Lou Hamilton – dealing with a buried trauma and rediscovering pencil and paintbrush

Lou Hamilton was living an idyllic and artistic life in Scotland when she witnessed the Lockerbie air disaster. Years later she realized that the trauma of that event was still within her, and she started to address that. Lou trained as a coach to help herself and others feel courage and confidence. Age 50, Lou was compelled to start drawing again, which led to her publishing two books (so far) and picking up a paintbrush too.

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Researched, edited and produced by Claire Waite Brown
Music: Day Trips by Ketsa Undercover / Ketsa Creative Commons License Free Music Archive - Ketsa - Day Trips
Artworks: Emily Portnoi emilyportnoi.co.uk
Photo: Ella Pallet

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• 30:32 (Cont.) Lou Hamilton – dealing with a buried trauma and rediscovering pencil and paintbrush

Transcript

Claire Waite Brown: 1:49

For this episode, I'm speaking with Lou Hamilton, who was forging an artistic life in Scotland when she witnessed a dreadful event. Years later, Lou realised that she needed to address the trauma that was still within her. And after regaining her courage and confidence, she felt compelled to once again pick up a pencil, and then a paintbrush. Hi, lo. Hi, how are you? Very good. Thank you. You had a creative and a personal reawakening as you approached your 50s Can you tell me what it is? You do? Yes. So I'm a bit of a mixed bag. I'm a painter. I'm a writer, author, Illustrator, have my podcast, and I have a business helping people to become podcast guests. So it's a it's a ripe old mixed bag. And really sort of how it came about was when I turned 50. I, I don't know whether it was a bit of a sort of midlife crisis, or, you know, I was going through the menopause. My grandmother had died that year, I was turning, I turned 50. And my children were flying the nest. And I sort of thought, Well, you know, what, what's next? For me? Obviously, it's kind of a whole new start for my children. But is it a whole new start for me to I guess this was sort of playing out in my mind. And I just suddenly had the urge to start drawing again. And I hadn't picked up a pencil in years, and I started drawing out popped this little character who later became known as brave new girl. And at the time, I'd been posting on social media, with photographs that I've taken with sort of inspirational sayings. And, but it was beginning to become a bit like everyone was doing it. I thought I wanted to do something a bit more original. And so I thought I could I could post Brave New Girl with some inspirational sayings. So I started doing that. And the response was immediate, I guess, because it was so different. And very personal. So I kept posting, and people kept saying, well, more, more, more, please. And then someone said, Oh, you should really try and get her published. So I did. And it all happened very, very quickly. I've got an agent. And then we got publishers. And so the book was born. And really with that, my, I don't know, my creativity just started sort of spilling out in in every direction. And these drawings were tiny little stick drawings, mean black and white. And I suddenly had this urge to go to paint big and in colour. So I started painting these six foot paintings. In my flat. It just felt like the the dam broke and unleashed this sort of torrent of creativity, which I still feel seven years on. Brilliant. Yes, this breaking open, just trying to wondering whether that was a brand new thing or refound things and what was your experience of the arts like as a child? Well, I was always very creative, but then I think children are until maybe they reach secondary school, you know, we explore and play and colour and paint and draw and read and it's sort of coming out of every orifice when we're kids here. That's just what we do. And in primary school, we are encouraged to do that. And it is how we learn. We're really nurtured in our creativity and our curiosity. And then I guess in secondary school, you're sort of timetabled out of the arts and into academia and with the goal of exams And getting you through through all that. And for the first couple of years, I was doing art. And then when it came to our levels, I had to make a choice because of this timetable, thing I couldn't do. I wanted to do Latin, music and art. And I couldn't do all three. So I had to choose two. So I thought, well, I can't do the other two on my own. So I'll take music and Latin as school subjects, and then I'll find a way to do art outside. So I found a local gallery, who agreed to teach me and go to classes every lunchtime, I was able to take that on my own. So I guess I was pretty determined that it was something that I wanted or maybe needed to do it needed to be in my life. But the thing with art education schools, then I think it's very, very different now was that it was not very imaginative, you know, you we were encouraged to cut out pictures from the Sunday coast supplements, and basically square those up and then paint what we'd cut out. So you know, with powdered paints, yeah, so I was doing powder paints, squaring up pictures from supplements. And I wasn't very good at that, really, I sort of lost the, the kind of that sort of playfulness. But I still knew that I wanted to go to art school, I was going to try for reading English at Oxford or Cambridge. And, and then it was a sort of funny time, it was, it was a sort of really tough time, there was a mass unemployment, there was a lot of strikes, you know, it was really, really hard time. And, and we, we had this class called general studies where either visiting lecturers would come in, or a teacher would come in and talk about a specific subject one time they showed us the the film about the nuclear, because it Yeah, we really thought we were under a nuclear threat then. And, and this film was about what to do if a nuclear bomb did go off. And you know, we had to basically hide under the table. Not sure that was going to do very much. But anyway, we said they've kind of put the fear of godliness. And, and then there was this other one where we were told, well, you know, there's going to be no jobs when you leave. So you better know how to spend your leisure time. As it turned out, quite prophetic. 