CBC Radio, February 10, 1999 Documentary about Lara and Scott St. John interview by Jill LaForty Transcript of a Radio Documentary by Jill LaForty first broadcast on CBC Radio Two's In Performance in June 1998 (opening music: Schubert or Grieg from an Oct. 1990 concert) Scott: Certainly to this day I want there to be a connection with younger people and to project an image of classical music that is not stuffy or whatever. I think so far my sister has drastically outdone me in this department. And this is great. It doesn't really matter how we get people into the concert hall, we just have to get them in there and turn them on. Lara: The fact that some kids at the age of 20 have never heard a symphony, have never heard a piece by Bach or don't know who Beethoven is - to me this is a big problem because once you get into classical music, you love it no matter who you are. It takes a little getting used to and then you love it. And it's interminable. You can go the rest of your life and never hear the same thing twice. (music up and fade to New York traffic...) Jill: It's a rainy night in downtown New York City. In two apartments 26 blocks from each other, live a brother and sister who are both musicians. 27 year old Scott St. John is packing and doing laundry. He's an accomplished violinist and violist and he's getting ready to leave on tour. Scott: I enjoy playing chamber music a great deal, and the Marlboro Festival in Vermont is one of the pinnacles of chamber music playing. They put a tour together once in a while and this one is particularly fun. It's four people, we are all around the same age, we get along fabulously, and we are doing a great program. Jill: Scott's apartment is decorated with Walt Disney memorabilia - there are Pinocchio and Winnie the Pooh dolls and a Beauty and the Beast poster. A large Canadian flag is draped over the video cabinet. Sitting at a small table in the living room, Scott tells me about one of his great passions: Scott: I'm sort of known these days as the Dvorak fanatic. Well, actually it was chamber music that drew me to Dvorak. I think he is one of the most phenomenal chamber music composers. A lot of it is in terms of an inner voice standpoint. I've always played a lot of viola and Dvorak himself was a violist. And when you play for example, the string quartets you find that there's so much interweaving, so much of interest going on in every single part and when you put that together with Dvorak's love of folk songs, you know - simple melody, I think it's a winning combination. Jill: Scott's younger sister Lara St. John is also a successful violinist. She's just returned to New York after a couple of weeks on the road playing recitals and concertos. Lara: I was playing with some symphonies in New Mexico and California, one of which was in Roswell of the famous 1947 crash. They claim a space ship crashed and the government covered it up. So everything is in the shape of aliens, even the garbage bins. It's a really cute town. Jill: What were you playing there? Lara: The Bach E major, with the Roswell Symphony. Jill: Lara is a striking figure - 6 feet tall with long straight hair. She's barefoot and wearing a beige and black tank top and lounging pants. Her apartment has the look of someone who isn't home much. In the living room there's a beautiful leather couch, and a large aquarium which is home to her pet iguana. A baby grand piano dominates her bedroom. Like Scott, Lara is also passionate about music but their tastes and inclinations are very different. Lara tells me about HER longtime favorite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach: (music from the Bach's B minor Mass...) Lara: When I was little I think I heard the B minor Mass for the first time and fell in love. When I saw Bach on concert programs I became excited. Of course you can't grow up 200 miles from Toronto without knowing about the great Glenn Gould, and we had his Goldberg Variations. And then I think I bought the Well Tempered [Clavier] and I would say that was a big influence. And as I was getting older I eventually found the passions and cantatas and choral works and learned all the partitas and sonatas. At one point I got into the organ music so strongly for a whole week that I couldn't get out of bed, I was so depressed. If you listen to Bach organ music all the time you get down - it's a tough one. But that music is also so great. I don't know - it's been an attraction forever. Jill: Lara was four years old when she and her six year old brother Scott made their orchestral debuts playing the Bach double violin concerto with the Windsor Symphony. Jill: Scott and Lara St. John were born in London, Ontario. They're the only children of Ken and Shari St. John. Ken was a high school French and Spanish teacher, while Shari was a stay-at-home mom who played piano and had a keen interest in classical music. The children got their start playing the violin when the Suzuki program arrived in London. Scott was three and Lara was two. They remember their first teacher, Richard Lawrence, with great affection: Scott: He was a wonderful guy. Definitely an eccentric by London, Ontario standards. He came from Scotland and he was just amazing with kids. I think he inspired a whole generation of London kids. He had this way of describing music, often in terms of emotion, making a phrase sound like a ray of sunshine was coming out. It was wonderful because as kids you tend to think that classical music is a bit regimented and stuffy, but Mr. Lawrence had a great way of looking at everything. Often he would put on a record of Stephan Grappelli for instance, and say "Listen to