Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Following on from our first character-building creative writing exercise in Textual Portraiture, join us as we experiment with another set of constraints to develop strong, everyday characters.
Two friends obsessed with books and writing, we're Shannen and Gareth, and welcome to The Pleasure of the Text Podcast. Reading and writing aren't lonely pursuits, and The Pleasure of the Text lies in the shared imaginative space where readers and writers make meaning together. So tune in and join us as we talk about the books we love, interview remarkable authors, and discuss the writer’s craft.
Shannen: That's so funny because you said authentic Persian and it sounded like authentic person, and I was just imagining a skin of a, you know how people have cow skin hides? Imagining human skin hide rug.
Shannen: Well good morning everyone, and welcome to “The Pleasure Of The Text” podcast! We are your hosts; Shannon and Gareth, and today we are doing part two of our creative writing segment. Where last week we did some character-building. What did you call that topic that we did last week, Gareth?
Gareth: Yes. Hello. I called that textural portraiture, I believe.
Shannen: Yes. And what are we doing today, in part two?
Gareth: Today we're doing something a little more alliterative and easier to say, which is street sketching. Or street sketches. Yeah. So that should be good. It sounds urban, doesn't it? It sounds kind of cool. Can do some street sketches.
Shannen: Yeah it does. Sounds like we're going to grab our notepads and head out to the streets and draw a building. Except we're not.
Gareth: Exactly. No, we are, we're going to reclaim the streets. If people are listening to this right now and they're, you know, on the street, you're in the right place. Because that's where you need to be, around people. Really anywhere where there are people and you can find a nice comfy spot to have a sit down and get out your writing pad or other device and get cracking.
That's, uh, yeah. Now I actually said this last time and I think we've did the longest podcast we've ever done, but this should be a relatively quick podcast because it's in a sense, uh, an addendum to last week's podcast.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: So I guess I should give some background on this because this is not strictly speaking, uh, a writing exercise, or at least for me it didn't begin as a writing exercise.
So back in the day. I was at art school. When I left high school I headed to art school and, it was, it was everything you could hope for. I remember I got off the bus and I was walking up Oxford Street, which is in Sydney. And this fellow came up to me and said, do you want to buy some methadone?
Uh, not heroin mind, but methadone. And that had never happened to me before. And, and I, you know, I was, I didn't buy any, but I was sort of vaguely thrilled by it, to be honest. It was one of the more exciting questions anyone's ever asked me. Just on that topic, Shannen, have you ever had an experience like that?
Shannen: With methadone?
Gareth: Well, not necessarily methadone. I mean, you know, it could be anything. But being offered something you wouldn't necessarily ever think about buying. But it was kind of an exciting experience nonetheless.
Shannen: Um, yeah! So being offered something that I probably wouldn't buy, um. You know, when you go into a big shopping mall, and there's normally those stores in the middle. And they're trying to sell you stuff.
And if someone tried to sell me a rug. Like a carpet rug that I would never necessarily buy. That's not as exciting. But I suppose if you want to continue the talk on getting offered drugs, I did once get offered magic mushrooms in Bali, and you definitely do not want to buy magic mushrooms in Bali.
First of all . . .
Gareth: No, it's not the place, is it?
Shannen: No. Undercover police and um, just not the right type of magic mushrooms. It could seriously mess you up. So, yeah.
Gareth: Yeah. I suppose that's true of rugs too. Like if you were hoping it was an authentic Persian, but it was actually, you know, made somewhere else.
Shannen: That's so funny, because you said authentic Persian and it sounded like authentic person.
And I was just imagining a skin of a, you know how people have cow skin hides? Imagining a human skin hide rug.
Gareth: Well, I suppose a really tattooed person would make an excellent rug.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: Ah, that's gotten dark fast. There's actually, I think it's a Roald Dahl story in that vein. I think it's called “The Tattoo Bands”.
It's something like that. And it is about a fellow who is done away with because of the amazing tattoos all over his body. So I guess the lesson there is, you know, cover them up. Is that cover up, cover up tattooed men! Don't you go flaunting your tattoos in public! I see that. That's the lesson.
Shannen: I feel like we've veered off topic here. So we're talking about art school.
Gareth: Well we mentioned Roald Dahl. That's not bad.
