movement immersion to be certified as an instructor and that was really cool i knew right away that i wanted to combine music and mindfulness and like all of my passions into one and i tested that with my first concept which was called nightlife yoga and it was really really fun it went really really well

by the way nightlife yoga

exactly i'm i think it's time to breathe new life into that project because it really was very cool and it was a great way to get people socializing in a healthy way you know with our well-being as the focus so that was really fun and i've had a lot of great opportunities and experiences since learning about web three and performing in the metaverse in 2021 i was my husband and i were booked to perform for a music fest in decentraland in december 2021 and it was through that process that i met the woman who works with mental health action day and she reached out and she was like i know this is something you're passionate about would you be interested in joining our partner network and i was like yes of course and so you know last year i was in a healing cave somewhat and i had written this song shake and i was like what am i gonna do for this activation and i i just kept coming back to my own practice my own dance practice and just the power of like shaking our physical bodies which we'll get into that a little bit more but i i thought okay let's activate and we'll just shake together and you know the tech was like the gallery was great the exhibit was great because it was static and then the livestream was like we had some hiccups but yeah i'm super thrilled to be here today and and this feels more like up my alley right now just conversations and and sharing and stories and resources and all the fun stuff so that's a little bit about me and how i got into this this project

yeah so there is a special poap you'll need to download the app so that you can get the secret code word which we'll share at the end of this broadcast and yeah it's just like a a fun souvenir that you came you took some some action for your mental health by connecting with others today and then tomorrow after everybody's had a chance to like take action today and through the evening and things there are channel specific poaps that will go live tomorrow there's one for rcaster there's one for the art channel there's one for fashion there's one for hire and adhd and parenting and all kinds of fun stuff so those will go live tomorrow but yeah the claim for that the secret word will be shared at the end today and then we have a very special announcement that i'm super excited about this is a farcaster native collaboration that i've been working on and yeah we have a special guest joining us toward the end for that too so

yeah absolutely and in case i forget i wanna put a pin in that like taking care of yourself first and putting on the oxygen mask because there was something that was really powerful that helped me kind of reframe that and mental health action day you really nailed it it's driving the culture from awareness to action and i i find that you know we can we can be passionate about all these things like we need to do something we need solutions right that's a big part of what unites us in blockchain tech is like let's do something with this and elevate our systems and really like change things and it was the taking action piece that caught my attention because i am all about like let's just go let's do it like even if it's you know messy or an ugly win like let's just let's just try it and we'll figure it out and i think a lot of times we can get so stuck we hear all the news we know what's going on what can i do about it you know i'm barely hanging on myself or i'm just trying to do this or my family has this going on or you know there's always so much and one of the things i love about this specific collective action is like you mentioned it's one hour and that doesn't have to be like okay clock in here's one full hour i did it good job it can be twenty minutes in the morning twenty minutes in the afternoon twenty minutes in the evening it's just the intentional practice of i'm gonna take some action for my mental health right now by doing x y z i'm going to really really savor this cup of coffee while i write in my journal for twenty minutes i'm gonna call a friend that i haven't talked to in twenty minutes for twenty minutes i'm gonna go for a walk you know it's literally anything i love you know bob's burgers i'm gonna watch an episode of bob's burgers for my mental health it can be anything it's something that makes you feel connected to yourself and that that's the theme for this year is connection so social connection it's a way to target the loneliness epidemic and i i have found through my practices through my teaching that if we can connect with ourself if we feel good with ourself then we can extend it outward that's where the oxygen mask you know comes like put it on yourself first that's where that comes from because then we can radiate out and when i became a new mom

and tell everybody what i'm doing or i could just like stay home and do it it was so awesome i thought

right

nice

i love that so much just being present with your senses you know like what am i hearing seeing smelling tasting feeling you know i love that so much and that's exactly it it's the reframe and that's what i wanted to put a pin in is that i had a mentor when i was a new mom and she said if you bring a little intention to the little things you'll realize how much you're already caring for yourself as a parent you're reparenting yourself while you're parenting your child so i can tell my child you need to get this many hours of sleep or you need to go to bed and do this or it's not great to eat a heavy meal right before bed all of those things it was like wait am i doing those things as well right and then realizing that setting that foundation is a huge piece of self care so am i drinking water amazing great job you know did i reach out to someone today did i stay in my sweats all day because i needed the extra rest and not beat myself up for it great you know and for anyone that's

i'm sitting here in my adidas track pants like yep but like and even this stream like this is us connecting this counts so anyone that shows up

