The Mindful Activist – Episode 13 Alanna Shaladra
Matt Ready: …With microphone [laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: That could help.
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Voilà.
[Alanna sings]Alanna Shaladra: I’m surprised you don’t have a little theme song yet.
Matt Ready: A theme song?
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah!
Matt Ready: Maybe today is the day.
Alanna Shaladra: Today is the day!
Matt Ready: Something that you might start singing.
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t know. I think I would need to end my night with whiskey to write that song.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Because it is my show? [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: No. Just to write a little jingle is what I would need.
Matt Ready: Alanna Shaladra.
Alanna Shaladra: That’s me.
Matt Ready: Yeah. We’re about to go live.
Alanna Shaladra: All right! He’s here!
Matt Ready: Woohoo!
Alanna Shaladra: Here he comes, Mr. Samuel. [Alanna sings and waves an invisible flag]. Sorry I don’t have a flag for you. Next time.
Matt Ready: We’re live!
Alanna Shaladra: Oh my goodness!
[Matt is off screen arranging the equipment]Matt Ready: And… I can’t remember, does…? I think it will turn it. The interface here looks like — I hope it’s not like turning the wrong way but if it is, it is.
Alanna Shaladra: Whatever. It will be interesting. How are you? Sleepy?
Samuel: Apparently.
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: You know I got up early and I was like, uh! Couldn’t get ready in five minutes and then you weren’t there so I could have just like actually gotten ready but I decided to stick with my five minute getting ready.
Samuel: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: It’s practice.
Samuel: It is.
Alanna Shaladra: And then I watched videos of people who are auditioning for The Voice and cried for like 30 minutes and now I’m here!
Samuel: [Inaudible 00:02:58].
Alanna Shaladra: It was! It was great. I was like —
Matt Ready: You cried for people auditioning —
Alanna Shaladra: I was like, [Alanna talks in a crying voice] “They’re so happy! This is just beautiful. Their lives are going to be changed forever! I don’t know if it’s good but they’re happy right now.”
Matt Ready: All right, cameraman, come over here. Fill your spot.
[Alanna sings]Matt Ready: This one, I think we’re good. Just leave it just like that.
Samuel: Cool.
Matt Ready: And so this is all gone so… You maybe just watch and see if we get any comments [inaudible 00:04:10] you can like just put your hand up if there’s something interesting, not if it’s like, you know, “Hi from whatever…” or if they actually ask something like, “Where did you get your hair done?” Or something and they want to know where I got my hair done.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Yeah, I know.
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
[00:04:27]Matt Ready: All right! Here we are! It’s been several weeks since we’ve had an episode, an official interview episode of The Mindful Activist webcast. My name is Matt Ready. I am the host of this webcast and I’m also an activist, an artist, author of the new book Revolutionary Mindfulness, founder of the Global Consensus Project and an elected a politician—I’m a hospital commissioner for Jefferson County, Washington—and I am very happy to be here today with a young woman that I have known since she was a baby, at least that’s the first time I saw her but we’ve been sort of friends since she was five years old.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! We were roommates when I was five. We got a house together for a while.
Matt Ready: We did! We did. Everyone thought it was kind of weird, me and five-year-old girl getting a house together.
Alanna Shaladra: Well, and my dad.
Matt Ready: Oh yeah! Right!
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah, yeah.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Yeah! So Alanna Dailey, amazing young woman and singer, performer… What else are you?
Alanna Shaladra: I am a person. I don’t know.
Matt Ready: A person, a human being.
Alanna Shaladra: I guess so.
Matt Ready: Excellent.
Alanna Shaladra: Water enthusiast.
Matt Ready: Okay. You like water —
Alanna Shaladra: I do.
Matt Ready: — without lots of flavor in it.
Alanna Shaladra: With no flavor in it.
Matt Ready: Straight water.
Alanna Shaladra: Straight water, yeah.
Matt Ready: Nice.
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t really like chlorine in it either.
Matt Ready: I hear ya.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. I guess I’m really — I’m passionate about music and I’m also passionate about just like body image and self-esteem.
Matt Ready: Interesting. So tell me more about that.
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t know. I should have prepared something to say.
Matt Ready: Well —
Alanna Shaladra: I’m slow to respond.
Matt Ready: That’s okay. Someday we’ll like edit the video down so we’ll cut out [crosstalk] any long pauses.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! So then it will look good. So I’m not like: “Uhm…”
Matt Ready: So do whatever you need to do in your process —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: — to think about your answer and we’ll pretend someday I’ll edit these videos. [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Perfect! Awesome! So when I’m in my thirties we’ll be like, “Hey! I got you!”
Matt Ready: Yeah. You look great in this highly edited version of the interview.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: [Mimics an edited video with cut speech]
Matt Ready: So I assume you’re talking about the way our culture [crosstalk] views body image.
Alanna Shaladra: Yes. Just the way that we view women’s bodies and even men’s bodies, ’cause I remember in kindergarten I told my friend I like to puke, it makes me feel better. And then, in high school I was bulimic and anorexic and I just had a really poor image of my body. And then there’s an organization made by a model called Katie Willcox and it’s called Healthy is the New Skinny and she came to the Chimacum School when I was like 16 and did a talk about body image and that really helped me start to pull myself out of my eating disorder and out of my deformed view of what I looked like ’cause I had pretty severe body dysmorphia, which is when you see yourself as way bigger than you actually are. So that — so when I see girls and women who clearly have an eating disorder it’s really hard for me to not just go up to them be like, “Stop it! You’re ruining your life! Don’t do it! You’re wasting your childhood!”
Matt Ready: Do you ever try that!