that for violin playing; now let's try and improvise a little bit". Now that's something that doesn't happen very much in your standard violin lesson. Lara: He was very, very musically oriented and that is actually the reason we did stick with it. Instead of being taught to worry about competition and get notes in tune and hit this and hit that and play faster and louder, we were taught why does this sound like this, why is it so beautiful, why do you like this part, what do you like about it, that kind of thing. He really brought out a lot of appreciation in us. Jill: Scott and Lara entered the Kiwanis Music Festival, also playing the Bach double concerto. Their mother accompanied them on the piano. The talented youngsters caught the ear of adjudicator David Cerone. At that time he was a professor of violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Today he's the President there. David: I heard perfect ensemble, perfect intonation and an unbelievable involvement with the functionalities of the music, and them having a marvelous time performing and being with one another. It was just completely natural and a joyous union of two siblings making magnificent music together. I gave them a score of 100 and it surprised my colleagues on the jury because it is not common to give scores that high. But I explained to them that these are two extraordinary young people and very much deserving of that score. Jill: While David Cerone was in London he conducted a masterclass. Shari St. John was so impressed with his teaching that she asked him whether he'd consider giving her children lessons one in a while - in effect supplementing their studies with Richard Lawrence. Both teachers thought it was an excellent idea. Soon Scott and Lara and their mother were flying once a month over Lake Erie to Cleveland to study with David and his wife Linda. The children also spent their summers with the Cerones at the Meadowmount School in upstate New York. Scott: It turned out to be a wonderful combination, because Richard Lawrence was the visionary. David Cerone took one look at us and said, "they play really musically but they're drawing the bow backwards" - you know we had a lot of technical problems because that was not Mr. Lawrence's department. And I remember the first painful summer studying with David because I played scales for four hours a day until I got certain things straightened out with my bowings and fingerings. It was painful but really good at the same time. A lot of fundamentals of violin playing that I think about today are based on Cerone methodology. Jill: Scott was a teacher's dream. He worked hard to please David. They developed a close relationship that included many hours hiking and talking together or going for a spin in David's small plane. In the meantime David's wife Linda, who is a professor of violin at the Cleveland Institute, was teaching Lara. Lara is a very different personality and it became clear early that she would require a different approach. Linda: She was a very attractive young lady and a very independent personality. She had her character formed very early. It was clear she liked to do her own thing, and was very, very gifted. She wanted music and she loved to play, so we spoke to each other through the music. David: I might add here Jill, Lara didn't have a lot of options - also a part of this process. She had her mother working with her at home and she had her teacher working with her during the lessons. What I observed and tried to employ with Scott as well, although he was a very different personality, was to simply remain consistent with the information given, remain professional, remain supportive. But if you just don't budge - if the teacher just won't budge and the the mother and father don't budge, the child has two options: one is to come up through the soil and blossom, or seek to escape and quit. That is often how the process works, and fortunately for the music world Lara chose to stick with it and pop up through the soil with that kind of nurturing and pressure and become a very fine artist. Jill: Under the Cerones' guidance Lara and Scott progressed very quickly. Soon they were winning local and national competitions and touring Europe. Music became a door to the world for these young prodigies. But it also demanded sacrifices. Scott: At the beginning I think Lara and I had, incredibly, what would be called a normal childhood. But it slipped away after a little while just from the amount of practicing we had to do in order to keep up with all the expectations. My mom assigned a real priority to music, probably from around when I was eight and Lara was six. So from that point on, if we had a music lesson that would take precedence over anything else that was going on. Often a half day or a whole day would be off in order to prepare for the lesson. But combine that with a few Kiwanis festival events - I mean during the Kiwanis festival you know - and Lara and I would literally be in 26 classes. For Kiwanis, it would be violin duets and each of us played some piano too, so we'd do the piano things and there were so many things going on it was like 2 weeks out right there. And later on when we were like 12-14, as a result of these competitions we ended up doing some international touring at a rather young age. So we had literally a couple of weeks where we went to Spain, Portugal, and we also used to go to Cleveland for lessons. And if we went to Cleveland that would be a three or four day adventure, as my mom would put it. So in some ways, I tried to feel a part of regular school but it was often very hard. I look back at it now and it makes