Shannen: Yeah!
Gareth: Well, you know, it was good. The patron of the art store, the College of Finance at the time was an artist called Stellark, and he was famous amongst other things for hanging himself from ceilings, from hooks. Like hooks through his skin. Which I feel we could almost tie into tattooing and Roald Dahl and really give this a literary bent.
But I'm just I'm coming up short. But he was an interesting guy. Stellark, um, I don't know who the patron is anymore. I'm not sure how long patronages lasted for, but we're going all the way back now to the mid-nineties. That was when I went to art school.
Shannen: You’re showing your age there, Gareth.
Gareth: I know! Well, I do that every time I appear on camera. So yeah, I got offered methadone, I declined and then I headed for the university. It was my first time there. And it was quite stunning, you know, because it had big sandstone walls around it and they were covered in moss and these sprawling, uh, grass fields.
And I was like, oh my God, I've arrived. It's, you know, one of these Ivy League schools. I wandered in. There were a lot of soldiers walking around, but you know, I kind of figured. The army kind of goes to open days, and because, you know, you're naturally thinking of joining things at open days.
I figured, well this is the time, you know, if people are open to joining staff, let's get them to sign up with us. So anyway, I rocked in there and there was just soldiers everywhere and I went to the administration building and said, oh you know, I'm here to sign up, and I was filling out the form, I realized it was the Department of Defense. And I was like, wait a minute, what's this?
I realized I was actually at the barracks. Not the art school.
Shannen: Did they tried to get you in through offering free education?
Gareth: No, the lady at the desk took pity on me. I think she could sort of, she sized me up and said, this guy, you know, he'll never go beyond private. So she said, no, this is actually the barracks. The College of Fine Arts is across the road.
So I headed over there. It was an inauspicious start. Um, and the, it wasn't what I expected. It was a very industrial looking building. I assumed it was a factory or some such, but it wasn't, it was the college, and it was a wonderful place. I lasted there a year and then I got given the flick, rightly so too.
And then I did what all people who get kicked out of art school do; I joined a band, thinking that we'd be the next Beatles, and we weren't. And so that was, that was all kinds of cliches. But then, you know, I did take away a few things from art school, which have stuck with me, for many, many years now.
One of those things was colour theory and colour theory is something we'll probably touch on in, in relation to writing. Because there's some interesting ideas that can be sort of transposed into a textual context. But today we're going to do something; one of the exercises we did at art school, which was street sketches.
And this was like all great exercises - a traumatic experience. So get ready for that. What they did was they took us outside. I saw my would-be dealer on the corner, gave him a wave. He seemed to be doing well. We all sat down literally in the gutter and just started sketching people as they walked past us.
This turned out to be a very difficult thing to do because, oddly enough, people don't stick around and pose for you. They actually notice you sketching them and start running in the opposite direction. So that's what we are going to do today. We're going to try doing that, but obviously we won't be drawing, We'll be writing . . .
Shannen: And we won’t be in gutters. You'll be in the comfort of your own household.
Gareth: Yeah. Although, you know, if you're out there now listening to this and there's a gutter that's like not too grotty, it's not a bad place to sit honestly. You lean up against a car parked. People say if you're wearing a hat, just place it next to you.
You'll find that sometimes people will chuck a bit of money your way, and that's, you know, you didn't ask them. It just happened. That's a victimless crime. So we're going to play a video though for everyone else who isn't out on the street. If you are listening to this podcast, then head over to thepleasureofthetext.com and go to the “Blogs” page and you will find a post called “Street Sketches”.
Uh, and that will have a link to a video, and that's what Shannen and I will be looking at today together. So you can join us that way.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: Alright. Shannen, what do you reckon? So we are going to do five minutes. Always Five minutes. It's the perfect amount of time. Going to start this video up from the first, its first moment. It goes for an hour and 10 minutes and the goal is to just describe the people that you see on the video.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: Sounds pretty easy.
Shannen: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not focusing on anything, I'm just describing for five minutes.
Gareth: Yeah. For this first round we’re just going to go off instinct and see what happens.
Shannen: Yeah. Your time starts now.
Shannen: Oh! Welcome back, Gareth!
Gareth: Thank you, Shannen. It's good to be back. I missed you.
Shannen: How was your adventure?