Alanna Shaladra: No. That doesn’t work. I don’t do it. I do it in my head but…
Matt Ready: Yeah. Do you like virtually do it, like you imagine I’m grabbing that woman [crosstalk] —
Alanna Shaladra: I imagine myself doing that —
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: — but you have to actually be pretty — it’s such a personal and sensitive subject, you have to know how to approach it based on the person.
Matt Ready: Sure.
Alanna Shaladra: And there’s a lot of people, like some of my friends, I’ve said like, “I know you have an eating disorder. I know you have body dysmorphia. I can’t tell you how to fix it but I’m here for you. If you want to fix it, I can help you but I’m not going to force you to.” It’s just like trying to get someone off of drugs. You can’t force them to stop smoking cigarettes or stop doing meth. You can’t stop people from their eating habits but you can support them and help them be aware of it.
Matt Ready: Well, you can if you can lock them in a room —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah!
Matt Ready: — and control their movements.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. And then they’ll just completely be grateful for you doing that.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: That’s what people love.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I mean, don’t like —
Alanna Shaladra: I love when someone tries to completely control me —
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: — by locking me in a cage and telling me, “No! You’re wrong!”
Matt Ready: I’m just saying. You were saying you can’t do it and I just want to point out you can do it —
Alanna Shaladra: You can do it if you want to maintain your positive relationship with that particular person.
Matt Ready: [Laughs]. It’s called the intervention.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah, but even with interventions you have to be careful on how you approach it. So anything really sensitive and personal with someone, you have to be very careful with how you approach it. And that’s hard.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: ‘Cause when I was bulimic, my parents didn’t really say anything to me but my step-mom was printing out papers that had facts about how bulimia can ruin your vocal cords and then one of my friends pinned it on my door so every morning when I woke up that was what I would have to see when I was opening my door. And when you have a fact sheet with gross pictures on it, like you [cannot] look at it.
Matt Ready: That was very clever of them.
Alanna Shaladra: It was clever of them to do that.
Matt Ready: It’s like a subtle subliminal…
Alanna Shaladra: So they didn’t tell me to stop. They just said like, “Here are some facts. I’m not even going to say anything. It’s on your wall.”
Matt Ready: Now, did you — at any point were you tempted to rip it down and throw it in the trash? Did you —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah, but that — when I had that feeling, that made me realize, “Okay, I’m doing something harmful to myself. If this is offending me so much then I must be guilty of doing it, I must feel bad about it.”
Matt Ready: So that is the moment of, you know, what was — sounds like your Moment of Truth.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: ‘Cause it was like, you know, it’s — and that’s what you can’t… you can’t help another person get to their Moment of Truth.
Alanna Shaladra: No!
Matt Ready: In a way that was your rock-bottom moment.
Alanna Shaladra: Exactly.
Matt Ready: It’s like either I start denying the truth of what I’m doing to myself or I face it right now and at that moment or — you allowed yourself to stand in front of that fact until it was stronger than your craving to —
Alanna Shaladra: To harm myself.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: To shape your body image. That’s like a different — that’s two layers of things going on there; your body image and your relationship to food, ’cause most people they just have this relationship with food that they cannot control.
Alanna Shaladra: Well, it’s a control issue with the eating disorder when people develop it when they don’t feel like they’re in control of their lives. So that’s why a lot of young girls do it ’cause they feel pressured by media to look a certain way; they feel pressured at school to do all these things; they feel pressured by their parents to do all these things. You’re growing up, your body is changing, your life is changing, you’re supposed to be maturing. You don’t understand things. You’re starting to be interested in relationships, in boys, or girls, or sex, or drugs. You’re curious about everything and it’s just so much, you get out of control. But the one thing you can control is how much or how little food that you eat because when you’re really young, your parents pay attention to what you’re eating because they’re feeding you but at a certain age you take over and you’re doing that yourself so no one can control it for you.
Matt Ready: And that transition from parental control of your food to you controlling your food, that can be kind of like a lot of friction between you and your parents.
[00:13:28]Alanna Shaladra: Well, it’s just like maturing ’cause —
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t — I think it would be weird if I was 16 and my dad packed my lunch. I mean, it works for some people.
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: I guess now I sometimes pack my dad’s lunch but…
Matt Ready: Yeah. I find diet-shaming very interesting.
Alanna Shaladra: Oh, yeah.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Food shaming, you know, it’s like — I mean because everyone eats and so everyone has an opinion about what foods are healthy and then lots of people have opinions about food in a moral sense and they have lots of ethical, you know, moral judgments about it, and some people view health as the moral high ground of food consumption, so… And particularly in this town where we live, there’s a lot of eccentric and varied —
Alanna Shaladra: And lots of judgment regarding it.
Matt Ready: Yeah. How do you relate to it when someone’s like, “Wrong! Whatever you’re doing with that food right now is wrong,” and they express that to you?
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t think it bothers me that much.
Matt Ready: No?
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t really get that —
Matt Ready: Do you get mockery for — I’m from the East Coast and my family were like so good at mocking people for —
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Oh, really! I can see that!
Matt Ready: Yes!
Alanna Shaladra: I’ve known you for 15 years.
Matt Ready: Yeah. So I do have skill. I have a lot of skill in the mockery realm but I’ve seen —
Alanna Shaladra: I’m — oh, I know that I have done it.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Mocking others?
Alanna Shaladra: Not really mocking others but just being like kind of judgy about what they’re consuming. [Until then], now I try to catch myself when I’m doing that ’cause I don’t want to be that kind of person and it’s really sad that — I’m really grateful that I can afford healthy foods and I guess it’s ’cause I mooch off my pants and I don’t pay any bills.