perfect sense. If you're a kid in school and you have some other kid who is constantly being dragged off to do special things, you know you look at him like "well what is he doing?" and I think sometimes that was difficult. It's hard to look back and say it should have been this way or that, because the amount of time you put in at that age pays off in an exponential fashion later on. Lara: I remember doing things like taking the violin to school in a garbage bag so nobody would know what it was. I tried to quit many times. My mom would get exasperated and say "Okay quit" and I ran away a couple of times and stuff like that. I never made it very far - maybe an hour, two hours and then come home cold and hungry. So a couple of times I tried to quit and strange things would happen like I would get a piece of music in my head and think, "Oh, damn, I don't want to live without this." One time I really thought I was going to do it. I had gone 5 or 6 days; I was about 12. I was in a book store and I heard some Bach oboe concerto; it was definitely Bach and I just thought, okay, that's it and that's the last time I actually tried to quit. I'm unusual that I take a lot of time off sometimes but I don't call it quitting. At that time I wanted to just never play again and just be normal and play football at school and things like that. (laughs) Jill: Lara and Scott spent a great deal of time together because of their involvement in music. They had and still have a close relationship. As children they helped each other with projects and entertained each other. Scott and Lara were close despite having radically different perspectives on just about everything. Scott: I think Lara and I at that time had different ways of looking not only at music but also at the world. I was very convinced that my place as the older brother was to do everything as correctly and properly as possible. I was very concerned at that age about not rocking the boat anywhere, a way-over-achiever at school - you know it's funny how rapidly that changed when I got into college, but um - at that time I wanted to do everything according to the book and very, very well. Lara on the other hand, having all the same intelligence and talent quickly became the more easily provoked of the two of us, I guess you could say. And this I think proved to be one of the best things for her ever. But at the time it was often very difficult because there was a lot of stress in the family between my mom and sister and me. At times I felt I should try and make things right or whatever. Jill: This difference in personalities is something Scott and Lara also bring to their playing and they have high praise for each other. Lara: He's very, very natural. There's a certain naturalness and joy to his playing that I love - it's a certain kind of beauty that you don't get very often. We have different repertoire strengths as well. He is more in the romantic era than I am - romantically classical. I tend to be much more Baroque/ 20th century; at least that's where I feel my strengths are, and in the gypsy stuff. We don't often play the same pieces at the same time. He loves Dvorak. Dvorak is his favorite composer. I like Dvorak (laughs) - but it's inconceivable to me how someone could prefer Dvorak over Bach. Scott: Lara's spirit of independence burns so strongly and it's always been an inspiration. And, I think her playing style and her personal style are so closely mixed that you feel a complete authenticity about anything she does. I think that's a really great goal for any musician - to be projecting just one's own kind of raw soul or emotion. Jill: In 1984, Scott and Lara's teachers David and Linda Cerone left Cleveland to join the faculty of the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia. Commuting for lessons which had gone on for 8 years was no longer an option for the St. Johns. The family had to make a decision. In the end, their father Ken remained in London so he could keep his teaching job and help finance his children's musical studies. Lara considered staying but decided she didn't want to be apart from her brother. Their mother Shari packed up Scott and Lara and the three of them moved to Philadelphia. 14 year old Scott entered Curtis immediately. Lara studied with Linda at the New School and started at Curtis the following year when she was 13. Typically, they had very different reactions to the school: Scott: I adored Curtis. I thought it was a wonderful school - you know, the family atmosphere; there were so many exciting things happening, especially musically - things that I'd never known that much about. My first big interest in chamber music developed; also the orchestra was just phenomenal. And there were these conductors coming - I mean, it was just an amazing place to be. Lara on the other hand, although I think she enjoyed many of the classes, felt rather stifled there. She felt it was a place where you had to get along or else things would go badly because it was a small school. Lara: I don't really think that Curtis is great place to grow up because in most schools you have 2000 people. Curtis is 180, so in any given year you're only going to meet 30 new people. And that's not really enough I think. It's kind of narrow. It's a stagnant pond. The people you are meeting are all the same kind of people and you are not getting too much fresh blood. Jill: After some time in Philadelphia, their mother felt she should return to London to be with her husband. At the same time David and Linda Cerone returned to Cleveland. So 16 year old Scott and 14 year old Lara were living on their own in an apartment. Sometimes the