Eric Hemian, is atalented music and sound producer and we chat about the reality of pursuing a creative profession. His transition from performing musician to a successful freelance composer and producer is not only inspiring but is also filled with practical advice. He discusses the balancing act between creative expression and earning a living, and why he prefers commissioning custom music pieces over generic ones.
Eric's journey is a tale of unlearning and discovering joy in new creative avenues. This episode is filled with practical advice, and a whole lot of inspiration. Tune in and join us on this exciting exploration of creativity, passion, and music.
You can see Erics Instagram here
https://www.instagram.com/eric_hemion/
Erics website is here
http://www.erichemion.com/
Sign up to the next Creative Light Festival here:
https://creative-light.co.uk/
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Follow me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/margaretsoraya/
Join my online Creative Haven community :
https://creative-haven.newzenler.com
Eric Hemian, is atalented music and sound producer and we chat about the reality of pursuing a creative profession. His transition from performing musician to a successful freelance composer and producer is not only inspiring but is also filled with practical advice. He discusses the balancing act between creative expression and earning a living, and why he prefers commissioning custom music pieces over generic ones.
Eric's journey is a tale of unlearning and discovering joy in new creative avenues. This episode is filled with practical advice, and a whole lot of inspiration. Tune in and join us on this exciting exploration of creativity, passion, and music.
You can see Erics Instagram here
https://www.instagram.com/eric_hemion/
Erics website is here
http://www.erichemion.com/
Sign up to the next Creative Light Festival here:
https://creative-light.co.uk/
Sign up to my newsletter to hear first about new retreats:
Follow me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/margaretsoraya/
Join my online Creative Haven community :
https://creative-haven.newzenler.com
I'm delighted to be speaking with Eric Hemian today, all the way from California and he is a music and sound producer and we're going to be just having a chat today around a few subjects. But first of all, eric, thank you for joining me, and would you like to tell everybody a little bit more about what you do? And my description of what you do probably was quite simple there, so give us an outline.
Speaker 2:I think it was the best description, because it's hard to encompass everything. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you. I started out as a musician and I was a performing musician for many years, but in more recent years I decided to get away from performing for a variety of reasons. I just kind of got burned out on it. So I started out with the aim of writing music for other people to perform, or writing, you know, like underscore for films and theme music and that kind of thing, and so I do all of that.
Speaker 2:But along the way I've ended up getting into doing so many other things because you know, as anybody knows, who's a freelancer number one. You're always kind of looking for places to make some money with your skills and your passions. But also, you know people would just ask me hey, you know, I have this little short film that I just produced and I don't have much of a budget. But if I throw you a little money, do you think you could edit the dialogue on it? And you know I would say, well, yeah, sure, even though I'd never done it before, and I would figure it out, because it's related to the skills that I would use in producing music, and so in that way over the years I've just gotten into all sorts of different composition and production things with music and sound doing, sound design and sound editing and music editing and arranging and writing and all sorts of things.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fabulous. I'm so excited to talk to you. It's just like it's just great to listen to other creatives, because creativity just encompasses well everything. It's so broad, isn't it? We don't have to be speaking to photographers to learn about photography. You know, we are creatives as a whole and music is a particular interest to me, probably because a few things really my boys I've got two boys and they're both studying music at university will be, as of next month, two of them at university.
Speaker 1:One's doing sound design and the other one is doing music at an api, I think it's just called music. He edits this podcast, so he'll be listening to this going. Mom, I do this, so yeah, so, as you say, I have now hired him to edit this podcast, join his summer break. So, as you say, there's so much opportunity, isn't there. But but just to go back and what I was saying there, I, I love music because I just see the value in it so so much. It's so powerful when you put it together with photography, and I've a lot of people comment on my the slideshows and the little videos that I make.
Speaker 1:And I'm very specific about the music that I choose because I think it's very important yeah, and I also think that sometimes musicians have a little bit less given credit maybe, and I think it's just, yeah, I think we should. So on occasion I've commissioned as much as I can, commissioned small pieces of music. So this podcast, for instance, the music was commissioned oh, that's great, I think yeah, I think that's of collaboration. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2:I love to hear that. Yeah, it's nice because so many, so many things now. You know, people are just pulling generic music from music libraries and things and of course somebody did write that music and they're earning money on it. But it's very different than having a very specific custom collaboration and I love the opportunity to do those kind of things and I always appreciate it so much when people reach out to me for that kind of thing. It's so creatively satisfying and it makes me feel so much more valued than if some simple thing I wrote is just kind of pulled off of a music library. I mean, believe me, I always appreciate that too, but it's really great for somebody to say can you create a custom thing for my, for my project?
Speaker 1:yeah, wonderful isn't it? I've done it a few times now. The podcast music is one of them. And then KJ, my friend is a musician and she made a piece to go with a video. There's just a short YouTube video that I was wanted to make, so I told her about it and she, she created it. Wonderful, love it. I'd love to do more of it. I've had budget for that sort of thing that a lot of the time I use sandstripe, which it's. It's fine for some of the YouTube videos where I'm not you know particularly that that bothered. But you know, I'd like to.
Speaker 1:I'd like to do more with, with you so, but that kind of brings us to one of the things that we'd thought about talking. It's really relevant with you, isn't it? This, this, both of us, actually, because we're both very commercially based, maybe. So this is your living, is this? This is what you do for your living? Yeah yeah, so that's quite tricky, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it's very tricky, you know, for so many different reasons. I mean I I think that there's there's a personal trickiness about doing creative work for a living, because I think it's so easy to get caught up in the commercial side of it and thinking about how much money do I need to make or want to make? And you can very easily go down the path of either doing work that you're not as excited about or is proud of, and you can also just get caught up in forgetting to enjoy the work you're doing because you're more focused on earning a living, and I find it sometimes very confusing for that reason. But there's obviously also an advantage to it, because you do get to do something that you love, and I think some of us are more cut out for doing work that they don't love.