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: That’s why I [unclear 00:15:50]. If I had to pay bills — like I only for my phone and I buy groceries but if I had to pay for rent, and pay for a car, and all these things I’ll hopefully have in the next few years, I won’t be able to afford to eat like I do now or I’ll have to really really budget myself [unclear 00:16:16]. I can still eat healthy but I’ll have a lot less options than what I do now and I won’t get to like go to [Alo Spring] and get a smoothie all the time [laughs]. Good things like that. But a lot of people don’t even live near a place where they can get healthy foods like we do in Port Townsend. I can’t imagine living somewhere that there’s not fresh farms, organic farms nearby.
Matt Ready: Yeah. [Crosstalk] I can. That’s where I grew up, you know —
Alanna Shaladra: I can’t imagine that.
Matt Ready: — East Coast, suburban sprawl is what I grew up in so —
Alanna Shaladra: I go to the coop and I’m like, “Oh, I’m looking for this specific farm because that’s my friends farm.” I’m like, “Oh! This is Dharma Ridge? Yeah, I’m going to get Dharma Ridge. I lived at Dharma Ridge for three months with my mom and my aunt and I’ve known those people for my whole life.” Like, “Oh, Red Dog Farm? I’ve been there. Finnriver Farm? I’ve been there. I’ll get that.” I am so privileged to have that and I’m so lucky and grateful that I grew up here and I have those connections.
Matt Ready: Yeah. It’s a pretty amazing place.
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t want to live here forever and ever.
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: And it was so nice, I lived in France last year and they have market on Wednesday and Saturdays like we do, the Farmer’s Market uptown, and it’s huge!
Matt Ready: How big of a town were you in?
Alanna Shaladra: Where the market was it’s like 50 thousand people, I think. It’s called [Bourgogne Bresse 00:18:16], which is where my boyfriend lives, and I love that market and I was like, “Let’s stay here all day and just buy produce!” And they actually had live chickens. People would — it made me sad but also part of me is like, “This is awesome that there’s live chickens for people to buy for food,” and then the other part of me is like, “This is really horrible. I don’t want to see a live chicken and know that it knows it’s going to be food.”
Matt Ready: Do you think the chicken knows it’s going to be food?
Alanna Shaladra: It’s just scared. I think it doesn’t know what’s going on.
Matt Ready: Yeah. [Crosstalk] I think that’s the way we all feel all the time.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. [Crosstalk] What’s going on? Oh my God! [Makes chicken sounds].
Matt Ready: Scared [crosstalk] like chickens in little chicken cages like the market in France. [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Basically. Yeah. But I just — I guess how I contribute is I just try not — I don’t eat very much meat.
[00:19:20]Matt Ready: Well, let me ask you the question that I ask everyone.
Alanna Shaladra: Okay.
Matt Ready: Do you consider yourself an activist?
Alanna Shaladra: No. I —
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: I consider myself starting to be interested in it but I don’t feel like I’m an activist right now. I don’t think that I’ve — I don’t put too much focus, or my time, or my energy onto a lot of things that are going on. I try to stay notified and a bit updated but I don’t feel like an activist.
Matt Ready: How do you feel about the way our country works? The way our government works? I mean, do you basically feel like it’s pretty good, —
Alanna Shaladra: [Laughs]. No.
Matt Ready: — or so so, or where would you…?
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t understand a lot of it and the parts that I do understand just seem really shity.
Matt Ready: Like what?
Alanna Shaladra: Just — it’s like a group of people that are voting based off of what benefits them, so there’s a top very small percentage picking for everybody and it’s people who have never been in poverty. It’s a bunch of privileged men—and I’m sure there are some women in there too—a bunch of privileged people choosing like rules and regulations for people they don’t relate to in any way.
Matt Ready: Kind of messed up.
Alanna Shaladra: It’s really messed up! If you haven’t experienced like poverty, or discrimination, or all these other bad things, you can’t relate to it. You don’t know how it feels.
Matt Ready: Why would they want to know how that feels?
Alanna Shaladra: Well, they —
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: No one should know how it feels but it’s just — it’s just really sad. Like all the things of Planned Parenthood; why are they picking on Planned Parenthood? Especially if Planned Parenthood isn’t even government-funded. It’s just a distraction.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I think distraction’s a lot of how the people in power keep power.
Alanna Shaladra: It’s true! It’s about fear. How they keep power is — it’s just fear: “Oh, the Mexicans are all rapists! They’re stealing your jobs and they’re rapists!” Like, okay, a lot of Mexican immigrants are coming to U.S.A. and doing jobs that Americans think they’re too privileged and too good for. That’s not stealing our jobs. And also people aren’t coming here just to rape Americans. That makes it sound like, “Oh, I’m so great that everyone from another country poorer than my country wants to rape me.”
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: That sounds pretty privileged and stupid!
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Just like, “All Muslims are terrorists.” If you think all Muslims are terrorists, you’ve never met a Muslim person. I’ve met a lot of Muslim people and I do not feel they were terrorists. And also not all Muslim people look the same. There’s so much generalization about people and it’s just to keep us afraid and keep the hate going.
[00:23:52]Matt Ready: Yeah. I mean, I think about the debates that they get us, every presidential election, they get us arguing about or just sort of like very convenient closed debates; both answers are good for the people in power so it’s just like, you know, it’s like — that’s why I was drawn to activism like Occupy Wall Street ’cause they were going out on the streets and saying — changing the subject saying, “The problem is the 1% is controlling the entire government,” like basically what you just said.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: It was like, you know, you have to be an activist to change the topic ’cause you have to say, “Wrong topic; wrong question.”
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: And so in theory, good journalists, maybe bloggers could do that, you know, help change it but if the big media outlets are controlled by the people with all the money that are also trying to choose the topics it’s hard to change topics on the big media channels. Okay, so we can go two directions with the next question, okay?
Alanna Shaladra: Okay.
Matt Ready: We could go towards spirituality and science fiction-ish things or we could go towards Donald Trump.
Alanna Shaladra: I’m too tired for Donald Trump.