results were pretty funny: Lara: I remember one time we had this dishwasher and I had never really used one because my mother always washed dishes by hand. So I stuck all the dishes in the dishwasher and tried to turn it on and used the wrong stuff. I used Spic and Span, which is for the floors. Went out to get ice cream and came back and the kitchen was four feet deep in bubbles. It was absolutely hilarious. We had to open the window and start shoving bubbles out the window. Silly little things go wrong but it's not the end of the world. Bubbles evaporate. Jill: But these were also difficult times. The St. Johns received full scholarships for studies at Curtis and other grants as well. Even so, living in Philadelphia was expensive and put pressure on the family's financial resources. Scott as the eldest especially felt the burden. Scott: I was the older brother and I was definitely responsible for Lara. At the same time both of us made huge mistakes; there was a lot of difficulty, especially financially. We had to somehow support ourselves in Philadelphia; we had a grant from the Ivy Foundation but it was just barely enough to eat and go to school. And I became a bit of the evil brother because I was in charge of the money and Lara was never allowed to have any money if I had anything to do with it. I look back on this now and (laughing) I'm like "oh my God, what was I thinking", but back then it was critical for me that we both survive that time in Philadelphia. Lara: To me when I was young, boredom was worse than death. It didn't seem interesting to follow all the rules. I was always getting into trouble. He would be the one saying, "We can't go out and have a yummy dinner, we have to have tuna casserole." I'd be the one trying to spend money and buy clothes. I would eat just ice cream for days. I would live on pizza. It was a good thing we were almost full grown - we would have been stunted. Jill: Lara did indeed have a knack for doing it her way. In 1987 when she was 15 and still studying at Curtis, Lara entered the Montreal International Violin Competition. Lara: I thought I played great. You know when you're 15 you think everything you do is great. But this one I really thought I pulled off terrifically. They kicked me out after the second round. I had made it to the semis. I was really, really angry and I wrote a bunch of letters to people. And I informed them that they had never heard a better Schoenberg Fantasy live or recorded. And a bunch of people wrote back and said that's true, we haven't. But of course there's the Beethoven Sonatas and people ten years older than me; there is stuff not mature by 15 for that level. I don't think there was any technical problem. Jill: As Scott and Lara continued their studies at Curtis they were on their way to blossoming into mature musicians, and the motivation to practice no longer came from teachers or parents. Lara: At that age, at that time, I think the real interest was sparked in music and we practiced because we wanted to. That's when it started. We didn't need any forcing. Curtis is not exactly a competitive environment, but there are so many good people there you don't want to fudge off and play a bad concert. Or a bad lesson. You keep plugging whether there is a parent there or not. Jill: Looking back on the Curtis/ Philadelphia experience, Lara's reaction is mixed: Lara: I leaned a lot about music. I didn't learn very much about life, and I really didn't know much about the world. I had traveled a lot but I had never experienced life to its fullest, shall we say. So I took off to Russia. Jill: Scott graduated from Curtis at 20. The dutiful elder brother took the expected musical path. He moved to New York and began his career by entering international competitions and auditioning. 16 year old Lara on the other hand, true to form decided she was ready for something completely different. She went on a year's exchange to the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow. When she got there, she discovered that the teacher with whom she was supposed to be studying had left to spend some time in the West. So she put her fiddle down and explored life in a foreign country. Lara: People told me horror stories about the bathrooms and you can't buy this and get enough food and it's always cold and dark and I just thought well, if 300 million people can survive here every year, then why can't I survive for one. The mentality, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. I was in a better position than most because of the black market - it was high at the time. On $500 for the whole year I lived like a queen. (music from Lara's Gypsy disc...) Lara: I traveled around the Soviet Union a lot, to the north. It was really great. My best friend was a gypsy and I learned a lot from her. We'd go out to the caravans outside of Moscow, and I made a lot of lasting friends that I still keep in touch with today. Jill: After a year in Russia, it was time for Lara to get back to serious violin playing. But she wasn't ready to return to North America. Instead she moved to London, England, and studied at the Guildhall School of Music. Lara: It was a hard couple of years because I was very poor. They wouldn't let me work. And I was on a grant from the Chalmers which was in Canadian dollars. London is very expensive and the dollar was low. I lived in a rat-infested place in East London. It took me a really long time to realize how poor I was. One day I just pulled a Scarlet O'Hara: got back to the apartment and there were rats there and I had just walked a mile in the rain and my violin case didn't close properly so I had to fish a