Faire Folk at Work
John Young
In a thoughful interview conducted within audio range of a murder of crows, John talks about some of favorite street bits, the creative process, and the unity between his creativity at the Faire and his work as a product development engineer. He also talk about the skills acquired about when his daughter when she was taken to Faire at an early age.
- Broadcast on:
- 30 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
Welcome to another episode of Fair Folk at Work. You know, there are many groups and subgroups out at fair, but only one group calls their leader a king. I'm chatting with one of the king of the fools, Mr. John Young. John, how's it going? >> It's exceptionally well. I was the 40th king of fools, aka, cock doodle, the gnaw. My reign was during the plague, so I was the gnaw king. >> But before we get to all of that, I'd like to ask you the first traditional Fair Folk at Work question, which is, who is the person who said to you, there was a thing called Fair, and what did they say to get you out there? >> It would be my wife, Donna Hollander. And all she had to do to get me to go out there was, she was my girlfriend at the time, and she was a washing well wench, and so I had opportunity to push her into the well. That was good enough. It was characteristic of behavior. >> Talk to me, what kind of kid were you when you climbed into the car to go to Fair for the first time? >> I was in college, so this would be out in Agura in the late '70s, '70s, sometime. What kind of kid? I was a blathering 20-some-odd-year-old male. >> Did you have a theatrical background? >> No, I was in industrial design, so it was art department. It was the same group of people, but not theatrical. No, I didn't bring that. >> If there had never been a renaissance fair in the world, what do you think your career path would have been? >> Identical. It didn't -- the fair became a focus, not for me. We went back 25 years ago to the fair to -- because it was a safe place for our daughter to be. We went there because it recaptured some of the things we valued in our childhood. It was a large safe space with 10,000 people she could go out and interact with at age five and learn agency. She could go off on her own, interact with anybody, and we were comfortable that she was no more than five feet away from somebody that would recognize her as community, so she'd be safe. So she could go off and we'd know she was safe, and she absolutely was. What was your lovely wife's connection to the fair? >> She was enticed by a dance crew, Doug Berger. Doug Berger had a dance crew of folk dancing, and they said, "There's this place called the Renaissance Fair, and we're putting together a dance group, and so come on out." >> What do you remember about those early years at Fair as striking you as this might be a good place to hang out for a couple of decades? >> There was an honest creativity to it, and it was clearly exploring something at a very creative, simple level. It was just an honesty to it. >> Can I ask a slightly more personal question? What do you remember about seeing or feeling at the fair as you're wandering around that she struck you as being honest or creative? >> Well, you have to remember that being immersed in the creative arts always, been drawing, painting, making things, and then going through a focused discipline of design, there's a mindset. It's a different mindset than most people carry around with them day to day. It has ambience, it has a suchness to it, and it can manifest in a lot of different ways, in music or visual or theater, but there's the mindset in physics, but there's a mindset to creativity, and it was just all out and walling around the fair. >> But between theater, music, people interacting with what part of that environmental theater mix spoke to you at that point in your life? >> At that point in my life, nothing. I was a visitor back then. Donna was the one that was, you know, she went when she was 14 or 15, I think, she started going up to Agora, and like I said, I went back and I joined that old madness when the fair came up to the dam. You know, when it first opened there, we went back and that's when we took our daughter, and that's when I fully got exposed to and found who the people were, the group that were, you know, that's my group, I'm going with them. >> And which group was that? >> Oh, that would be the Fools. >> Who were the Fools that you noted and said, I kind of want to do that? >> It wasn't even a kind of wanna, it's like I'm going to do that. It was the parade, it was the parade, they would go by and at that time, our avenue in was through Susie Cooksey's fruit ice booth, and so we were hawking fruit ice in food court, and the Fools that go traipsing a buy up at the top and it was like, who are those people? You know, it's just like instantly I needed to know who they were, and there was a singular group of people, and that same creativity that exploring things was just really part of the group. I had never seen a collection of people that was so diverse, yet so homogenous in a way. They checked all the boxes for me. >> Do you remember what your first full costume was? >> I think like any fair costume that's worth a shit is an emasement of bits and bobs. My first costume I got just recently, it was made for me as a king