Matt Ready: [Laughs]. That’s good —
Alanna Shaladra: Donald Trump, I’m glad that you have a healthy family and you’re able to take care of them and your children are able to pursue their lives and their dreams. ‘Cause his children seem like genuinely happy people so…
Matt Ready: Wow.
Alanna Shaladra: That’s good. A lot of people are not genuinely happy.
Matt Ready: That was very nice of you to say [laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: So I didn’t say anything about him. I just mean his kids.
Matt Ready: Still, wishing a, you know, well wishes to a person’s family is generally considered a nice gesture.
Alanna Shaladra: Well, I think he has — he could have had some good ideas in there but…
Matt Ready: He could have but you don’t think he has any good ideas?
Alanna Shaladra: I’m sure he does but it’s hard for me to actually listen for very long.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: I’m just saying when it’s in his head it might have been a good idea; it’s just when he speaks, it just…
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: … it’s the spirituality —
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: That’s what I can focus on without getting too weird.
Matt Ready: Okay. All right, so we’ll shift away from Donald Trump.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. No one wants to talk about him. I mean, they do but…
Matt Ready: It’s kind of a love-hate relationship with the topic every human being has right now. It’s like sick of it, yet it’s also really —
Matt Ready: It’s also irrelevant.
Matt Ready: Irrelevant —
[Laughter]Matt Ready: — and there’s so much there to talk about.
Alanna Shaladra: Definitely.
Matt Ready: You can just — it’s like so many layers of bizarre, surreal reality.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: Okay. Well, we’ll go to a different part of a surreal reality.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. We’ll go to a more fun part.
Matt Ready: Okay. Here we go. So do you believe that there is anyone else listening to this conversation that you and I are having?
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Sam is!
Matt Ready: Okay.
Alanna Shaladra: Actually, I don’t know if he’s listening. He just shook his head. He’s not listening.
Matt Ready: Okay.
Alanna Shaladra: He’s head is just like [moves her head in a distracted way while singing].
Matt Ready: Besides Sam, do you believe there’s anyone else listening to this conversation in the entire universe?
Alanna Shaladra: In the entire universe? I’m going to guess there’s like two people on Facebook Live —
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: — and then I’m sure the government has something bugged in here, so maybe that’s about 20 people and…
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Okay.
Alanna Shaladra: But… No.
Matt Ready: Anyone — anything else beyond that? Any other… anything like ghosts, or aliens —
Alanna Shaladra: Or there could be ghosts.
Matt Ready: There could be ghosts?
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: So that’s a possibility?
Alanna Shaladra: Especially in this town.
Matt Ready: More ghosts in this town than in other places? Or more ghosts out in the open?
Alanna Shaladra: I think they’re just more free and open here [crosstalk] ’cause this was a town for like sailors and prostitutes so I think they’re just all over the place.
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: They’re just doing their thing.
Matt Ready: It’s like, why would they leave Port Townsend?
Alanna Shaladra: They can’t!
Matt Ready: Do you think there’s any in this room right now? Sailors and prostitute ghosts?
Alanna Shaladra: I think they’re mostly downtown.
Matt Ready: Downtown.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: And they might not be up this time of day.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. They’re sleeping.
Matt Ready: Sleeping until 3:00 in the afternoon, maybe.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. That’s what I would be doing too.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Okay. So seriously, are you open to the possibility that ghosts are real?
Alanna Shaladra: Yes.
Matt Ready: Okay. Anything else —
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t think they look like Casper the Friendly Ghost but…
Matt Ready: No?
Alanna Shaladra: …I’ve felt something that a ghost — that the definition of a ghost would explain.
Matt Ready: And do you feel like — See, if I believed in ghosts, if I believed they were real, I would just assume 24 hours a day one was watching me.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: I mean, is that the way you live or do you feel like, “They’re real but I’m pretty sure they leave me alone. They’re not watching me 24 hours a day like you know every human would if they could watch other humans”?
Alanna Shaladra: Well, I feel like they are at my work.
[00:30:07]Matt Ready: But not at home?
Alanna Shaladra: No. My house doesn’t feel creepy, it just — but at work —
Matt Ready: But is that just you psychologically not letting yourself think about ghosts watching you in your home? Because —
Alanna Shaladra: I think so. Well, now I’m going to think about it.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Yeah! That’s why I find this question interesting because it’s like it doesn’t really matter if your answer was ghosts, or God, or aliens, or whatever. It would —
Alanna Shaladra: I do believe in ghosts but I don’t constantly think about how I believe in them and I don’t constantly think about — well, I guess I believe that it’s possible.
Matt Ready: Do you ever talk to ghosts?
Alanna Shaladra: I kind of did when I was little but I don’t know if it was ghosts or imaginary friends.
Matt Ready: Okay. So you’ve got the idea of these invisible beings, ghosts, but they’re not terribly interested in your life.
Alanna Shaladra: No.
Matt Ready: It sounds like you think they might be there but they are not like sitting there, like right here, like with their head like staring at you.
Alanna Shaladra: No. I don’t think I do enough interesting things.
Matt Ready: Okay. Have you ever seen Big Brother, you know, that TV show? They just set up cameras inside this house of people and nothing really interesting happens except millions of people watch it ’cause they can?
Alanna Shaladra: No, I haven’t.
Matt Ready: No? Anyways.
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t watch shows like ’cause they’re not interesting.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: But millions of people do.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Welcome to…
Matt Ready: I’m just saying, if there’s ghosts then there’s millions of them and some of them would find you fascinating.
Alanna Shaladra: So we’re actually having a whole audience. True! Actually, if there’s millions and millions of ghosts there’s at least one that finds me fascinating.
Matt Ready: Actually, there’s probably at least a few thousand that find you fascinating [laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: Oh! There we go! So I already have a very successful music career from that!