30 odd years later, there's a global pandemic when everybody's at home. And they did kind of find their creativity many people did, as a way of sort of coping with that weird weirdness of being at home. But anyway, I, on the back of that may be the only person in our class that took this kind of other decision. But I thought, Okay, well, I'll I'll go off to art school. And and because I could imagine spending my life painting would be a really amazing way to live. So if I went, yeah, I moved to London and went to art school. They're brilliant, you obviously took something from that lesson, I'm not sure if everybody else took that point for that lesson and made it such a big part of you going forward. Interesting, ya know, lots of people went often and went to the city and made lots of money. You have to spend your leisure time. So you went to art school? And I know that after our college, you went to Scotland. During that time, was there a plan? What was the plan? Well, at that time art school, there was something about going for the fine art rather than graphics or something kind of useful that you could actually get a job fine art was then kind of assuring you that you weren't going to get a job you weren't really taught about those things in in art school, it was all about the art it was all about critical thinking and really, really going deep on pushing yourself and pushing the envelope and really exploring and I guess kind of back to childhood but you know, at times it was really brutal but it did really make you think and it really did develop your critical mind and I I heard once someone say someone famous say that everybody should go to art school at some point in their life and, and I can see see that you know, it wasn't that we were taught how to paint or mix colours or composition it was that we learn to think and analyse and really question everything and observe everything. And and I think that's a really that is a really good good tool, but not obviously one for finding a job immediately afterwards. Although a few years later, it wasn't that much long, longer after I left out college, that the likes Damien Hirst and Tracy, MN, and that whole kind of Goldsmith's gang, they actually did think differently. They did think that they could make art in ways that they could also earn money. And they, they didn't kind of push the two apart. Damien Hirst, in particular took a lot of flack for Oh, well, he's really commercial. But it's that sort of old fashioned thing of thinking, well, if you're creative, you can't earn money. And, you know, we did come out thinking that. And so I was really glad that, you know, it was only a few years later that that group of artists did say to themselves, well, why is that true? But for myself, I left art school, it had been quite sort of hairy, being a young woman in London at that time, you know, you just have to be looking over your shoulder every second of the day. And it's not that you learned to get used to it, but you just kind of got on with it. But it was very wearing and very exhausting. And so by the time I'd finished art school, I was really ready to get out of out of London and, and so we kind of ran away to Scotland and group of us had done the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a couple of times, and this time when I finished art school just decided to stay up there. And eventually bought a church in Lockerbie for 7000 pounds, which just happened to be the money that we'd got for for a public art commission. By that point I had learned to make money from from my art. And so yeah, so we just said, Well, we've got 7000 pounds, this church is 7000 pounds, let's buy it not thinking you know, it's got 100 foot spire it's got a massive listed building roof. Keep in tact, but it was a massive space. It wasn't the most incredible space and so you know, we were able to make huge sculptures and do sculpture Commission's and for a while it was it was really great. It was really idyllic. It felt really calm and peaceful. And you know, you didn't need very much money. I had a part time job working in a gallery. It was quite quiet so I could draw paint while I was waiting for customers come in. It was quite a sort of bohemian area. There were other artistic people. Yeah, so so it was all going very well. You were feeling safe and creative and calm. As you've mentioned, you were living very close to Lockerbie. And you were there when the Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb over the town. Can you tell me what you witnessed and how that affected your sense of safety and perhaps your life decisions afterwards? Yeah, so we we'd bought the church in Lockerbie itself. But we were trying to sort of convert it so that we could live there. But at that time, we were living in a little cottage, literally just outside. And it was just one night, I was watching the television and I heard what I thought was thunder and I went to the to the window and it didn't seem to be thundery out there. And and then the phone rang and it was my landlady. And she was saying, Are you okay? Yes, fine, why, and she said on a plane as being blown up out of the sky by view. And so we just turned on the television and kind of watched it play out on TV like everybody else was, except that out of the window, you could see the sky was orange, and, and just mayhem. We were just up a