Speaker 2:You know there are some people out there who say you know it's it's. You don't need to do what you love to make a living. You can just make your living doing something that you're good at and then find your passions outside of work, and I think that that's a really valid approach for some people, but I don't think everybody's cut out for that, and I've learned. I'm 54 years old and I think I've learned that, no, I really can't do that. I've tried that over and over and it's, you know, it's not really my thing, and so, in a way, I feel like the only option for me is whatever it is, whether it's music or sound, or I've started again in the photography. Like I, you know, I'm never going to make my main living from something that I'm not really passionate about.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how do you, how do you make your main living? What's the, what's the primary source of income?
Speaker 2:It really varies from project to project. You know, everything that comes along is so different and I just I find that as long as I remain social and relaxed and enthusiastic, the work just comes. You know, I don't spend a ton of time doing marketing and that kind of thing, but I think just through word of mouth and repeat clients and knowing people. You know, things just come and it's interesting this. You know I'm going to get really philosophical for a second, but I've seen a lot on social media and I've talked directly to people. You know I worked with a kind of a business coach for a while and I've paid a lot of attention to tips for being kind of a freelance person and there are a lot of people who really push the idea that you have to spend a big chunk of your time marketing yourself and I've found that although that has been helpful, it hasn't been always necessary and the more that I've just kind of relaxed into the process and done good work, the more it's taken care of itself.
Speaker 1:I find that interesting because I have this battle with the amount of time I spend, I suppose, marketing you know doing all the things that I need to do and I'm always trying to reduce the amount of time that I'm on the computer, being outdoors more and having a bit more time for my own creativity. So I guess I suppose I'm kind of like I'm looking for help here, but I'm looking for, you know, a discussion with somebody who's you know, a fellow creative who is earning a living form there their passion, but also has a passion as well. So my work comes in two distinct forms. So I have, like I've, earned 20 years. I've been a commercial and wedding photographer, so it's been very much. That's been a day job. And I suppose when I say day job, it's something that you would. If you didn't have to earn, you wouldn't be doing it. That's probably the definition for me, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that, that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if I didn't need to earn anything, I didn't need to pay rent and talk mortgage whatever. Yeah, would it be photographing weddings? Although I don't mind them and parts of it are very enjoyable? I wouldn't be doing it, so I would be going out into the water with my cameras and I carve out time for that part. But it's a balance. I'm always trying to balance time at the computer time with the commercial work that brings the income in, and then the last chunk of it is going out and doing my own thing, which I just love doing. So I'm trying to bring that balance back somehow, and I constantly seem to be failing at that.
Speaker 2:I don't think you're alone in that struggle. I don't think I've ever spoken to somebody who works in the way that we do, who doesn't go through that Absolutely. And I totally do and totally have. And I've just been gradually trying to cultivate the confidence that comes from relaxing more and more into the process and seeing the positive results from that. I think that's one of the main things that's helped me.
Speaker 2:I mean I do a lot of internal quote unquote self-help work, so I meditate and I go through all sorts of different practices gratitude journaling off and on, and all sorts of things like that that I think are becoming more and more common these days.
Speaker 2:But I think a big part of my what's the word I'm looking for kind of the ease that I feel around my work situation, is that as each year goes by, I can witness how, the more I relax, the more successful I am. By successful I don't mean that I'm making a ton more money or something, but just that I'm enjoying my days more, I'm not struggling, I don't feel like I'm fighting and I'm continuing to work and earn money and enjoy it. And the more that that happens, the more it reinforces the idea that I don't have to struggle and I don't have to stress about it. And of course I'm always mindful of that balance you were talking about and I'm always making little adjustments and there are plenty of times where I'm sitting at my computer gazing out the window, longing to be there, but I just feel like the whole process just flows more and more for me the more I go through life, because I'm able to recognize the correlation between relaxing and trusting and flourishing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm the same actually, definitely, as my life has well got on over the years. Definitely, things have become very, very different and, allowing the creativity to happen, there's this idea of you follow the thing that you're really, really passionate about and the money will come after it. That sounds like a load of nonsense, really, but actually there's some reality in there. But the bit that's missing out of that phrase is that the money will follow if you put in the work and the time and the energy and persistence and all the basics that you need structure, almost.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like this the word manifesting at the moment so on trend, isn't it? And it's so badly misused Because it's kind of like oh, you're going to sit there and you're going to say, well, I love painting, so it's just going to happen. It's not going to happen unless you buy the canvases and you take hours and hours to do the painting. But there is that thing at the moment that's kind of floating around where people it's not very concrete and people are saying you just follow it and it'll come.
Speaker 1:Now I think that the hard work is the bit that's missing for most people. But I think that maybe I'm just trying to figure it out in my head here when you allow yourself the time to be creative and to do that and you put in the hard work, then definitely that will. That comes because I've seen that in my own world. Whereas why I'm living now more in a world of where I want to be, of creating images in the water. I can spend days out in the water and I can be floating about and have turned that into work somehow.
Speaker 1:Which is pretty incredible, isn't it really it's great. Yeah, I don't know what I'm trying to say there, but I think that there's a little bit of there's a little part of me that thinks we have to be real as well. We have to be real, don't we, Because we all have different circumstances.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So there's all those things going on. So that's why, when you said, you said oh, let's talk about how money and creativity not many people are willing to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a really important thing to talk about, and especially now. It's interesting because, in a way, earning in a very general way, earning money by doing something creative has become so much more accessible to everyone, because, of technology, but at the same time, and partly for that reason, it's become so devalued.
Speaker 2:You know, so, for instance, I'm at an interesting age because when I first got out of college and I was in my 20s, I had this idea that it would be really great to write music for TV commercials and TV shows and things, and I think that I had the potential to be good at it.
Speaker 2:I was, you know, played piano since I was a kid and I was a music major in college. But I grew up at this little town by the beach in New Jersey and I had no idea in 1991, when I graduated college, like how to go about that. Who did that kind of work? Who were those people? Where were they? And the college I went to gave me a great music education, but they didn't do much and I think this is very common. They didn't do much in terms of kind of connecting me with where I might want to go, anyway, and so that idea just kind of shriveled up because I didn't know where to begin to do that kind of work. You know Now, when I re-approached the idea of doing that kind of work in my late 30s, it was very easy to find out how to do that work.