Matt Ready: Yeah! And I have a very successful webcast.
Alanna Shaladra: There we go!
[Matt and Alanna high five]Matt Ready: We are popular in the ghost realm, if there is a ghost realm. So is there anything you want to say to the ghost realm audience?
Alanna Shaladra: Hi. Thanks for watching.
Matt Ready: You’re looking at the camera. You’re assuming a lot of them look at the camera feed?
Alanna Shaladra: They’re watching somebody else who’s watching the show.
Matt Ready: Yeah! Well, that’s the power of including other people at all is all the ghosts that are watching them are now, you know, in fact also watching us so it amplifies.
Alanna Shaladra: There we go. It could be.
Matt Ready: Okay. All right. I haven’t talked to anyone about that, the whole ghost thing, but let’s leave the ghosts. Besides ghosts and the humans on Facebook Live and Sam, who’s barely paying attention over there —
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Thanks Sam!
Matt Ready: You’re doing great!
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Do you believe anything else is listening to this conversation, like anything?
Alanna Shaladra: No.
Matt Ready: And are you absolutely sure of that or are you just like —
Alanna Shaladra: No.
Matt Ready: — or it just doesn’t like interests you to think about it?
Alanna Shaladra: Like my dad’s family is Southern Baptist and then I’ve had friends who were like Jehovah’s Witness and Mormon and — until I like heard about the Bible [of law 00:33:52], I’ve read pieces of it and I don’t believe in God like that. I don’t think that there’s one guy watching over every single person that ever existed and like judging.
Matt Ready: Do you think there’s one guy just sort of casually observing and not judging?
Alanna Shaladra: No.
Matt Ready: [Laughs]. Or maybe like 12, like Zeus and Athena and Artemis, may be [crosstalk] —
Alanna Shaladra: That’s way more fun. I don’t believe in anything but I also — I’ll never say that there’s not anything.
Matt Ready: But again, it’s not one of those things that you think it’s so possible that you’d really — that you ever like actually think it’s true. Like you do sometimes think that ghost thing is true but you don’t really think about the super ghosts [unclear 00:35:00] super ghosts. Do you ever think about super ghosts?
Alanna Shaladra: Well, I — kind of. Like I think about ghost ’cause it’s fun to be like, “Ooh, it’s a spooky building, and it’s haunted, and there’s ghosts, and they’re going to get you.” And then go to a haunted house or this haunted mansion.
Matt Ready: Yeah. So it’s fun.
Alanna Shaladra: It’s fun. Yeah. And there could be super ghosts. I just don’t base my choices off of that, I guess.
[00:35:36]Matt Ready: Well, what if there’s super ghosts? We’ll just go with super ghosts, [we won’t use] the word god.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: Super ghosts and they’re super because they can like somehow do stuff that interacts with our world. Where was I going with this?
Alanna Shaladra: I don’t know. We’ll see.
Matt Ready: What if they are just not — I mean, some people believe in their god, or religion, or whatever, because they at some point someone convinces them to just try it; try praying, try talking to it and see if the super ghost or whatever, gods, see if your life changes. And then sometimes people —
Alanna Shaladra: It works.
Matt Ready: It seems to work so maybe that’s what it is. Maybe you just need to try asking the super ghosts to do something.
Alanna Shaladra: But I see people asking their version of super ghosts like for stuff.
Matt Ready: It sounds like you’re judging what they’re asking for [laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: Well, if you’re — you’re not supposed to ask for stuff, apparently. I mean —
Matt Ready: How do you know that? Who told you? Did a super ghost tell you? [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: My preacher great-grandfather.
Matt Ready: Said, “Don’t ask for stuff.”
Alanna Shaladra: I’m pretty sure like — if you’re going to ask a super ghost, like don’t ask for stuff. Like if you —
Matt Ready: What should you ask for?
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Like you could start asking for… I don’t know, that’s really hard. It’s just really weird to me when I see people just on Facebook that are like, “Please pray for me and for — so I can get this thing,” this material thing, but it doesn’t bother me when people are like, “Please pray for me, I am in the hospital. Pray for my health, pray for my mental stability, pray for my ability to focus,” like that makes sense to me ’cause I really feel like the magic — I feel like we all have it, we all have a piece of it. I think when someone’s praying to God, you’re really looking inside yourself for an answer. My mom always tells me like, “You know the answer, you know inside of yourself what the answer is and what you think is right.” So some people need an outside source to do that. Some people need a second opinion and —
Matt Ready: You think God is a second opinion?
Alanna Shaladra: I think God is a second opinion ’cause you’re praying; you’re looking up to God for that second opinion —
Matt Ready: But unless God —
Alanna Shaladra: — but I think you’ve really — but I think what you’re really doing — my perspective of it is when you’re like looking up praying to God or looking down praying to God, whichever way you look, like you’re opening up yourself, you’re allowing yourself to be vulnerable because you have created God in your life as someone you can be vulnerable to and a lot of people don’t allow themselves to be vulnerable to themselves, or to their friends, or their family. But God is a safe person that you can talk to. And so I think that’s why people pray.
Matt Ready: Yeah. That’s really interesting ’cause I grew up Catholic and taught to pray from an early age and I was like, “All right, I’ll try this,” and I didn’t like to listen to anyone when they told me what to pray for and to use like standard written prayers; I was like, “Okay, I’m going to believe you that there’s some god I’m going to talk to but I’m going to talk to this god however I feel like I should,” you know? And I did. I prayed pretty much every night until I was in college and it was incredibly psychologically useful.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: It was mas- I mean it was like, I mean, what could be more empowering, especially at that age, you know, being a teenager and grown from a child to believe you can talk to God? It so really helped me, you know, with like I was very scared at night when I was really young of the dark, and vampires, and stuff.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. All those creepy things, ghosts…
Matt Ready: Yeah. And so when I was taught praying, you know, in Catholicism you make the sign of the cross on you and that’s how you started prayer and so if I got scared in bed I would just like do that.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: And it was — I would do like that and I was like, “I’m with God now! You can’t get me!” You know?