Gareth: It was, it was incredible. It took me back all those years ago to my first ever street sketch and all the horrors of street sketching. How did you find it?
Shannen: Uh, I found it - can I use the word “horrible”? I would spot something that got my attention and I'd be like, okay, I see this detail and see this detail. Oh, and they're gone!
Gareth: I know, right? And that is the point of the exercise. And I recall when we did it the first time, my drawing teacher looked down and I’d drawn part of a woman's sandaled foot. And she said, you know, why were you so fascinated by that? And I was like, I wasn't, it was just the first thing I saw and I was drawing it.
And she went, well, you missed the rest of her. So that's all you took in, was this woman’s sandalled foot? Not even both of them, just one. And she might have been a one-legged woman. And it was a bit, you know, it was a bit confronting. I was like, I don't know how to do this. And so, what we did was we had to adjust what we were seeing to what can be placed down in a couple of seconds.
And that's very interesting and that is truly impressionistic. Which is something to access as a writer. Your innate impressionism. So I wonder if you want to share what you wrote, Shannon?
Shannen: Okay.
Gareth: Yeah.
Shannen: Lady with thick arms in a cut lemon shirt. Um, this is another describer - USA White long flavourless shirt. Lanky frame cap on backward. Woman in green pants, thighs rubbing together. Yellow shirt, pot belly, shop bag in hand, walking past. It's about as much as I got.
Gareth: Oh my! Okay. So you can see, um, now I've got a bit more than that, because I've done street sketching before and you build up a certain stamina. So here's what I got.
Thin grey lady carrying donuts. The boys have noticed me. So have the girls. They're all moving so fast. Love the balloon hat kid. This old fellow wears his sunglasses like a blind man. Uh, nobody is using the bin. So much grey on the adults. Colour on the kids. Pineapples on a grey canvas. Pigs on black. Socks touching white shorts.
Flapping. I'm getting fatigued already and seeing no one. The son is a cooler cut of his dad. Little girl at the table making mental sketches too. Nice to watch someone sitting still. She's holding his wrist. Why? Finally a jaunty straw hat and someone used the bin. I think there's a frozen ice cream place nearby.
So that was, uh, that's what I got down. Um, and looking into that, there a couple of things that I see in my own observations, which I might not otherwise find on a conscious level.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: So when you start going into the unconscious, the idea of the grey on the adults, colour on the kids, is a noticeable thing after a while. A while that I don't think I would've otherwise noticed.
And also the son being a cooler cut of his dad. There was a, I don't actually think they were related as it turns out, but at the time it looked as though they were together. They were both wearing caps. They were both wearing red shirts, except the son’s was just groovier. I think it was some sort of baseball top and they were both wearing grey shorts. And the son’s, again, were more groovier, and he had better shoes, but they were the same sorts of shoes. So basically, yeah, a cooler cut of his dad. Um, and so these are the, a lot like our free writing. You start pulling things out. Can you pull anything out of yours?
Shannen: I was very fascinated with people's t-shirts and I think in every description I at some stage talked about their t-shirt.
Gareth: Yeah, see that's interesting, isn't it? I mean, it's a billboard. So all these t-shirts, you know, different brands and like there was one that was a tennis brand, I think, but I can't remember what it's called because, you know.
Shannen: Oh, so you're saying that you’re paying to advertise them.
Gareth: Yeah. And isn't that interesting?
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: And that was something that really jumped out at you. So, you know, there's something there immediately. Whereas if you, you know, if we'd gone on a few seconds longer, I note in the still there's an older lady wearing a floral top and that's advertising something quite different, I think.
And that contrast between older and younger fashion sense and, and indeed, you know, with mine, with the cooler kid and his dad. His dad's stuff was so plain. The kid's stuff was all sort of cut around designs and logos. Trademarks and such. So you start to build this picture. But the other thing that starts to come out is the surroundings.
So, you know, in my one, I noticed the bin and, you know, I wasn't trying to notice the bin because we said we're going to draw the people. But the bin was always there. And then someone interacted with it and that felt meaningful, even though God knows it isn't. Um, and the ice cream place. I'd noticed a lot of people eating from these little tubs.
Shannen: Oh, actually I did as well.