Speaker 2:We all had laptops, there were workshops everywhere, you could look at YouTube videos, you could easily communicate with people in LA who were doing that kind of work, which is a big part of the reason I ended up living out here part-time. But the difference is that by the time I moved out here 15 years ago and started trying to get into that work, so many people were out here trying to do the same thing because they could, and the money you could make was less and less. You know, the first month that I was out here, a friend of mine introduced me To a colleague of his or a friend of his who was in, wrote music for advertising out here, so that, you know, I would have kind of a mentor and somebody to get tips from and stuff. And I got on the phone with that guy and he had just quit his business and gone back to school because he said I can't make money doing this anymore. You know, if I had figured out how to do it the first time around in my early 20s and I was good at it and was willing to put in the work I could have made a ton of money on it, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.
Speaker 2:Now I finally figured out how to do it, but you do have to scrounge so much more and the work that you do and this is obviously true of photography, because there are so many stock photo companies that shutter stock and Getty images and stuff and they really kind of rake you over the coals and you could take the most beautiful photo in the world, but you know, if you give it to Getty images, they're going to give you such a small percentage of the money that they make and then it's just going to get spread around like the most generic thing. And I find that very frustrating and that's one of the things that contributes to my stress. It's the question about OK, I've decided I'm going to make money at this and now I know how to do the work and how to find the work. But how do I find work that's valuable, that actually pays, because there are so many of us doing this and it's sad that I think that now the work is in figuring out where is the money? Is it even there?
Speaker 1:That's really interesting because I was thinking, as you're saying, that, yeah, I think music is harder to make money. I would have assumed that it's a more difficult industry. There's so many different varieties of things that you can do, but definitely when I was early in my career, that when they had stock libraries were actually you were making proper money. Now you put an image in I don't know. I haven't gone near it for years because it's like it's a dead loss. It's 25 pence an image or something ridiculous. It's not worth the time of even thinking about it. I might be wrong and there might be people in there, people in this, people listening to this and they're going. Actually, you know if you go to this one, but I don't think so. I think that's just gone. That's a means to so you just look somewhere else, I suppose would be the answer. Well, certainly that's what I did. I was like that's not going to work, so let's do this instead.
Speaker 1:And then I suppose, as I followed my own, as I said, I followed my own passion I start to realise that I need to be where the passion is, because that's what people will well, where the demand is, because if they, your passion shines through, doesn't it? So, for me, teaching other people was the big thing, actually. That's made the difference. So I suppose, interestingly enough, I went on a course in June Covid, so three years ago with Kathy Heller, who started out by launching an online course teaching musicians to sell to the music, I think it was to the TV and film industry.
Speaker 1:So that's what she did. She'd run online courses and teaching them how to pitch and where to pitch and who to pitch to. And she had made quite a good. I think she'd done quite well in that herself. So she started teaching it and then she evolved. It was quite interesting to watch her journey. She evolved from that to teaching people to start small businesses. She became more generic and now she's actually gone really big now and she does some quite expensive coaching and mentoring programs. So I suppose maybe evolving is the answer.
Speaker 2:I think these days it is everything's evolving so quickly. I'm interested to hear that about Kathy Heller because for a while years ago I was following what she was up to. I never took one of her courses but I had a friend who did and I was paying a lot of attention to her because she was kind of in the industry pretty well known for doing that. But I didn't realize in more recent years that she had shifted and that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that she was well known at all. I just found her online and I thought this sounds really good and I did invest in that. I thought I'd invested. Now you look at the prices and it's like but good on her.
Speaker 1:It's just amazing. She's helping other people monetize their passion and that's what she did and she actually it created a massive pivot for me as a result of her course and I started doing all these things and started this podcast. She made me start a podcast. I'm still going three years later. So, yeah, she's doing really well now she's gone very big, but just general coaching on people wanting in business, I think, and inspiring people yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but maybe that is the answer that her journey and my journey has been. It's constantly changing. So you know, as it would have been stock photographer then, and then it was wedding photographer and then it's like no, actually I need to pivot because, actually landscape was where my heart is, so I want to.
Speaker 1:This was always in my mind was like okay, I'm spending 100% of my year doing wedding photography. In the summer, I'm doing 50, 60 weddings. In the winter, I'm doing all the paperwork and living on baked beans because there's no one. So how do I? But I love landscape photography. How do I move into landscape photography? Well, I'm going to have to earn from it If I'm going to move away from weddings because there's a non-negotiable Can't just say, yeah, I'll just stop doing weddings and just you know, be on beat.
Speaker 1:So I found a way to monetize that. So maybe it's a, yeah, it's a. It's a pivot type thing, pivoting towards where your heart is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I think that's really true. I've had such a kind of a parallel journey in recent years, you know. I mean I, like I said when I first got away from performing, my main goal was writing original music, and not necessarily writing for me, but writing for other people, whether it was films or advertising or whatever. But I consciously started to make a pivot a number of years ago when I realized that, just like with photos, the amount of money you could make, mostly writing original music, was just shrinking. You know, unless you're John Williams or Hans Zimmer or you too or something, you write original music, people don't really want to give you a lot of money for it, and so my pivot at that time was doing more of providing services, almost like a tradesman. And this is part of the reason that I do so many different things, and I just described myself as music and sound producer, you know, because I found that if you write a piece of music, you can either put it in a music library and make nothing. You can get it on Spotify and Apple Music and make even less. Once in a blue moon you might be able to get in a commercial and make a decent amount of money, but it's so few and far between that that would happen. But if you're willing to edit dialogue on a film or do sound design or mix somebody's project, they'll pay you the way they would pay a plumber or an electrician, and so it's not necessarily huge sums of money, but it's real, consistent money.
Speaker 2:And so my first pivot was getting more and more into that kind of work, rather than writing original music, which I still do as well, but I found that I also really enjoyed doing that kind of work. It was satisfying to me, but I could make more consistent money at it, and so that was just one of my pivots, and I think it's really important to be able to do that. You know, and now, who knows with, the biggest thing in the news these days is artificial intelligence, and more and more the kind of work I'm doing. Ai can do, you know, and so it may be pivoting to something else soon, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean AI does it really badly, so I won't worry about it for the moment.