Alanna Shaladra: It’s a safety net, which I think that’s really beautiful and it’s really helpful to people ’cause I know people who have converted to a religion when they’re older and that’s really helped them get through things in their life and it’s helped them become a better person in their own eyes and in other people’s eyes too. I think that’s wonderful.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I mean, I think if we just stopped at that, everyone talked to God, just at that, that was all that people did; but then you have people that say, “I talk to God and I know what he said —
Alanna Shaladra: “…and he told me to go shoot all these people.”
Matt Ready: Or just to go tell you — to tell what to do, what you should eat, where you should do this, you know? And it’s like — I mean that’s the whole…
[00:41:45]Alanna Shaladra: That’s my problem with organized religion is I think most of the people are good but then there’s some extremists and so that’s where it’s hard for me to really want to be a part of a religion ’cause people are like, “You have to think like this, you have to do this, and this, and this, and this. This is how it is.”
Matt Ready: Yeah. I think the problem comes in once you start saying certain people know God better than others [crosstalk] and they’re an authority of God.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. That’s the problem.
Matt Ready: I mean, how much more authority can you have, how much more power can you have in the world then for one of us to sit here and say, “We are equal human beings except I talk to God and God tells me what to tell you.”
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Like you were raised Catholic, I was raised atheist, like, “Oh, I’m superior to you ’cause I was raised Catholic. I’ve known God since I was born.” It’s just — I feel like if you believe in God and if he’s really there and people always say only God can judge me but then they’re judging each other and they’re like, “Oh this form of Christianity is superior,” “No, I’m superior,” “No, I’m superior.”
Matt Ready: It kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning, about how gentle you have to be when you’re —
Alanna Shaladra: Confronting someone.
Matt Ready: — Yeah, about something deeply personal that is like inside.
Alanna Shaladra: Exactly.
Matt Ready: It’s the same thing with like —
Alanna Shaladra: It’s religious.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. It’s basically that intimate. I mean, there nothing more intimate than thinking you’re talking to God in your head —
Alanna Shaladra: Exactly.
Matt Ready: — and so if you’re going to tell someone what —
Alanna Shaladra: If you’re going to tell someone what to think or if you think they’re wrong like —
Matt Ready: — at one of the most basic levels of existence, you’re going to tell them…
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah!
Matt Ready: That is such a presumptuous thing for me or anyone to tell another person like, “You should feel this,” or “What you’re feeling is wrong,” or “What you’re —
Alanna Shaladra: You can’t tell people how to feel.
Matt Ready: I mean you can.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Again, don’t mimic what you [crosstalk]
Alanna Shaladra: Okay, let me rephrase: you shouldn’t. Oh! You’re so literal!
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: You should not tell people how to feel.
Matt Ready: I think it’s just a waste of energy.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! I think it’s okay to express how you feel but you can’t — Okay. Here’s what you can’t do: you can’t expect people to react the same way that you react and to feel the same way that you feel. You can’t force it and you can’t expect it.
Matt Ready: I’d go back. I’d go a step before that and I’d say, “You can’t expect a person to want to hear whatever you want to say.”
Alanna Shaladra: Oh, yeah! That’s true.
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: That’s definitely true.
Matt Ready: So I think it’s like if more of us were just like, “Before I shove my words over you, maybe I just check to see: can I say something to you about this topic?”
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. I actually — one of my friends, I was talking to her, I was ranting to her about something and she said, “Before you talk, do you want me to listen or do you want me to give my opinion?”
Matt Ready: That’s beautiful.
Alanna Shaladra: And I was like, “That is the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me,” and I said, “Actually, I do want your opinion. I do want your advice.” And so then I told her what I needed to say and then she gave me advice and — She’s a person that she gives you advice but she doesn’t expect you, she doesn’t — she’s not going to be offended if you don’t do what she said. And I think that’s something that everybody needs to learn how to do. We should be taught from a young age, like at school, if someone’s talking like, are we listening to listen for that other person? Or are we listening to just give an opinion? And so I know that I catch myself all the time just like giving my opinion. That’s so easy to do: “Oh, you’re talking to me. Let me tell you how to feel.” And then you have to — I have to stop myself and step back and be like, if I’ve already said it then I’m like, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” That’s something that all humans need to figure out how to do.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: It’s definitely a learning processes. It’s difficult especially with someone you care about and you want to help. That’s the problem I think that parents have ’cause parents don’t want to see their kids feeling bad, or struggling, or whatever [sort of form] of negative emotion, so then they try to control it.
Matt Ready: Yeah. It seems — I think of it as like safety, you know? It’s just like the more aware you are of what you can do to make someone feel safer when you’re talking with them and the more aware you are of the things you do that are actually attacks. A little — it’s like you just learn —
Alanna Shaladra: “Do this! Come on!”
Matt Ready: [Laughs] Yes.
Alanna Shaladra: “If you do this you’ll be happier!”
Matt Ready: “That’s stupid!”
Alanna Shaladra: “You’re going to be so f***ing [sad] if you do this. Come on!”
Matt Ready: “Don’t be ridiculous!” [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: “Matt! Listen to me.”
Matt Ready: “You’re such a child.”
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Yeah. I mean, when people do that like so often, I mean it’s like amazing and it’s —
Alanna Shaladra: We don’t even notice it.
Matt Ready: It’s like jabs, you know? And yeah, it’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating thing human relationships [laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Relationships are confusing.
Matt Ready: And we don’t learn it and then our politicians don’t learn it and then, you know, they like bicker in public, and our… the political activists, they do kindergarten level like communication technique.