Gareth: Yeah. But, you know, it's all moving so fast. You don't necessarily write it down the first half dozen or dozen times you see it. But there's something in that too, I think.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: Which is that people are not separate from their surroundings.
Shannen: Hmm. Good point.
Gareth: And when you describe people, often you can catch some of their character by describing all the things around them that aren't them, but on some level represent them. So that's what street sketching kind of, drags out of a person. Through their panic and sprained wrists as they're desperately trying to write everything down.
So I was thinking what we would do is do you want to pick, arbitrarily, would you like to pick a point in the video? Like, you know, 36 minutes and 28 seconds, or whatever. I'll let you have the, without even looking. Give us a number.
Shannen: Uh, okay. Let's do 15 minutes in.
Gareth: 15 on the nose?
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: All right. I've got it to 14:57. That's pretty close. Okay, so we're going to do this exercise again. Only this time you, you still want to try and describe the people and pick out the things that jump out at you, but also think about the way they're interacting with their environment or even the way they're not interacting with their environment.
They could, for an for example, be, you know, someone sitting in the gutter. Possibly, you know, looking for some loose change, possibly sketching them, who's to say? And they're avoiding that person. And that could be a defining feature of their appearance. So whatever it is, um, you know, try and bring it in, but allow that distinction between people and places to fall away a bit.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: Yeah?
Shannen: Okay. Let’s do this again.
Gareth: Let's do this again. I'm going 15 minutes in, folks.
Shannen: 15 minutes into the clip, and your five minute timer starts now.
Gareth: And we’re back.
Shannen: Yes.
Gareth: How did that work out for you, Shannen?
Shannen: Uh, that one was a lot better, because I started looking at the environment and how people interacted with it. And I'm not sure if you guys noticed or you noticed Gareth, but there was a widgets, a toy stand that a lot of the children were interacting with.
Gareth: Oh, the glowing thing. I thought that was a bake stand. Oh. Oh. Well, yeah. No, that explains that. Um, gosh. Well, so it went well. So I'm champing at the bit to hear what you wrote.
Shannen: Yeah, sure. Taking a city map from her companion, a girl in yellow shorts and blue shirt, white hat, picking up the fallen squishies widget toys. The dangling display of toys. No! The dazzling display of toys completely engrossing her. Removing all the other couple’s children and passersbys into the background. Can we try that? More toys falling on the ground and from them she's gone. On the other side of the toy stand, but her voice is still clear over the couple talking in an Asian language I can't identify. Another girl comes over to pick up a toy. Will she steal it? No. Her younger sister perhaps comes over to join her. The stand like a magnet, toys falling down to the floor. A hardened patrol. A girl herself in a tight ponytail, black shirt, watching the small nimble kids' hands, fondling the toys.
Gareth: Hey, cool. So, I mean, you've got, that's really interesting. So, I mean, you're focused on certain people and then you're not, and then you're drawn into the scene again. And I mean, there are moments where, you know, you're clearly following people for a length of time, but maybe they're becoming other people.
And, the marker of the, the Asian language. That for me landed about halfway through my writing. So that was interesting because I could see where, uh, that landed for you.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: Yeah. And I mean the space really dictated it, that time for you. That's really interesting. And yeah, it pulls out stuff you wouldn't necessarily notice.
Shannen: Yeah. I'm not sure if you noticed, but the toys kept falling, before you thought it was a bakery, but they kept falling to the ground.
Gareth: I just kept thinking five second rule, just over and over. Five second rule. And also, you know, if it's not on the shelf, it's mine. Um, yeah.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: Well, I'll read you mine. I found myself far more distracted on this one for some reason. But what I found was that I was becoming more interested in people's motivations this time around. So I've got washes of blue where near the beach. Strollers. Pastels. Heads bent over phones. They're lining up for something.
Baked goods. Turns out to be widgets. He stops. Pre-faded clothes, adding to his edge, edge off the rack. The bin stares at me, agape. Swinging arms, drawing them somewhere, hands heavy with bags. They've already been. The passers-by draw nearer, crowding it around me. Hints of a foreign dialect. So much empty space.
Why did the lights change? That strollers wheel is wobbly. Girls in matching black tops and blue shorts. Helicopter passes and everyone turns. Why are handbag so different to the rest of people's outfits? A fly hovers around her mouth, just hers. Didn't she floss?