Speaker 2:So far, but gradually it's getting better and better though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then we just have to I think we have to, we just have to constantly adapt and go. Well, things change and we have to adapt and move on and those are the people that are successful. You know, you just have to accept the things that you think you've got no control over. But that was interesting hearing you talk about that, because it's obviously some of the thoughts that I've had, from my boys as well, and I've often said you've so much opportunity. The opportunities now are, you know, all the things are shrinking and I can see what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Especially with music, there's a lot of opportunities that are shrinking or there's it's more and more difficult to make money with original music. I understand that, but alongside that, there are opportunities with just being the internet, to see its existence and the rise of podcasting and, yeah, the rise of online. And it's not, it's not always going to be exactly the right thing that you want to do. You might, you know it's, it's. I haven't always wanted to photograph weddings and edit weddings, but actually you're still working within the genre that you, you, you're, you want to be in and that unlocks things like because you've got a business, then you can afford the equipment and you know there's benefits, isn't there?
Speaker 1:So, your day job, rather than being a postman or working in Tescos, you sit and edit podcasts. I hope you're listening to this very carefully and he's grateful for his job. But there is actually, you know it must. It must be quite tedious, but there are people that are making, doing, you know, having good businesses now as podcast editors, and well, there's all sorts of things like social media and all of that, but within the sound, sound part of the world. I suppose I'm trying to think so. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that opportunities have arisen as much as things have, you know, gone.
Speaker 1:We've gone past a lot of things. It's a bit like the stock. Stock photography is gone. So but look what we've got. We've got all of this opportunity to be able to. We've got this access to digital photography, which has just opened up world and it probably will go too far at some point, but right here, right now, it's, it's good. For two of these You've got access to, like Kathy Heller's, access to coaching people all around the world on zoom. Who'd have thought?
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's an interesting one and I don't know, I suppose it's just.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that moving with the times maybe, yeah, I think so you know you touched on something that I really, really struck me about how you talk to your boys. I had very, very supportive, loving parents. I was very, very lucky they're gone now. But there's one thing that I wish I had gotten from them that I didn't and I had to learn it myself and it took decades longer. But you know, I started playing piano when I was eight years old and there was a piano in the house and as a little kid I used to just pack away at it and so my mother wanted to be supportive and she got me piano lessons and I improved very, very quickly.
Speaker 2:I was quite a good pianist when I was a kid and then continued getting more deeply into music and high school and college and I was quite a good musician and I loved it and my mother always encouraged it and she wanted so much for me to be quote unquote successful in music, to be able to have music as a career. But she came from, I think, a generation and a mindset that you were going to be a starving artist and it was always going to be a struggle and that you should be able to fall back on a real job. You know she wanted me to learn kind of more traditional office skills, and she was hoping I'd be a business major in college, which I tried, and it didn't work out. I ended up switching to music because I couldn't apply myself to anything else. But I realized many, many years later that, aside from the general message that was kind of being subliminally implanted in me, which was that I was always going to be a starving artist, and that subliminal message definitely has not helped me I never realized until so many years later how many different kinds of opportunities there always were for me within the realm of music. I always just thought about it as becoming a pop star or a big time composer or something you know, and I think that was how my mother thought about it. You know, and your odds of being really successful at that are so slim, and so by going for it you're taking a big gamble and it's really important to have something to fall back on and stuff.
Speaker 2:I wish instead and my parents were so well-intentioned so I feel uncomfortable even criticizing them but I wish that my mother had sat down with me one day and said okay, let's talk about this. You love music, you're really good at it. Let's talk about the aspects of music, like your skills, that you're the best at, that you're really excited about. And let's talk about all the different ways that you could earn a living at this, you know. So you could be an arranger, you could be a copyist and actually write the written sheet music. You could be a transcriptionist, so somebody else who just plays, you can learn their stuff by ear and then write it Like there are all these different things you could do. You could work the sound board at live concerts. You know, I mean, even back then, before the internet, there were so many different things that I sorry I have an itch. There's so many different things that I could have pursued that it never even occurred to me. And so my point in this is that I'm so glad to hear that that's the way you're talking to your kids, because I think it would have been so, so helpful to me when I was younger and given me so much more confidence and such a better chance at earning a living doing what I loved. You know and I'm not sorry for the path I took I was in a band for 11 years and we worked really hard.
Speaker 2:We all had kind of like temp jobs during the day and stuff, and then at night we played gigs and we wrote music and we made our own CDs and we sold them in all the local record stores and we had a fair amount of success. But for all the work we did we never made any money at it. We just made enough money to keep doing it, you know, like to put it back into the band, not even to support ourselves, just to put back into the band. I learned so much from it. I'm so glad I did it. I love those guys that I was in the band with and it was a great experience. But it never occurred to me that there were all these other things that I could have been doing. So I don't regret that I didn't do something else, but I'm kind of sorry that I didn't understand all the options that I had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe it was a time you know, it was a while ago and maybe things have moved on slightly. We're a bit more aware of being able to earn in different ways. So the traditional job now isn't really, you know, it doesn't really exist as much as it used to. But the other thing is, I think as a parent, it's scary. You know you want your child to be secure, yeah, and to encourage them into something that doesn't feel so secure is essentially. There's a little bit of a leap there, you know, because sometimes I'm saying you go, I know I'm always saying to them you can do it, you can do this.
Speaker 1:Look, I've just, I've just survived the last 20 years as a self-employed photographer, against all odds. You know if I can do it. Well, you know you can do it, and I was saying this outwardly and, you know, encouraging that. I think it's really, as you said, it's really important how we talk to our children and how we can just see creativity as as this thing that is, not only as of equal importance to traditional trades or jobs, because it is, but also that they can, you know, make a career out of it and they they'll find a way, you know. But, but at the same time there's part of you that's going to open up. I wish you could just get like a regular job and then I know you'll be able to afford your rent and you'll be safe and secure, and that's all you want for them.
Speaker 1:You know, that's all you want for them, and I think that's probably where your mum came from.