Alanna Shaladra: Maybe if you’re a politician you need to go back to kindergarten.
Matt Ready: And just learn how to —
Alanna Shaladra: How to be a decent person.
Matt Ready: [Laughs]. Well, there’s a book called Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten and it’s like, it has eight rules and it’s basically like, you know, be nice to each other, pick up after yourself, you know, it’s like share [crosstalk] so it’s like: What if we shared the resources of the world and when a corporation or somebody —
Alanna Shaladra: What an idea!
Matt Ready: — built something and made a big mess, they cleaned it up?
Alanna Shaladra: What if everybody works together so that we can get things done?
Matt Ready: Maybe just make like these kindergarten rules, this giant billboard, you know, like the size of [laughs] —
Alanna Shaladra: Maybe that’s what my sign will be for the women’s march on Saturday.
Matt Ready: Have you [unclear 00:49:10] so you’re going to the women’s march?
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Hopefully.
Matt Ready: That’s kind of an activist-ish thing to do, you know?
Alanna Shaladra: Well, I told you I’m starting.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: Just starting.
Matt Ready: That’s cool.
Alanna Shaladra: My hesitation with the women’s march is like people being like, ” F*** pres- F*** Trump! Not my president! Blah, blah, blah,” and I’m really hoping that it’s more focused on the energy of everyone who has been discriminated against, like “We’re here to march for you and show you our support.” So I really hope that it’s not more towards like a F*** You Trump march. I want it as a Support the people who need it march. I don’t know what it’ll turn out to be.
Matt Ready: Well, you bring whatever energy that you bring to it and —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Well, I know. I was reading on the Facebook page like for the people who originally set it up and I think the original idea for it is: support women, support people of color, and support the LGBTQ plus queer community and just support the people that are really being targeted.
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: And just say, “We are here. We are together.” And I just want it to have that sort of energy.
Matt Ready: That’s great. Yeah. I just — food for thought; I’ve been in a lot of marches and occasionally some group starts to chant something that you don’t want to chant and, you know, there’s nothing stopping you from like [crosstalk] look, I was at —
Alanna Shaladra: You can start chanting something else.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Or you can change a word, like you know, I’ve been where some group starts to say something really hostile to the police or something, and another group they had already — they had some phrasing that stuck right over their chant that is a little, that was friendlier and [unclear 00:51:29] started group just doing that. So you can have these little like chant-offs.
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! Chant-offs.
Matt Ready: Yeah!
Alanna Shaladra: And then we’ll have a little dance-off.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: That’s right!
Alanna Shaladra: It sounds good.
Matt Ready: All right. Awesome! That reminds me there is a — we have to do some dancing like right here, because —
Alanna Shaladra: Form “September”, Earth-Wind-and-Fire like?
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: That’s our jam!
Matt Ready: That is! You remember it like us singing and dancing to that song?
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! Of course I do! That was my life.
Matt Ready: Ah! The 70s music that I exposed you to at a young age.
Alanna Shaladra: We’ll cut it to the video of you, me, and my dad dancing [laughs].
Matt Ready: I wonder if we still have that?
Alanna Shaladra: I’m sure you do somewhere.
Matt Ready: Yeah. But I like to like have — we don’t have the copyright to Earth Wind & Fire so, you now, so we’ll like stick some of YouTube free note music —
[Alanna sings and dances]Matt Ready: Nice. Keep going!
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Good! All right. So here we are, a little bit of dancing. I’ve got to tell you something that I think — I went on Facebook and I said a week ago you’ll never guess what I just did.
Alanna Shaladra: Oh, yeah!
Matt Ready: And nobody guessed it.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah.
Matt Ready: But I’m going to tell you ’cause you are, of all the people I know, you might appreciate it the most.
Alanna Shaladra: Okay. I’m honored.
Matt Ready: So I was recorded singing for a song for this women’s march.
Alanna Shaladra: Really?
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: Oh! With [Judy Kate]?
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: I was invited to do that but I —
Matt Ready: You could have been [crosstalk] recorded with me singing.
Alanna Shaladra: I could have!
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: Well, I’ll be singing the song.
Matt Ready: Awesome!
Alanna Shaladra: Maybe I’ll be in the Christmas jingle version next year.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: That would have been so incredible if you and I —
Alanna Shaladra: Extra-festive version.
Matt Ready: That would have been so cool if I walked in there and, you know —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. I would have been like, “Sit down right here on that mic, all right? Here’s headphone two. Let’s go!”
Matt Ready: Actually, it was more like I was the only [unclear 00:53:37] guy that got invited and it wasn’t because of my singing voice. I just said, you know, I was just offered to do it. I was like, “If you want male voices I’ll come whatever,” and —
Alanna Shaladra: I know! I wish I could have gone to that but it was my first day at therapy so I was like, “I should probably go to my first day of therapy.”
[Laughter]Matt Ready: You’re so transparent! That’s very endearing. It makes people really trust you.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah!
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: My great grandfather’s 90th birthday was on the 14th and breakfast, before my parents and I left, my granddad goes to my dad, “You know, son? I’m just really happy that no one in my family, we ain’t got nothing to hide.”
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: I was like, “Yep! This family, we are all completely ourselves.”
Matt Ready: Yeah.
[00:54:35]Alanna Shaladra: It was like, you have a family of shameless people. That is true granddad.
Matt Ready: It is.
Alanna Shaladra: Especially my dad and me.
Matt Ready: Yeah! It’s one of the reasons I’ve been friends with your dad and a part of your life since you were five years old like that ’cause —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! You need to be transparent.
Matt Ready: Yeah! I mean, people that don’t have shame and don’t get embarrassed if they say something stupid will just say whatever they actually feel.
Alanna Shaladra: I mean, I get embarrassed.