garbage bag out of the garbage; I walked in there and my one roommate wasn't home and I said, "I don't care what I do, I'm never going to live like this again!" Got myself a job. The grant was fantastic but it wasn't enough. At certain points I was living weeks on end on brown rice and a few vegetables that were on sale. My hair started to fall out - really weird. The lack of money was really scary. At the end of two years, I did the first Canada Council audition and they were nice enough to give me an arts grant and the Gelber award. So I moved to New York feeling like a million bucks. It was time to move back to the States. The first time I got here from London - in London you order a pizza, it costs you 20 bucks and it's the size of a pancake. I was staying at my brother's place and he wasn't there, so I ordered Chinese food and thought I should order at least $20 worth thinking these must be small because they are so cheap. This huge bag of food arrives. I ate for 4 days on $20. [New York] took some getting used to but most of it was good. Jill: By the mid 1990's both Scott and Lara were living in New York City. Scott's career as a violinist and violist, soloist and chamber musician was in full swing. Lara was starting to build her career as a violin soloist. And they discovered they both had a common mission - to reach an audience as wide as possible for classical music. Typically, they went about it in very different ways. In 1996, Lara's debut CD of Bach solo works landed her in hot water. One reviewer described the cover as jailbait Bach. But the CD sold over 30,000 copies. Lara: For people who don't know the cover, it's me with apparently no clothing, although that's between me and the photographer, and a violin across my chest. I thought it was pretty cool because it was a recording of Bach works for violin solo - a violin and a violinist. It's got sunlight coming through the blinds; a dark picture in black and white that's very artsy and to me it expressed lack of anything else: no jewelry or clothing, nothing to distract from the fact that it's just a person and a violin. What I did not notice was that apparently everybody thought I looked about 12 years old. Jill: You didn't intend that? You didn't change your hair or makeup? Lara: NO! I think the Toronto Globe and Mail said "10, possibly 12 years old"; others said something about kiddy porn. I got all sorts of interesting comments. Scott: I saw the original pictures before the cover was even created. I have to admit that my first reaction was one of absolute shock. Um, the original plan was even more risque than what ended up going. So I was somewhat pleased that a big brother intervention toned it down from what might have happened. At the same time, it's funny - after the initial shock wore away, I thought about it a lot and decided well, what's really wrong with this? After the CD came out, I felt really proud that Lara had gone ahead and perhaps risked an ounce of her reputation but gained a lot more in courage and sheer determination to put a great product out on the market. So I think it's great and ever since I've been a huge supporter of that Bach disc. I guess it's an honest market - if I took off my clothes it wouldn't really sell any CDs. (laughs) Lara: A lot of people picked up this CD because of the cover and listened to these really great works for the first time. And if that reached even a couple of people, then to me it's all worth while. And if that can be done with a cover, then so be it. Obviously with all of the hubbub there was a lot of publicity that wouldn't have happened - People magazine, CNN, US News & World Report, etc. That also brought classical music more to the attention of the general public. My whole mission is to debunk the elitism inherent in this stuff. Jill: Who are you trying to reach? Lara: Well, first of all a younger audience. Second of all a wider audience - even some middle-aged and older people have probably never heard a symphony. But especially the younger crowd because in the States there is a real lack of music education in the schools. It's pretty hard to keep an audience for classical music unless we present it in a better light. I mean, of course it is great and there is so much of it out there, but no kid wants to pick up a CD of some old dude standing there in a suit - it just doesn't look appealing. They want to see who is playing. I have no qualms about taking examples from rock for marketing ideas because obviously that succeeds and obviously we don't. Therefore I think a more down-to-earth image, not so hoyti-toyti, will bring this music to the attention of young people. Jill: Scott shares Lara's interest in getting the word out about classical music. He also has a couple of CDs, but his biggest marketing success has been with chamber music concerts. Scott: I founded the Millennium Chamber Music Society with the idea of promoting chamber music - Canadian chamber music, chamber music for young people - a whole host of ideas. I feel very strongly that chamber music is a very accessible form of classical music. It's much more intimate. Running Millennium was a great experience and it was amazing to get out and do a lot of concerts at schools and talk to the audience, that sort of thing. Jill: Scott founded the Millennium Chamber Music Society in 1994. It was a group of musicians based in various cities who came together in larger or smaller groupings depending on the repertoire for any given program. When I asked him of what career achievement he's proudest, his answer was immediate: Scott: Our Millennium series in London, Ontario is the what I'm proudest of. It was