Speaker 1:Definitely yeah. You just, you just want to know that they're going to be okay. But for me, I suppose I'm slightly different, because I have a fundamental belief in encouraging people to pursue the creativity for both, for well being, for everything. You know, if you don't follow that passion in life you know, and so many people are stilted because of that, they don't then you miss out, you know, and you've, you've, lose this part of yourself. You just let you, let it go because, in the name of a good job and a good house, and you lose this part of your, your heart. I suppose and I feel quite and you probably feel this as well you feel quite proud to have lived a life with your creativity.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, definitely. And if I start to forget that, somebody always turns up to remind me of it. You know, I'll spend a few months in California and then inevitably I'll fly back to New Jersey, which is where I grew up. And so there are a lot of people in my small town back there who I've known my whole life, and I'll always run into somebody the first couple of days that I'm back who will say how, how's California? You know, how's your music going and that kind of thing. And you know I'll always be very kind of nonchalant and lackadaisical about California was nice, works, good, whatever. And then they'll say you are so lucky and so amazing that you've built yourself a life where you can go back and forth, live in two different places, do this creative work and make money at it. And those are the moments that I am brought back to what you just said and reminded of it, and it helps me appreciate it, because I don't always remember it on my own, but it's definitely true, yeah yeah, I forget that as well.
Speaker 1:And then you know you just, yeah, somebody says something, and then you turn around, you go, I'm living this life and it's incredible. Yeah, okay, I kind of get it. You know, I kind of I don't have to go to work every day. I make my choices and I'm not saying I don't work every single day of my life, but but it's my, my choice of work and it's my choice with whether to get up at six o'clock in the morning and work for six.
Speaker 1:I was straight and then have the rest of the day off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah although saying that I think it was just last week, I was having a moment, and it was just a moment when I was like I can't do this business anymore. You know, sometimes when you're head, you only lose your head and you like, I just can't like like manage all these. You know it's not adding up, this doesn't add up. And I've got accounts. I've got three different businesses right now at the moment and everyone accounts for three of them. I can't do the accounts for them all and they're just. And I was just in a bit of overwhelm and sometimes I suppose I live in this. This, this is what I was saying earlier this little bit of fear-based Things come, come up when, like, the weddings have taken a massive downturn this year.
Speaker 1:And although I don't really need them anymore. You know, I'm fine, it was still like oh, but the wedding business is kind of slowed down. It's only slowed down because there seems to be a. The people aren't coming over to get married like they were. There's just a trend.
Speaker 2:You know it's nothing to do with me.
Speaker 1:So I'm the registrar said that. She said that there's just really not many weddings compared to what they used to be, so and Then it kicks in with them. I'm like, well, what if we can't? We can't afford to pay the bills, and you know, you must feel that as well. And then there's other moments where you're just like, well, most of the year where you're going, this is, this is a great life and I've got my. I make my choices and, yeah, I work hard. I work really, really hard to keep this going, but I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. I want to confess that when I first opened my eyes in my bed this morning, I Totally panicked. I woke up and I thought, oh my god, I'm alive and I'm a freelancer and I'm doing creative work. I'm gonna starve to death. It was my first thought.
Speaker 1:So I can really not, just me, not just me.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to tell you something else, which is that I've been following you on Instagram for the last couple of years and I I initially saw one of your photos, I think through a different Instagram account, and it was just a beautiful landscape photo that I loved and so I I I clicked into your account and immediately started following you because I liked your work so much.
Speaker 2:But I have observed through Instagram as you've made the move to Harris and I visited the Adder Heberties last year for a week and Renata car and drove through all the islands from South to North and spent a few days staying at Leskentire and and absolutely loved it. But I Keep having the thought whenever I see you post something about your house and getting settled into the house and I even like looked on a map to see where on the island it was and stuff, and I just keep thinking, oh, I Can't believe, like she is so lucky and she's just built this amazing, wonderful thing. So from the outside, like good for you, you're kicking ass and I'm envious of you that you get to live on the Isle of Harris and this Beautiful place and go swim in that water every day, even though I know it can get quite cold and rarely gets warm. So you know, this is me reminding you that you're doing. Alright, I'm doing alright.
Speaker 1:I'm doing alright, actually, and actually I've just I've just returned. I've always away off the island for a couple of weeks and just returned and I've just sent my friend a message and said, oh, I've just walked, I've walked around my house Into every single room. I love this room, I Love this room and I love this room. And then, as an as I'm driving down, I went out to I've got an exhibition on. I went out to meet some D2D for lunch and I have such a hectic social life here you won't believe like it's like I've never been.
Speaker 1:I'm not normally social. I don't think when I was on the mainland I wouldn't see anybody for weeks and weeks and here it's just like. I said, no, I see ever see lots of people all day. It's been it's been quite busy day, which has been lovely because it's all been like art based and creativity based. So but, as a as I drive down the road and I do this all the time I'm just like this is just wonderful.
Speaker 1:I actually, I actually literally love every minute, even when it's I mean, probably it's been quite, it's been quite sunny, so since I've ever arrived, but I know the winter say I know what I'm in for in the winter and and this, this dream, this dream of being here, has been like, you know, a 14, 15 year dream. So what we have, what we haven't to forget, is that it's been you know, it's not just a whim and it didn't just, it wasn't just given to me as well, well-earned, and I Appreciate every. I really do, as hard as it gets sometimes with that, with the business and the mind. You know, go in a bit bit wonky sometimes, but I think, yeah, it's just great. So well, I'll keep posting updates and then maybe, maybe, you'll come visit.
Speaker 2:I would love that. I would love that I'm planning to be over there in a couple of months, so I'll oh, yeah, yeah, oh yes, yes, yeah, yeah, I'll be there the last week of September, first week of October.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:I can connect in person, and yeah, I would love to come see your place, and yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just back from, I think I'm at the fair while's leading a workshop. Then. So I know, and you, you're saying oh, wow, wow, I shouldn't be saying this actually on this podcast, but then I say a lot of things on this podcast. Yeah, who's gonna tell me off? So, as much as like I'd like to see the fair while's and I'd like to to travel places, actually the moment I'd just rather be here. I understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's kind of like it's okay, it's fine, it's again, it's, that's yes, not a bad way to work, is it? I've got to give some fair while's for a week to work. So yeah, well, you know.