as my absolutely absolutely

something that helps me with that i i also have that struggle sometimes and if i notice like my mind is just like i'll stop and just do a mind dump and i will write everything out and then you know it becomes really clear what you actually need to focus on and what your brain is just like what about this what about that what about this you know

mhmm

cleaning too i like like cleaning once i reframed cleaning as self care because someone said that one time they're like cleaning is my form of self care and i was like that's weird but okay and then i thought about it and i was like you know i actually feel amazing afterward so yeah that's a huge piece of self care when the dishes are done or when the laundry is put away and you finish and you're just like that

yeah interesting like you said you come back in it feels like a sanctuary because you don't have to get to work immediately

on that

yeah i asked her if she would want to curate something and she was thrilled to support you know something a mental health initiative and so yeah i i sent her you know this is some of the work these are some of the artists that i i didn't have time to like put a call out but i hand selected just a few

well yeah and then it turned out so great i love her eye for curation

it stands for acknowledge support and keep in touch love it so there's there's a video resource i can share on that as well i'll share it in the show notes but yeah people can watch this video and it helps to start some dialogue and really just take away the mystery of you know like when you know someone's struggling and you don't know what to do just ask them how can i how can i help you how can i support you what do you need

was it looks great i love that

so that was

yeah before we move on to shake i wanted to share that there is a co curation opportunity on frameboard for anyone to go and share what mental wealth it's called mental wealth what mental health or wealth looks like to them and it can be a picture from your day it could be something online that you resonate with it could be art you've collected it it can be anything on frameboard but that's up for cocuration right now yeah on framework so oh very cool yeah

what are we shaking we're shaking it all out so this is a project that i had an idea for years ago and i was once a professional tahitian dancer i grew up with a bunch of pacific islander some of my best friends are pacific islanders and they brought me to a class one day and you know they were like come try it with us and the choreographer and the troop mother asked if i wanted to join the competition team and i felt totally out of my element i've always grown up with music and dance but this was really really hard for me to like shake my hips in a really fast way and so i would go to rehearsals and then i would go home and practice and the the mom of the troop she she was you know an older grandma and she would go around and say you need to get your shake you need to get your shake to all of us dancers because we weren't like shaking fast enough or you know in rhythm and so i could just hear that in my mind when i was at home practicing and i realized like this is this is really powerful and when i got my shake it was like shackles fell i mean it just like it was like starting a lawnmower and it just like went and i had remembered this book that my mom shared with me called waking the tiger and it's a trauma book and the and the author peter levine he talks about his research in in the animal world with mammals they will shake after they've had an experience with a predator or something that has you know like rattled their nervous system they just like pull up like shake it off immediately but humans have kinda lost that and through his research he was finding this like connection how powerful that is for our nervous system so i had that in the back of my mind and then i experienced it and i was really shaking through you know some old trauma that i had grown up with my 13 year old sister was killed in an auto bike accident when i was 11 and so i mean it just like cracked my foundation right like at 11 years old i learned like life is temporary i didn't expect to get emotional dang it

and so i realized like wow my body is really storing this trauma like i had no idea how locked i was and it was so liberating and so so powerful to be able to just like experience that moment it was such a breakthrough and so when i started producing music i thought there is nothing like tahisian drums like it's so unique the pattern the drumbeat the sound the tone and the texture and so i always wanted to create a song where i could like honor that and then it just you know i kept it on ice as a creative it's like oh that's a great idea someday or like you know maybe when the time is right and it surprises me how often we're planting seeds for ourself and we don't even realize it until later we're like wow i planted that like months ago or years ago that's wild and it was one of those moments i was invited by emon europe a beautiful like musician in web three she invited me to drop on sound and i was like okay this is a new like this is a new era this is new territory so i'm gonna i'm gonna create this song meanwhile i was healing from ramsay hunt syndrome so i'm literally like in my bedroom couldn't even really go downstairs to where the instruments were so i had to get really creative to meet this deadline and so i shared this behind the scenes footage that i captured and i minted it just yesterday it's called making shake and it's like me record you know like working out the drum like working out the the beats and and the slide on my notebook like that that sample is actually in the song it's like kind of like a zip sound and my voice is sampled throughout i i put a lot of root and like foundational elements into the song and into the art because i wanted it to feel like this primal like raw you know i didn't overmix it or anything like that it it has a rawness to it intentionally because i want people to just like energetically and vibrationally like kind of absorb that as they listen so that it it connects them to themselves and to their their own power just through shaking so that's where i wanted to combine the two and then with the activation i was like what am i gonna do well i had released the song and i was like you know what shaking is really powerful let's activate around that last year didn't have a theme so this is the first year that there was like a theme for mental health action day so it was kinda up to us what however we wanted to activate and so i created shake for mental health and it's been really really amazing i've been able to have some cool conversations with people and just a lot of you know moments with like wow that's so instinctual already like of course and i am all about those simple like what can i do right now on the go you know someone cuts you off and you feel stressed like what can you do to like to like not navigate that but like counteract that you know so that's how the project and the kind of led to the activation is like through the dance through the music it just all came together and i was sitting back like watching this expand into this bigger project like wow this is really wild and very cool