little hill and down at the bottom was the sort of main road going up through Scotland. And that was kind of read gridlocked. And then journalists were sort of coming in banging on the door because they were trying to, they wanted to use the phone, there was no mobiles or anything, then my parents couldn't get hold of me all night, because the lines were sort of taken up by the emergency services, but and, you know, and the ambulances and the police and everybody kind of rushed to the scene, but, but nothing would could be done because everybody was dead. And, you know, I'm sorry, I didn't expect that. All these decades later. Yeah. So we we didn't really know what to expect when, when light came up the next day, and we didn't know what we were going to open our door to. We we walked into town and you just saw bits of plain in the front, sort of gardens. And, and we just didn't look up because we didn't know what we were going to see and actually people People did see the most horrendous things in the trees and, and in their gardens. And, you know, people were really, really devastated. He never, ever would want anyone to witness what, what those people saw. And so here was, it was really devastating for the whole town. And for the families, and, you know, the, the town was kind of overtaken by journalists and, and, and it was sort of this media kind of storm. And I just remember going into, we just didn't want to do just kind of walked into, we just went to the pub, and everyone was just kind of sitting there. And this was like, 11 in the morning and just threw a cup of coffee and, and there were loads of journalists in there. And then we just heard one guy say, there was because obviously everyone died in in the plane, but also 11 people have died on the ground, and some of the houses has been completely destroyed. And I heard this guy say, yeah, there's a there's a child that he'd done, he'd gone to the telephone box to make a call. And, and when he came out of his, his whole family had been destroyed. And, you know, it, it was just, it was it kind of almost like went into shock, I think. And, you know, I'm quite resilient in many ways. And, and although I've always been very, very fearful, when things actually happen, you kind of just have to get on with it. And, you know, we were alive, we hadn't lost anyone. And there was a sort of real sense of, in my head that there was a kind of hierarchy of, of grief. I hadn't asked anyone, I wasn't injured, I still have my home. And therefore, you know, I had no right to kind of feel the pain that other people were feeling. And I went into the church and there was a church hall next door. And I just sort of something in me just went through the the door to the other space, and it was just filled with coffins. This was like maybe a couple of days later floor to ceiling, you know, you know what to do with that men mount bodies, though, it was all it was all very shocking. And but I think what I did was just kind of bury it. And a couple of years later, I left Lockerbie and went back down south and sort of started getting really went and did a an MA in public art and continued doing sculpture and but then through the AMA started to kind of explore other materials, things like video recorders had come down in price that we were able to kind of start playing with those and exploring sort of multimedia it was all very new and and very exciting. It felt very sort of cutting edge and pioneering and, and kind of sculpture and painting or seemed a bit fuddy duddy, you know, fashion. And it's interesting because I heard recently both Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, who've both come back to painting. I've heard both of them say, separately, that they really regretted not coming back to painting sooner, that they wish they kept that art because it's mastery, isn't it? We all kind of ducked out of painting, because there was kind of new toys to play with, and kind of missed, you know, maybe 1020 years of, of practice, and you get better with practice. But at the time, it was like, yeah, that was painting was really uncool. And, and multimedia was, you know, as just like the beginning. So it was all really, really exciting, and kind of opening our minds up about what was possible. And, and I was working with this woman. At the end of the degree, we did this performance piece called silent voices. And it really was about kind of reclaiming the streets and giving women a voice and a platform. But of course, we didn't have all the stuff that we have now. So we did it in the way that we could do which was we sent out postcards to 400 women and women's groups and got their answers on the postcard which was around the idea of you know, what would you say, but never felt able to. And then we projected these giant mouth into the union chapel and had their their words coming out of the mouth as part of a big performance piece. An interesting because, you know, when I started the the podcast guest agency and on my own podcast, Brave New Girl, which is all about kind of championing women and giving women a voice and a platform. I realised that oh my god, the seeds were planted back then. And so I was really interested in exploring art as a sort of way of looking at social issues. And, and I didn't feel that I had had this last big sculpture commission, which was these three giant dogs on stilts, 20 foot up into the sky, by the end for an outside vendor. And you know, while it was really exciting, learn to weld, and I worked with communities making poetry around it, and we had a massive kind of lanten procession. So it was all kind of very exciting. But I found that what interested me most was actually explaining the whole story behind the sculpture, the whole mythology behind the scope of sculpture, which was then put onto a plaque. And I was thinking, that's