Speaker 2:Where I grew up and where I live still half the year in at the Jersey Shore is actually Gorgeous, and especially in September and October, you know like so many places in the Northern Hemisphere.
Speaker 2:It's such a nice time of year and it's my favorite time. I always make sure, no matter what my schedule is between California New Jersey, I always make sure that I'm in New Jersey for September and October because it's absolutely gorgeous and it was a real conflict for me to decide to come over to Scotland for a couple of weeks at the end of September beginning of October, because I I loved visiting there last year and I know it will be a great time of year there too.
Speaker 2:But I feel the same way. There's part of me that would just love to be sitting on the beach in New Jersey that last week of September. It's like so crisp and beautiful and, and you know so I. I understand that.
Speaker 1:But I'm premium times, isn't it? You get premium times of the year, yeah, yeah absolutely so, but I'm I am a little envious.
Speaker 2:You're gonna see the Faroe Islands. That's on my list as well. That just looks breathtaking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it will be actually, and once I get there it'll be, it'll be great. But yes, I've got this lack of desire to travel anywhere at the moment, but I think that will fade. I think it's just. This probably is the year I want to just be quite settled here, but but yeah, it's, it's a good life, isn't it? It is so the message, the message of this podcast, let's, let's think.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think what was it about?
Speaker 2:Well, it's looking on the bright side and I actually I had something specific to say on passion and yeah value of really following your passion, and it's there's a little bit of a story with it.
Speaker 1:If you'll indulge me for a Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I. I think I learned something in the last few years About really finding your passion. I think I learned that I've spent a lot of time in that struggle to make a living at doing something I'm passionate about. I Think in hindsight, I've spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that I was passionate about certain things, that I wasn't you know, and, for instance, I've been working on a.
Speaker 2:My current main Project is is recording a demo and and doing an arrangement and a production of a Big, long kind of a musical piece that's new, that I did not write. A couple of other guys wrote it and hired me to kind of realize a recording of it and it's over two hours of music and it's wonderful and it's interesting and I'm Very happy to do the work. But it's in a genre of music that's not necessarily my favorite thing and a lot of the skills that I'm having to use Are things that haven't always come naturally to me. And there's so many positive things about this job. I'm, you know, making some nice money with it and it's ongoing, so I have a lot of job security because it's a long project and it's improved some of my skills so much and I spent a lot of time convincing myself that this is just great, I'm really enjoying and I'm learning so much and stuff. I don't think that's entirely true. I'm still grateful for it, I'm happy to do it, but something happened to me a couple of years ago that really changed my perspective on all of this, and this is one of the reasons that I'm so excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, about a year into the whole COVID times I'd lost interest in everything. I was not. I was kind of depressed. It was definitely not interested in doing music. I was doing some music work where I could get it, but it was a real struggle to get myself to do it. All I kind of wanted to do was get up every day and just go walk around my neighborhood, and I was lucky that I was in California where I could go outside. But I was just blah, mm-hmm, yeah, and I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2:One day I was walking down the street and I looked up at the sky and it was in the evening and I happened to look up at a moment where the stars were kind of framed by this weird big cacti See-looking plant that was kind of like hanging over in an arc and I could see the constellation or Ryan perfectly framed within that arc and I said, oh my god, that is like the perfect photo. And I hadn't taken a photo other than on my iPhone in years and years and years. But I did have a good old digital camera, like five megapixel Panasonic Lumix from 2003 or something, and I ran back to my apartment and I grabbed it and I went out and I, you know, cranked up the ISO as far as it would go which on that camera I think was 800 or 400 or something and I slowed it down as much as I could, which was like eight seconds. But I managed to get a couple of good shots of this, okay, and I came home more excited than I had been about anything in years and years and years. And in the three weeks after that night I spent a ton of money on a used, really good mirrorless digital camera and spent hours and hours and hours a day looking at YouTube videos and reading articles and teaching myself about. I felt like I always had a good eye for composition. But I finally got excited about learning the technical sides of photography and learning about exposure and stuff and, without consciously thinking about it, I put so much energy into becoming a photography enthusiast and I didn't think at all about money, why I was doing this or anything. I just did it because I was so intrinsically excited about it. And that was about two years ago and I bought a couple lenses and I started borrowing lenses from people and taking landscape photos and long exposure stuff and nighttime photos and wildlife photos. And I was looking through my photos a few months ago and I said you know, some of these are like kind of printable, and I made a big print of one. And I found a vintage frame in my house that had an old, crappy piece of art in it that I didn't even care about. And then I taught myself how to source and mount my own photo and frame it. So I did it all myself, had so much fun doing it Took it to my local coffee shop in New Jersey, which also sells art and jewelry and gifts and things, and said to the owner, who I'm friends with, would you be willing to hang this up on consignment?
Speaker 2:And she looked at it and said a thousand percent. And I said okay, I was thinking about maybe asking this much for it. And she looked at me and said no, it should be quite a bit more than that. And I said really, and she said yeah. And she said yeah. So she hung it up. She put a price on it, we agreed on a split and it sold the next morning to a complete straight and I saw that thing go out the door the next morning because I happened to be there when the woman came in and bought it and I just pretended like I was just a random bystander, I didn't say oh, I took that picture. But it was such a magical moment because in that moment I looked back on the journey from that evening when I saw Orion framed in that weird cacti thing and I realized here is something that I did a thousand percent purely for just the passion, because I was excited about it and it's the easiest money that I've made in my entire life.
Speaker 2:And it was such a huge lesson to me and it made me realize that when people say like it's worth following your passion, that it really can be, but that a big part of it was really, really, really following what you're really, really, really passionate about and not playing that mind trick with yourself, like trying to say, well, I can, you know. And that's not to say like don't photograph a wedding, don't record a demo of some big musical thing that you're not super excited about. Those are all worthwhile things. But when you can really totally lose yourself in something the way that I lost myself in photography without even consciously thinking about it or trying to do it, it just happens so organically. You know, the challenge to this is that you can't say, oh, I'm going to go find that thing. It's like it finds you, it found me in that moment.