something we did totally from scratch. We really had a mission in London - to provide chamber music to the community at really low ticket prices, in a package that would be irresistable. I felt it succeeded and I was delighted with the reaction to the concerts. It was also thrilling to go back to your hometown and feel that you'd made these steps and could show what you'd accomplished. We had particular success attracting a young audience. Jill: How did you do that? Scott: By doing a lot of school outreach. Our schools in London helped out and we did presentations for the Suzuki schools. Our concerts were big programs and took place at the high schools. We tried to be as proactive as possible in the community and that's the secret. The problem is you need to spend a lot of time in order for that to work. Jill: The Millennium project folded last season due to financial difficulties and because the group was not based in any one city. But Scott is still determined to bring classical music to a wider audience. Now he's found another way from his home in New York City: He's online. Scott: The website is a really fun project. I'll give you the address right away: www.scottstjohn.com. I wanted to do a website that wasn't just a bio and pictures but hopefully had an indication of a few things in my life that I love to do. So there's a little pizza section about eating pizza in New York, a section about Dvorak who is a favorite in the composition department, and a whole bunch of silly pictures of me, my roommate, my sister - a lot of things that are fun. (music: clip of Tchaikovsky) Scott: The most popular thing by far on the website is this blooper tape of me playing a portion of the Tchaikovsky concerto in California when I was about 15. I don't know what I was thinking when I was playing, but in one place I went completely off in my own spaceland. Actually, it's a great story because when it happened I was on stage, performing - it was horrible. I was going to quit the violin when I finished, I was so upset. They sent me a tape after the competition and I thought "oh my God, I don't want to hear that" and threw it in the closet. A couple of years later I came home and heard this raucous laughter coming from my room. I was like jeez, what's going on? There's my sister with a whole bunch of her friends and they'd found my tape and were rewinding it over and over the same spot, which was just the complete mess-up of the century. My first reaction was to be really upset, but a couple of years had passed and I had to admit it was pretty funny. So ever since then I've been happy to play that little excerpt for anybody, and when we started the website I thought I'd put that on there and hopefully give a fun impression. I think it's worked. Jill: Now in 1998 Scott and Lara have reached interesting points in their lives. At least for a while, it appears that the independent, adventure seeking Lara and the dependable, career oriented Scott are taking a page out of each other's books. 25 year old Lara gets 100 plus gigs per year. On the strength of her CDs and successful concert appearances her career is in full swing. It's a demanding life but the rewards the music brings her are well worth it. Lara: You still have to sit down and do drudge work. I do, at least, and that's a sacrifice when you could be out swinging a frisbee or going to a movie. But you stay home and learn it. The benefit in the end is being part of this whole, which is music. It's like a spring wind that gets inside of me. It's like surfers who want to find that wave again. There is a certain feeling when you are convinced; you know the audience is loving it and you're loving it - it's such a great feeling. It doesn't happen every time. I think that's one of the reasons I go on - to feel that wind. Jill: While Lara's career is building with every passing season, her older brother Scott has decided it's time to put his busy performing schedule on hold and take a rest. Scott: I'm approaching a sort of interesting step because I'm taking off an entire half-season. I've decided to put the violin aside for a little while and just look at a few other things that I've always wanted to do. Again, this is a little bit of a reaction - I've felt like I've always had a violin in my hand and I've always been thinking about the next concert. It's really exhilarating to think about a period of time where nothing is happening and I can do anything. Jill: What would you like to do? Scott: I have a couple of ideas. One of the things that I really want to do is a little family project. I'm going to go up to my uncle's place in Sault Saint Marie and do a little family archiving with him. I think that will be great because having left Canada at age 14, I've lost all connections with relatives and I would like to reinstate some of those. Otherwise, I don't really know, because there is so much out there. When I think back to elementary school, I remember there were so many things I wanted to do and I think music was just one of them. It's a little scary to reach this age and realize that music is the only thing I have ever done and I don't want to live my life feeling some kind of angst about what I could be doing. So this is my solution. I find really interesting what's happening to Lara right now. I think things with the two of us have always gone on these cycles: I had a real "up" cycle for a long time, right when I graduated, and that was when she was searching for her direction, traveling Europe and stuff like that. And I think right now she is so focused, and here I am taking my little sabbatical. It's very funny how things work out that way.