interesting that, that's what's interesting to me. And so that's how I then sort of started getting into video art. And we got grants from the Arts Council for five years making these these artists films. And then the last one, they were saying, they said to us, I think you need to give them a bit more narrative. And I was I didn't know what narrative meant. Although obviously, you know, we all have a sense of story. We know what beginning, middle and an end is. But I didn't know how to kind of work that into these artists films. And so then, chance, I didn't know good luck. I'd sent the film to somebody who, because it was dead at a screening in a cinema and she wasn't able to come. So I sent her the then VHS, but she just got her commission to do a three part series for Channel Four on terminal illness, which became called death, the series. And she asked me whether I would be interested in coming on and being one of the director, producer writers. And I said, Yes, because I always had a habit of saying yes, and then finding out how how you do after that. So that's how I kind of got into documentary filmmaking. Yeah, and I know that the filmmaking also led you to possibly revisiting what we've been talking about, and helping yourself to feel happier and less fearful. So can you tell me about that? Yeah. So Channel Four, at that time, were really good. And they were really on it in terms of looking after the, the teams who were making these films, and particularly this film, which was potentially psychologically quite challenging, you know, we were following 12 people who were dying, and being with their families who ultimately grieving, and it was an amazing experience, it really was the most incredible privilege to be with these people, and have their trust. And it was very sensitive, it was very challenging. But what made it easier was that the people who were being filmed to the ones that were actually dying, were really all of them were really strong in the sense that the reason that they were doing it was that it gave a point to their life that they were sharing all of the things about dying. It was still a taboo, talking about death, talking about cancer, called You know, it was, it wasn't like now where people have a platform on Instagram to kind of talk about their journeys and their experience. So this was really something for them. But for us, China for paid for us all to have a psychotherapist. And what we all found was that it wasn't so much about the film that we we needed to talk about it was kind of past baggage. And obviously, all the stuff with what had happened in Lockerbie started to to come up. I'd also lost my cousin, we were the same age. She died when we were 26. We were very, very close. We were like sisters. And and I think these things sort of still tend to kind of pile up on on themselves. And so I was beginning to feel these things sort of emerging. And then after the death series, I did a made of film on PTSD in soldiers hold a brutal piece. And I think that was the sort of final straw I was interviewing a psychiatrist at the Priory who specialised in this process called EMDR. And what it does is it it sort of winds down the trauma that keeps raising its head. And so as he was talking, I was thinking God this the symptoms of PTSD, some really, really familiar things like being hyper vigilant, being very scared, being very anxious all the time. Terrible. Terrible nightmares, all of the things that I just thought was me. I had no idea that it was as a consequence of the experiences that I'd might had. And so then I started to sort of go and get help specifically for that. And trained as a coach myself, because I thought, I liked the idea of coaching, because it was about, well, you know, things have happened to you. But what can you do from this standing point where you are right now? What do you do moving forward, and I really liked that concept. And it was quite new in the UK at that time. So I trained as a coach in order to understand coaching, and to be able to use the techniques for myself and also to help other people. And so yeah, so that was kind of the beginning of me kind of dealing with all of these things that hurt her come up, amazing. You enjoyed making films, and you are moving on with yourself and helping others. But during that time, you weren't painting or drawing. So perhaps we're creatively starved a little bit. And you started to tell us at the beginning about the catalyst for the change. So can you bring us up to date with how you got to Brave New Girl, the painting and all the things you're doing now? Yeah, so filming is, is an amazing experience. And it's a real team effort. And as a director, you're helping other creative people to be as creative as they possibly can be under your kind of vision. But you're also kind of dealing with your production side and raising money, and the less creative side of things and, and, you know, making independent films was, you know, hard work, it would take a long time to get them off the ground and get them funded. And, you know, whether they then ever get seen, and I went to lots of film festivals, and the films got awards, but that doesn't pay the bills, you know, on one hand, it was incredibly exciting, and very creative. And on the other hand, it was really not creative at all, that began to feel sort of very frustrating. And so I started taking photographs, again, that was a really great outlet for for my creativity, because it didn't require anyone giving me permission to do it, it didn't require any funding to do it. And I sort of just kind of immersed myself in that in between trying to get films off the ground. And, and that was really exciting. And it kind of gave me the sort of that sense of autonomy, creative autonomy, and you know, we have to do is get up, take your camera, and off you go. But then what I was finding was that what I was trying to make with the photographs were sort of these abstract images, I was trying to make them like paintings. And at some point, I just thought, you know, what's happening here, you know, your, your fear, which, you know, was still there, despite all the therapy and coaching and everything. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to use paint to make the images that I could make in photography. But ultimately, you know, your creativity has got it, it's got a mind of its own, it's gonna make it happen. And so, yeah, it was when I started drawing and then Brave New Girl and then painting and, and I was sort of unleashed back into to the world of the paintbrush. Yeah. I love sharing my guests stories with you. But podcasting isn't cheap. There are hosting fees and software costs, tech to buy and time to invest in planning and editing to make sure the guests sound great. And listeners hear the best content. If you would like to financially support creativity found, please visit kayo hyphen f fi.com slash creativity found podcast. The paintings that you're doing now are large, and the sculptures that you were doing for public art were also large. Do you think there was a conscious or an unconscious reason for this? Yeah, I love things being kind of bigger than human scale and that you're kind of totally immersed in, in the piece is a very different feeling. When you're painting a small picture you feel kind of outside of I feel outside of it. Whereas when I'm making big work, I feel like I'm really really part of part of the thing and you know, these are kind of quite spiritual pieces. And so I'm very kind of aware of the physics of the universe of sort of Atoms and cells and particles. And so I kind of really feel like I'm in that world when I'm working big. Definitely because I was a sculptor. First off, I do work in a very kind of robust way. It's a very physical way I work on the floor. I use builders, paint brushes, I work in plaster and sort of very textural and kind of scratch into the surface. And it's interesting because I've been thinking about who my influences are, and who they have always been. They're all male, Sean Scully, and a nice couple, he's a sculptor, but kind of uses colour, and the way that I like to think of colour and, and Tony tap, yes, who also made these big kind of very physical paintings, which I absolutely loved. The influences are kind of far, far and wide. Joseph boys, definitely Shawn scaly, but they're all very physical painters. It's quite sort of macho work that they they made. And it's interesting, because when Brave New Girl started being seen, and the book was published, and people would say, Oh, this such cute whimsical drawings. And that was like a sort of knife in my heart. Oh, gosh, me making whimsical thing. It's just like, feels so kind of alien to the artist in me, which is, has always been kind of very robust and physical and, and so I think that the painting is definitely antithesis to do the drawings. But yeah, I love the kind of exploring these sort of abstract colour fields. This painting commission I've got at the moment, which is for one of the buildings in Canary Wharf, that's a 57 storey building, and my paintings are in pairs, they're going to be on 55 of those stories. People have said to me, Well, aren't you going to get bored painting, the kind of same things, but it feels like, the less you have to think about composition and the things that you'd think about, if you were making figurative work, the more you can explore the physicality, of colour and shape and of light and hue and and how they kind of work together. But are under it all is the feeling of the kind of physics and nature and what it is that we're, we're all kind of made up of. And some people might call that spirituality. Other people call it physics, other people call it nature, but it is that kind of essence of what we're all made up of, and what our environment is made up of. And, and that is what I explore through colour. Yeah. And whimsical comments apart? Did you have any nervousness? or How are you feeling about sharing both Brave New Girl and you're painting with Brave New Girl drawings, Ida had had such a brilliant, positive response right from the outset, and people were urging me to, to get a book. And then I got an agent really quickly, the book went to auctions. So you know, publishing houses were sort of fighting over it. And, and that all happened in a very short space of time. So I just kind of felt that everyone else was behind it. So you know, I could be behind it. I guess, I felt like Yeah, she she needs to be out in the world, she's kind of forced her way through me out into the world. So I didn't really feel like it was kind of me, that was making it it was the site, this was just happening, and maybe it was my grandmother who, you know, from the other side, or, you know, it just needed, she needed to be out there, this character, and I had been, I don't know, chosen to be the one to draw her. And, and so that we kind of felt very, very straightforward. Then I wrote a self coaching book called fear less. And that was illustrated, but it was much more about the tools and techniques to sort of help people have more courage in their lives and, and use their creativity. You know, people say that they're not creative, but to be human is to be creative. And that ability is what we can use to get us through fear. To use fear, you know, we call it fear less, rather than fearless, because you're never going to get rid of fear. You just have to use it and see where it is, and then push through to the other side. And you know, maybe use that energy in a different way. And so when I wrote that book, that was a bit more nerve wracking. I felt much more exposed. There was much more about my story. I guess it Yeah, I felt just a bit more