Speaker 2:You know, but when it finds you it just works. And not only that, but the excitement that I got from that then went on to light me up so much in so many other aspects of my life. I got back to being excited about making music because I got so excited from the photography, you know, and I've gone on to sell several prints and I now have several more prints hanging in two different shops back in New Jersey. I'm about to hang some in California. So this could actually turn into a semi side career and who knows what it could be in the future. But I'm still thinking of it more just because it's something that I love and I'm really excited about and I'm not you know, making a living off of it.
Speaker 2:It's great that people like it enough to spend money for it. But it was such a great lesson about true, true, very, very deep passion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got so much, so many thoughts around that. It's wonderful, wonderful to hear. I think, when you're talking about following passion and when we're talking, we're talking, we're coming away from the immediately obvious earning side, and I always see it as two separate things actually. Yeah, although the point is that they lead to. If you allow yourself to do the passion thing, it will lead you there eventually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the biggest, the biggest problem of why people can't access that and you manage to do it is that they're they're valuing, they're still valuing other people's opinions. So, if you can let go of that completely, so you let go. You don't. You're doing something just because you want to do it and you don't care what anybody else is going to think, whether that's going to make a good photograph or whether that's going to be able to be. You know you're going to be able to do it, and so I think that's the definition of classic one. If you can let go of all of that and just allow yourself to like, play plays a good word. So I suppose that when we talk, we talk about I under water, in water photography, which is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I just wanted to do it one and this was like about four years ago.
Speaker 1:I started I just thought it'd be great if I could just get my phone into the water and just take some photos, because it's really clear and just having to have a bit of a bit of fun actually. And then it got more and more serious and more serious. And now you know, today I've got an exhibition and books and what not that's come from it. So it's the same thing. It came from that passion. I just wanted to do it. I for no other reason than I wanted to do it. And that's when you'll connect to that, that bit that you love, because you're not doing it for for anything else. So absolutely, absolutely right, if you follow that passion and you keep following it and then you follow up with hard work, like you did, like you learned the technicals.
Speaker 1:This is people often forget this middle bit, yeah, the hard bit, which is practice, practice and work. So the work we would have been studying, the work that I did was going through loads and loads of different camera houses, trying to figure out how to do which ones worked, loads of different worksuits and figuring out which ones worked, and you know that's. There's quite a lot. And then practice, practice, practice, practice, practice and practice small, because that's when you start to get good at things. But yeah, you are right, finding that passion thing is the is the first step, and I suppose the other thing that I wanted to say was that I wonder whether, after you've been in an industry, in a, in a, no, a creative, what do you call it?
Speaker 1:subject area, creative area like your music and photography for a very long time and, even though you love it, you feel, might feel the need to. I just wonder if this is true of everybody else, because I'm feeling this, the need to explore other avenues. I feel like I want to continue my photography. I love it, but I've kind of found my thing, I've found my stride and just keep doing that now I think, and it will evolve yeah.
Speaker 1:And it'll change and I'll always do that. But I was in started to explore video a few years ago and I still love doing that and just developing that and now writing and painting and I'm feeling the urge to go into different creative areas as well. To challenge, I suppose challenge, expand, explore, not music, because I don't really think I've got a musical bone in my body, really really don't think that would be very successful, because just instinctively think that but I don't know, I don't know, I've never tried it but, I just I think that would get really badly, but I wonder, if that's the same for you then are you feeling the urge to explore different areas and to create different ways.
Speaker 2:I think that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I didn't see it coming and I didn't expect it, but I think that's a big part in it.
Speaker 2:And I'm so glad you brought up about the thing about just making what you want to make without worrying about what other people are going to think about it, because I that's so true of the difference between my music and my photography, the way I described it, because, trying to trying to make a living in music, even when I'm creating my own thing, I can remember so many times over the years when I've taken a song to you know music professional, a record label person or something to pitch it, you know, and they, they would give some sort of critical feedback and I think it's always important to listen to critical feedback. But I would always take things to heart in a way that's suggested to me, like you're not quite doing this right, it's not quite right, it's not quite good enough, and I think it's really held me back. And with the photography, of course, I never did that because I didn't have an end game in mind, so I wasn't worried about what anybody thought about it.
Speaker 2:I was only doing it because I was having fun and I was excited about it and now that you point that out, I think that is a big part of AY and I enjoyed it. But probably has something to do with why that first photo is sold because somebody saw something that was truly in my heart, that was not at all sullied by anybody else's vision or opinion or anything, that I just decided to put up there and share and that spoke to them and that there is such great value in that. It's so hard not to go down that road of listening to people and changing your process, changing your style, and you can certainly learn things from listening to people, but when you really do something just purely from the heart, wow, it's so powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and actually there's a whole lot of other podcasts that we could be talking on that. It's one of those things I am very, very passionate about, because I've seen so many people destroyed by their opinions and critiques of others, myself included, so that's definitely another story, but it's something that's very close to my heart. I do think that if we're going to seek the opinions of others, we should be really, really careful who yeah.
Speaker 1:Because people are just people at the end of the day, and if somebody's going to critique anything like in your music, the first thing you should ask is who are they? Who are they to make a judgment on me?
Speaker 1:Are they do, I value them enough to. It's a whole kind of worms, that, but I do think that, absolutely, when we create freely, we create freely without we take away these opinions and these judgments of other people then it's truly from the heart. And when I was there with my iPhone dipping in the water, I wasn't thinking, well, this winner, competition, well, this pass, my. I was thinking, well, my phone come out of this alive, and then I was just having such a great time. So that's the key. I think you're right, you've hit the nail on the head. So everybody's listening to this. The key is don't care. Don't care about what anybody else thinks, and you'll find this joy and this freedom and it's a wonderful thing when you find it. I still have it because I don't. I got over that, I work through that and everything I do now is like well, what if somebody doesn't like?
Speaker 1:it or doesn't really care. I don't need a score or a credit to my name. I'm doing what I do and that's the key for me. That's the key for me and I think I just keep doing that, although now, with the new things that I'm taking on, I'm a little bit more kind of I'm relearning.
Speaker 1:I'm also having to go back to my own advice. I can teach people and advise people. You don't care about what anybody thinks, don't worry about what everybody else's photograph looks like. And now, as I'm painting, I'm having to consciously work through that process and say, okay, don't worry, you just gotta be free, you've gotta be free, it's not that easy? It's not that easy is it?