And that's where I landed. And then I realized that we'd passed five minutes and my connection had cut out and I was just writing in the dark, as it were.
Shannen: Yeah. I loved the concluding sentence.
Gareth: Yeah, it was interesting. She was just like really flapping her hand around and, and nobody else seemed bothered and, uh, yeah. That seemed very interesting to me. And I was also struck by the girls in the matching blacktops and blue shorts, because they did look, they both had blonde hair, they both had their hair tied back. They were very similar. I don't think they were related, but they, they were sisters of a sort and the only difference was the cut of their clothes and how they were cut. And I think that's interesting. That's sort of, little bits of difference within homogeny.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: It’s a really interesting thing. And that's something I know that if I was writing this is a scene, I would probably bang on about that a bit. That would, that would draw my sort of intellectual attention. And I'd find, I'd want to puzzle that out.
Shannen: Yeah. I think a statement you just said where, you know, points of differences in homogeny because, um, often when you’re reading a book and you're describing the main character’s love interest, a lot of the descriptions are the same. You know, we talk about their hair, their eyes. They might be wearing a suit or if it's a bit of a real background, they could have overalls with car grease on them. But those as describers are quite homogenous. Like, so tell us what's different about this particular character.
Gareth: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it was a bit of a standard trick for him, but Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, he would tend to give his Bond girls, uh, a defect of some description. There was a, “From Russia with Love”, the main character - what was her name? Oh gosh, it's too long ago. I can't remember. It was a fairly stock kind of Russian name as you'd expect from Ian Fleming.
Shannen: Ivanka?
Gareth: It was sort of that sort of thing. Anna, Annakover kind of thing. Her mouth was too big. Um, and this was her floor, and it was the thing James Bond found intriguing about her. He was always drawn to people's flaws and, in fact, Bond himself was like a series of scars and hair that wouldn't stay in place.
And these sorts of slight defects and twitches that were sort of, um, the points of interest. And they were the points of interest. Those kinds of things draw a reader. You know, it's the stuff that anyone can, I mean, well actually, again, the, uh, the handbags. I started to notice the women who were dressed quite, I don't know, I'd say stylishly, often had very frumpy handbags. And then there would be other women who were dressed quite casually, who’d have very stylish handbags.
I was like, what's going on? It's like everyone threw their handbags in a pile and just grabbed one randomly. And they didn't match. It's not something I've ever noticed before, but it, it was playing on my mind and it was distracting me actually from writing.
I was sort of noticing these things, these sort of character points that was dragging me out of the moment more than in the first attempt. So it'd be interesting to do 3, 4, 5 more goes of this. We won't. But, and just to see, to see how things change and develop in your process,
Shannen: I'm not a handbag girl, so I can't really comment on why stylish women have frumpy handbags or why casual women have stylish handbags.
Gareth: It's a mystery. I suppose our listeners should write in, you know, with also, you know, comments about whether that's, you know, the right thing for me to say as well. And yeah. Uh, you know, I would recommend people try street sketching. It's a really good exercise. It's another one you can do in a cafe.
Cafes are great places for it. And it's challenging. And that's part of what is great about it. It's another constraint. It disturbs your process. It pushes you out of your comfort zone. Gets you working in different ways, which may at some other point become the ways you work. The things you notice when you're describing characters and also this idea that I, you know, I think we're going to talk about again and again and again, which is that characters don't exist in a vacuum.
Dialogue doesn't exist as some sort of separate thing from narrative and action and essentially all text is wound together.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: So, yeah. I don't know. That was it. I think that was quite a quick one for us, wasn't it?
Shannen: Yeah. Um, so we've kind of done two character-building exercises now. What are you hoping the audience will do with this?
Gareth: Well, I think it would be interesting. I would love it if people sent in, you know, examples of their exercises. I think that would be fantastic. I think it would be such a thrill somewhere down the track. To be able to read out people's writing, do a podcast, which is just letters to the editor, if you like.
Shannen: Oh! I like the name of that.
Gareth: I think that would be a lot of fun. Yeah. But basically, the big thing that, one of the great myths in writing, I suppose, is that to place it into sort of discreet manageable chunks, people kind of go, okay, let’s look at dialogue. Let's look at the scenery. And it creates this false division. These things are not discreet entities.