vulnerable, putting that out into the world. But then with the paintings again, it was because I just had to make them and then very quickly, I got a one woman show. I was in a group show And then another woman want one woman show, because I felt so strong behind it that I was just gonna find ways to get it out there. And I was saying yes to things and being open about things and you know, maybe manifesting things, if you believe in that, you know, I was on Saatchi art and I was selling work across the world. So it all kind of felt like it was meant to be. And I just had to do my job, which was show up and do the work, and keep the self sabotage voices at bay. And then with this commission, could be quite daunting, the idea that, suddenly you've got this 116, paintings to paint, and they've all got to be good, they've all got to work in this space. And I think my MA in public art really came to the fore with this commission, because I really understood the nature of the responsibility of putting work into a space that other people are going to use, and understanding the context and understanding what a brief was, and that I am working for the interior design, who has got a very specific idea of what she wants, and the work has to work with that. And within that, I can kind of privately have my own journey and my own investigations and my own development and pushing walk the possibilities of painting within this structure. And so that's been really interesting for me that, you know, I can be responsible as an artist in the world with the work that I'm putting out there that, you know, other people have to walk past. And also give myself the opportunity to really explore and play and investigate and be be curious, within the structures that that I have. And this is absolutely golden opportunity, not least because I'm squashing that old idea of artists can't make money. But because you know, when do you have the opportunity to make big work, know that it's going it's got a home to go to, so I'm not having to worry about storage, and just being able to explore and push, push the practice every single day. And so that's been a really exciting opportunity. I bet it sounds fabulous. Well done. You. Tell me about Brave New Girl, the podcast. Yeah. So when the books came out, I felt like they will get out into the world, in book form. But I, I just had this sense that there was more. And so I started doing t shirts. And then more and more people were sort of getting behind Brave New Girl. And so I thought, well, it'd be really good to do a podcast. And because I was filmmaker, we started by doing a live live events and filming the experience. And so it'd be a q&a. And it was once a month, we'd have an audience, I would ask the questions, and then the audience would be able to ask questions of the speaker at the end. And then it was put on YouTube and out as a podcast, but it wasn't really gaining traction, because it was only once a month. And I was sort of limited to the people that could come to a live event in London. And so then when the pandemic happened, we had to cancel the last live event. And I had to quickly learn how to get all the equipment and learn to use it and, and then it was like this sort of whole new world just suddenly opened up, because suddenly, I could interview women everywhere. And you know, they could do it from their spare room, and I could be recording it from from my spare room and, and suddenly I realised, well, this is the future for Brave New Girl, because what I'm doing is interviewing real life Brave New girls, and give them a platform for their voices and for their messages for their expertise, their stories for their journeys, because we all learn from what other people have been through the lessons they've learned the challenges they've overcome. And I really felt like yeah, this is this is the place for Brave New Girl, you know, in real life, real women. And also because, you know, it was harking back to that performance that we did the silent voices that, you know, suddenly, the technology in 20 years has meant that you're not doing on a postcard. You're able to reach women everywhere across the globe. But then I was thinking, well, I can only interview 52 women a year, if that's once a week. So I decided to start an agency to help get people out there onto other people's podcasts. So I can kind of champion them and help them have a positive impact in the world. And so that's when the silk studios agency started. And from that, I felt kind of full circle. Not everybody can afford to have someone represent them to help them get onto podcasts. So I thought, well, I'll I'll write a book then. And I've called it dare to share. And it's about sort of helping people to connect with the world through audio, social communities. And so the book is coming out in, in the autumn 2021. And it's all about really digging deep into your story. So you don't kind of churn out the same thing from podcast to podcast, what are you trying to do? And what's the what's the impact you're trying to have? And how do you do that? How do you go about that creatively, but also, practically, that's gonna be really helpful. Lou, how can people contact you in your many guises as artist writer podcaster agency? The website is www silc dash studios.co.uk. So you can get hold of me there, or find me on Instagram on three counts. One is brave underscore new girl. One is Lu Hamilton art. And one is silk studio dot s. So yeah, come say hi. Let's connect. Thanks so much for sharing today. Lou. It has been a delight and a pleasure and an emotional to speak to you today. So thank you again. Thank you so much clay, you're a great host guiding me through and you're very generous in giving this platform for creative people to come and share their journey. So thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you.