Speaker 2:No, it's not.
Speaker 2:I think for most of us it comes with age and with a lot of experience you know, yes, I think there's the rare younger person who just kind of has that attitude built in, but I think for most of us you just have to live through years and years and years of letting that go. And, like you said, if you start something new, I mean I have to tell you, when I took that first picture into that shop even though I'm friends with the owner and I'm very, very comfortable with her, you know, I was so insecure and when I showed it to her, what was going on in my head was well, if she doesn't like it, is she gonna be comfortable enough to tell me she doesn't like it? Is she just gonna hang it on the wall just because she feels guilty, even if it's crap, you know? So, yeah, I totally get that.
Speaker 2:But while I was made the important thing is that while I was making it, I wasn't thinking that it was only in that final moment, and I think that's what made the difference.
Speaker 2:You know, I was thinking about the day that I took that picture, when you were talking about the first time going in the water with your iPhone, and it was the same thing. I wasn't thinking about what are people are gonna think about this? What are you know? I just happened to go up to the beach on an October afternoon and the lighting was amazing and the clouds were amazing and I thought, oh, I gotta get some pictures of this. This is amazing and this is a nice opportunity for me to practice with the camera. So I ran home and got the camera and some filters and lenses and the tripod and everything I had and I was up there for two hours just having fun, practicing and trying to capture a beautiful thing and the same thing. It was just all about being excited about it. I didn't think for a second what's anybody gonna think about this?
Speaker 1:It's like getting. It's almost like this that sort of middle part of your life is the hardest bit. So when you're, I was just thinking. I was thinking that actually we're trying to get back to that child artist. That's the aim. When we were three, four, five, six, seven, we would just go yeah great, I'm enjoying that, I'm just gonna splatter it there. It's brilliant, isn't it? And you go, isn't it brilliant? And then when we get to like 16, we're like, we're just full of like, or what does everybody else think I look like?
Speaker 1:And all of these we go through that terrible time where we're just like, well, the world's gonna end, isn't it? But because we don't fit in. And then, as we get older, we realise, actually, when we don't fit in, we actually that's us as artists, because we can't be artists and fit in. And then we go through this self-acceptance and it's like, yeah, whatever I am or I am. And as you go through that, I think, as you go through that process, which I'm now as I'm talking, I wonder whether this process of letting go is aligned with our development of ourselves. So, as we accept ourselves, we accept what we create and we accept that actually, not everybody's gonna like, not everybody's gonna like me, nobody's gonna think you know I'm nice, and not everybody's going to like my photography. So there we are and that's it.
Speaker 2:I think you make a really, really good point. By the way, I'm writing down something you just said because I liked it so much and I'm gonna read it back to you in a minute. But I can definitely see in myself the relationship between letting go of what other people think in terms of my art and just my life in general and my personal growth, and just truly embracing myself and who I am. I think that you're totally right about that. I think it's just part of our human journey and we're so lucky as artistic people to be able to have that experience and help us, cause I think that's a process that all people need to go through, but not everybody has the art to practice it with, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just came to that as we were talking actually, so that's a new one for me. I quite like that idea.
Speaker 2:That's one of the nice things about these kinds of discussions and having a podcast you just come up with stuff, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great and it's also, but also ironically, having the podcast has been a process of letting go as well, because it's three years in now and I don't know how many episodes, but a lot of the podcasting. It was difficult at first to let go of going. Did I say something wrong? Should I have said that? Should I have not said that? And now I'm just like well, do you know what? If I said something wrong, I said something wrong and that's all I was doing. Yeah, so that's a process as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I've been doing a podcast with a friend of mine, a music podcast, for a couple of years and I keep wanting to put a little disclaimer sound bite on the front. And if it were my own podcast I would do this. But because I'm collaborating with somebody else, I don't you know. But I just wanna go on at the very beginning and say don't hold me to anything I say on this podcast.
Speaker 2:You know, because I'm the one who normally edits it and every episode as I'm editing it, I hear myself say something and I'm like either the wrong word came out of my mouth, or I said something that's actually not accurate or whatever it is, and I'm like but you're right, it's another good way to train just letting go because it's done, it's there and whatever. None of us are perfect, we're just unique and weird.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is not everybody else notices we critique ourselves more heavily than we critique everybody else, don't we?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:So you're saying, well, like something, I said something wrong. And often I say I can't find the word for something, or I say something really, really daft, but nobody notices apart from me, so I've let go.
Speaker 1:But I let go of this podcast editing to my son who isn't as bothered about the silly things that I say and doesn't cut as much as I would. I've gone and got, probably won't listen to it back, so it's just going out there. It's going out there because I've got to let it go, because I need to reclaim that time somehow so I can be outdoors more. So it's just one of those things. So interesting though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. I want to read you back what you said that I loved so much. We can't be artists and also fit in.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:It's so elegant. You know it's just a handful of words, it's so concise, but it really it's such a nice thing to remind ourselves because I think it. If I read that every day for the rest of my life, it's going to save me so much time and energy in trying to fit in you know I can just every day surrender to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually. Yeah, it's quite good, that wasn't it.
Speaker 2:I'll do that, I'll email it back to you, so you don't forget.
Speaker 1:I say some good things occasionally, you see.
Speaker 2:I love it. I think we'll end on that high note Sounds good to me.
Speaker 1:Well, I've enjoyed this so much. Thank you so much for having me on as a guest.
Speaker 2:I've really enjoyed talking to you and I hope that when I'm there in the fall that we can spend some time together and whatever talk take some pictures. You know, I want to go in the water with you and put one eye below the water and one eye above the water and see the world the way you do and then realize how cold the water is.
Speaker 1:I already know that.
Speaker 2:I went in last year when I was there, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:I mean I surf in the winter in New Jersey, so I can be fine.
Speaker 2:I'm used to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'll be fine. Perfect. Well, I'll look forward to that. And yes, thank you so much, it's been an absolute pleasure. We'll see you in September, very good.
Speaker 2:All right, thanks so much, Margaret.