They bleed into each other and it's not just on a structural level. They actually mirror each other and affect each other.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: So they can't be pulled apart like that. And so I think this exercise kind of shows that quite well. That it's not just people, it's their surroundings. It's the way they interact with other people.
I suppose I'd love people to try it and see it for themselves, and see what they think, you know, see if they disagree.
Shannen: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for organizing this today, Gareth. I took a lot from that and the difference between the first five minutes to the second five minutes is really obvious. I think, especially in my own exercise writing. So thank you so much. I feel like I developed a bit more as a writer.
Gareth: Yeah, I think you, well, I don't know if I go quite that far, that feels like giving the exercise too much credit. But definitely there's a fascinating development in your writing from the first to the second piece, and the way you dealt with the challenge of that much information flying at you.
I think that in some ways my first piece was better. Although I was quite fascinated by this sudden preoccupation with motivation. You just don't know what kind of happy accidents are going to occur when you do these sorts of exercises.
Shannen: And I love that terminology because I think we get it in our brain.
I've got to sit down for an hour, or two hours and I've got to plug out this particular scene. And when you do a bit more free writing stuff, uh, it allows your consciousness or your subconscious to get into it, and you develop what you said. Happy accidents.
Gareth: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, if you look at impressionistic visual art, what's fascinating about it often is from a distance it can look quite, um, photorealistic.
But as you get up close, it suddenly takes on this whole other appearance. And I think this is something with writing that it's a mistake to imagine that all writing should be seen from a certain distance. Taking an impressionistic approach to certain scenes is possibly the right approach, certainly for like, crowd scenes, for example.
Doing something that's very close up, as a piece of writing might not convey the crowdedness of the crowd scene.
Shannen: Yeah.
Gareth: So there are definitely different sort of focalizations that are at play. In writing as with visual art or indeed with music and base tones and travel, and so forth.
There are analogues across all the art forms for this kind of thing.
Shannen: Well, maybe, because this is the second time we've done character building exercise. Maybe we can do one where we listen to a song, so someone's voice or someone’s speaking, and then we have to describe their character based on their voice.
Gareth: That's a great idea, actually. I think, let's lock that in. What we'll do is, we'll, here's what we're going to do.
Shannen: Oh, okay.
Gareth: We're going to have a piece of music. It'll have to be an old bit of music because; rights. So we'll have a piece of music and we'll also have some audio of someone talking, and we'll describe both in terms of character and then we'll blend them together. And see what we get.
Shannen: And then would it, could we, it would be cool if we can do a kind of reveal, and show what the person actually looks like.
Gareth: That's a wonderful idea too. Yeah. Yeah, no, that all sounds great. We'll just have to wrestle with the rights for all these images and sounds and stuff, but we'll get it done. We've got time.
Shannen: You guys don't need to worry about that. That's our problem.
Gareth: So don't worry about it.
Shannen: Um, so next week we are doing our second book review.
Gareth: “House of Leaves”.
Shannen: Uh, how far are you through the “House of Leaves”, Gareth? And everyone, actually.
Gareth: Well, I'm not as far into it as you are. Because, you know, as we spoke about two weeks ago, uh, I'm in a book club and had to quickly knock off that book, which has held me up slowly. But I am loving “House of Leaves”.
Shannen: Ah, yes! Me too.
Gareth: It's a little bit like these writing exercises in that it promotes discomfort for maximum satisfaction. I find myself reading it, going what's going on? I'm having trouble following this. Wait, I've been distracted by that. Why is this in blue? And just finding myself constantly challenged by it. But I'm just loving it.
Shannen: Yeah. I've reached a point in the story where, so there's a main character and then there's just kind of been a sudden shift, in the main character and, it's - I'm really excited. That's all I can say without giving anything away. But really excited to finish it and to share and talk with you.
Gareth: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. I mean, I'm not up to that bit, but that sounded like a pretty enticing teaser. So I'm going to really hoe into it in the next few days and see if we can catch you up.
Shannen: Yeah. Well, given that I really have to go read. So I'll see everyone later and I'll talk to you later, Gareth, as well.
Gareth: See you, Shannen. See you everyone as well.
Shannen: Bye!
Gareth: Bye!