Matt Ready: But it doesn’t hold you back.
Alanna Shaladra: I’m not quite at my dad’s level of shame —
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: — shameless.
Matt Ready: You’re not at [unclear 00:55:07] daily level of —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! I’m not [unclear 00:55:09] but…
[Laughter]Alanna Shaladra: I get embarrassed but I like still continue.
Matt Ready: But it makes you very brave, very brave when you’re willing to take risks, you know, with whatever you do or say and…
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. Well, it’s… Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone gets uncomfortable so it’s not a reason to stop.
Matt Ready: Yeah. Pain is not a reason to stop.
Alanna Shaladra: Well, I mean if you’re like bleeding out, then you should.
Matt Ready: Right. I’m just saying, that’s like injury.
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah [laughs].
Matt Ready: Injury, trauma is a reason to stop but pain is not, you know? Yeah. Awesome! Well, is there anything — do you — we can like wrap up there. Do you want to say anything else? Or do you want to just like sing a song to close? What do you want to do?
Alanna Shaladra: Well, I guess I could say that I had an album planned that didn’t work out, there was a bunch of drama and fun stuff that happened, and then I recorded my album in town and then I had to take a break from my life so I moved to France for a year and took a break from my life and I’ve been back home since the end of August, and last night I sent my recordings to a CD-printing company and today I’m going to pay for it once they confirm they have everything. And so a bunch of shitty things happened, partially my fault, partially other people’s fault, but I still did it so I’m really proud of myself for still getting it done.
Matt Ready: That is so awesome!
Alanna Shaladra: Yes!
Matt Ready: And that’s how I feel about my book, you know, it’s like — not that I had the same drama craziness that you went through but it’s like, you know, once you accomplish something like that, and you’ve done it, and you’ve produced it, I feel like it creates this like, “Oh! I could do this again!”
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah!
Matt Ready: I could like do another one.
Alanna Shaladra: During the process, I was like, “I don’t think I can do music anymore. Like, this has just been too much for me. And then I sent my music to the printer and I was like, “Oh! That was great!”
Matt Ready: [Laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: This has been a great three years!
Matt Ready: Yeah. Well, you went through the pain. You were like — just pushed yourself through the pain of the creation process.
Alanna Shaladra: And I’m lucky to have so many good people in my life to allow me to feel my pain. Like I was able to just — for some people I had to be like, “Don’t tell me not to be sad. Let me wallow in my self-pity for a while and then I’ll continue on.”
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: Let me be sad. Let me be angry. You know, it might be a couple weeks, it might be a few months, and then I’ll do something else. I’ll focus my energy somewhere else. So I’m excited I’ll probably have my CDs in a couple weeks and I’ll bring you one.
Matt Ready: Sweet!
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah!
Matt Ready: You can have one of my books, if you want.
Alanna Shaladra: Okay!
Matt Ready: Yeah? You get to — [you can leave here with it] [laughs].
Alanna Shaladra: Awesome!
Matt Ready: You can just take that top one right there.
Alanna Shaladra: Right here?
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Alanna Shaladra: You’ll need to sign it.
Matt Ready: Sure!
Alanna Shaladra: Cool.
Matt Ready: What is the album title?
Alanna Shaladra: It’s called Little Dreams. Little Dreams.
Matt Ready: Little Dreams?
Alanna Shaladra: Uh-huh.
Matt Ready: And do you want to just like give a little sample of anything just like right now? Just share…
Alanna Shaladra: Sure! Let’s see… I’ll sing you the song I was most uncomfortable to record because I usually sing Jazz and Blues and this is not either of those. And also, it turned out to be my favorite on the album because I did a bunch of harmonies.
[Alanna sings]Alanna Shaladra: I don’t remember the words very well, but yeah!
Matt Ready: That is awesome.
Alanna Shaladra: It’s fun to harmonize with yourself because it has the same resonance. So you’re like, “Wow! I sound really good with myself”! [Laughs]. You can have a beautiful egotistical moment singing with yourself.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Yeah! Well, that’s — I mean that’s just the way I sort of feel anytime I’m looking at like my creations. Like my book, it’s like I read it and like, “Wow! I get to really enjoy it! I said that!” You know? It’s like —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah! Well, then you get new perspective of it when you [crosstalk] are looking at your own creations.
Matt Ready: Yeah, ’cause there are layers of meaning I didn’t even think I thought of when I wrote it or —
Alanna Shaladra: Yeah. I got to visit my elementary school last week and I sang for the whole school. It’s like 30-40 kids and there was one little girl that was just looking up at me like I was so so amazing and I was like, “That’s why I sing.” When I was in choir, I had so many parents come up to me and say, “My daughter started choir,” or “My son started choir because they heard you sing and they saw you in choir.” So I guess I want to leave this on: Don’t be scared to create things ’cause it can help inspire kids to do it.
Matt Ready: Very nice.
Alanna Shaladra: Yes.
Matt Ready: All right. Well, thank you so much —
Alanna Shaladra: Well, thank you!
Matt Ready: — for being my guest. This has been so fun. Do we have any like comments out there?
Alanna Shaladra: No body’s talking to us.
Matt Ready: No? Okay. All right! Well, that’s all. Maybe I’ll just say next month, I think February 16th or something, it’s like the third Thursday of the month, I’m hosting an Online General Assembly using the hive1.net software that I developed, part of the Global Consensus Project, so this will be an interesting experiment inviting people anywhere and everywhere to join in on a conversation like this. We would just sort of like expand out to thousands of people.
Alanna Shaladra: Perfect!
Matt Ready: Yeah! So I think that’s all. Until next time, thank you anyone that watches.
Alanna Shaladra: Thank you!
Matt Ready: Bye-bye!
Alanna Shaladra: Bye.
Matt Ready: All right. That one went down.