we're like seated on camera you know like with your arms shake your legs out but like it really does feel so good just to shake

that's the sound

get that

yes perfect yeah i have yeah well that was kind of

a video shaking to the like a clip of the song

i thought it was so funny

so there you go yes yes

you know

yeah it's been a while since i've seen that so that was

yeah i do love that too

right yeah

that's awesome

you know i actually am it's funny you mentioned that because i'm working on a really cool like ep version that includes remixes so there's one instrumental remix that i i mentioned on shane yesterday by an artist named sigmund and it's really fire and then there are a few others that are that i'm working on right now not me other artists are working on and then that will come out around the same time as the music video and that i'm collaborating with a couple of dancers and so the project is still growing i'm kind of a i take things a little slow sometimes when it comes to that it's like i'm not gonna force the time to go

i did see that

trend alert you need like a cute little like

yeah so the app will go live at like right at the end of the show

we're going to be on the call

the answer is yes we'll

have to listen back

pull up the horse the horse meme that has a clip it's in the gallery

that's a video yeah

there you

both yeah that's also a good song yeah that's good

it's so good yeah

yeah shout out to matt he just cranked this out so fast and i was like don't stress we can do it like he's like no let's go we we can do this we can do this

it's been great

it's great i went and read it like and it's yeah it's so great and we just yeah

just kind of serendipitously it was like i happened to like see a reply from someone and i was like hey i am into what you're creating let's chat and then yeah went from there

do you have the frame where you can pull it up yeah

for sure yeah

me for choosing a hoodie in the summer but i know what it is we still have cool evenings

that's true

about air conditioned buildings

real quick

yeah why not love that it's probably on another frame that you could see around the hood right yeah another one

not right there

so those are coordinates to somewhere close to where i live in utah and the reason they're there is because in 2021 may i think it was may twenty first of twenty twenty one scientists detected this ultra high energy particle that blasted earth and that's where they detected it was from us and that's wild they named it in november they published the scientific papers for it and everything and it's called the goddess particle so the last time that earth was blasted with something like this was in like 1991 and they called it the god particle or the oh my god particle because they didn't know where it came from what is this and it's the same thing it's from beyond the void they don't know where it came from they have no idea no reference point for it so they named it amoratsu which is the japanese goddess who in mythology created japan and i just thought it was so beautiful and like such a really cool way to kind of anchor the goods that i wanna be putting out as a like a reminder like to remember that you're part of like something bigger like energy is within all of us and this huge blast of just like powerful light energy hit the earth and it's in us you know just like the sun like we're we're all part of the light so i i thought it was a cool like signature to add to all of the goods that i'll be

and matt has been studying it so what's your take on it

and it's gonna have a chip too right is that

just like right there on your heart you'll have resources for mental health you can donate cool and you have an authentication for it too yeah

yeah

so did you know that's that area you work for salt lake oh yeah

really really good that's how our first call a

we started connecting all these dots on our very first call we already know it's collaborate yeah that's really cool

you can cut the sleeves off no i'm just kidding don't do that

it's gonna

so every metric counts this is gonna be interesting to see how i can track that this year that was part of my my use of you know poaps and using the frame board and things like that it'll kinda help tracking the metrics and having it be mostly through broadcaster will also help as well but every like every recast every collect every share every purchase of the hoodie like everything is going to count and when i have the partner network rep call i think it's like next week or the the following week and we report our metrics it's always really exciting to see like just those little tiny things they matter you know they really do

sure the secret

where did it write it down

i'm like let me check my notes

h that's right shake for mental health that's the one

not

oh it's okay

which yeah

you didn't

and collect the free mints on zora there's a lot of artists that have contributed they're all free free plus fee on zora to collect

and matt and i will be joining the fashion channel to do a little ama about the hoodie and about evolve so directly after this we'll be in the fashion channel on for caster too

like a