by Robert Lamarsh, but my first gesture towards being a fool, I think I picked something up from Barbara Butch for a vest with a hood, and yes, I do remember what my first costume was. It was when I decided I'm a fool, and I'm going to start acting like one, and I'm going to announce myself as one. So that was my first assuming of mantle or costume, if you will. >> I realize that radio, in a sense, is a very imperfect medium, but can you describe what you took particular pride in declaring yourself as a fool by wearing fill in the blank? >> Again, it was the fool holds singular position in a culture, every culture, every recorded civilization has had the archetype of a fool. Historically, the great fools really didn't have a costume, per se, it was a mantle that they assumed, and so my costume would have been whatever prop or thing that I had that allowed me to approach other people on the street, the customers, and approach them as a fool, whether it strips the paper with Shakespeare written on it, or some little sight gagged, some little baubles, something that was a device that would allow me to approach them. Costuming? No, other than just being visibly part of the fair, initially. >> What props did you use to approach people, and what was your line of pattern to accompany this presentation of whatever it was? >> Well, that was the value of being a fool, it was an exploration of just how far can you push this thing before they got annoyed. But the typical prop, again, it was little strips of paper, and they would have some line of Shakespeare with act and scene and character, and I would make them read it. So I'd walk up and have a whole sheath of these things, and it was a bit like a fortune cookie. A lot of times it was curious how the thing they pulled was they found it very apropos to something in their life, and some of them were embarrassing as hell, and I would just make them read it aloud, again, if they did it poorly, and make fun of them the whole time and read it to them and say, "No, like this," or whatever, and make them go off and give it to somebody else and have them read it to them. >> Oh, that's really nice. >> So is it chain? People come back years later and say, "Oh, it's you. I want another strip," or "I remember you gave me one of these. I have it up on my wall for the last 10 years." I'll phrase this in terms of the question, one of the nice things I think the pattersons came up with in coming up with a fair, is they set it up as a playground. You could not fail, and everyone was there to have a good time. >> That's the assumption. And it's really hard to get 20,000 people to agree that this is an Elizabethan village and we're all here to have fun, Hazah. But they did it somehow with all of us playing along. Did you find that to be true that it was when you were approaching people, by and large, they were willing to play if they were out at the fair? >> I would actually look for the ones that look like they were the least willing, and I would go to them and try and do the most embarrassing thing for them I could think of. It's like I'm cock doodle, and they go cock a doodle, and I go, "No, it's not a drawing of shit. It's a drawing of a cock. Think of a bathroom. There's a bunch of them on the wall, cock doodle. It's not hard. Well, it should be, but it's not. And the biggest, burliest guy I'll walk up and say, "Can you read? Here, read this." And it'll be something like, "I'll be a deer and you can be my dell." Eat where you will, and mountain, and just like, "And they'll laugh." And it's like, "I'll have a rubber chicken, and I'm dragging it around." And they go, "Oh, chicken, man." It's like, "I am not a chicken. I have never laid an egg. I am a cock." "Oh, you're dragging your cock around." "Yes, I am. Here, hold this." Now, you know, and so I'll just push it as far as I can until they smile. And I can get away with it because I'm a fool. I'm dressed in this big chicken costume, and it's like, if my dignity isn't intact enough to take anything you've got to say, I shouldn't be here. So, lighten up. If you've had concerns with dignity, you would not have made those choices to be in the chicken costume. I wouldn't have been King of Fools, either. It's a hard road to the top. Well, that's the gift that the fools give, is like, we don't care what you are, so long as you are honestly that. It's like, we don't care. And it's singular in that there's thousands of members, thousands. And it's like, just bring your game, whatever it is, it's perfect. You said something I sort of agree 110% with, and Disneyland, to me, was one type of environmental theater, which was very top-down, because there was an environmental space that was pretty much from the bottom up. And I mean, other than it being fair day, the Queen's coming, and it's market day, and people here to buy stuff, go. There wasn't a lot of thought on things you cannot do kind of thing. So if you just stay in those rough parameters. I think you put your finger on the thing that makes it durable. It's the fact that it's a space for, it's not a package like here. It's not like this storefront that you walk into, and it's all manicured, and every little portion of it's been touched and it's ready to go. It's just a giant stage that you go and get to play on. And anybody can play on it. You can push people, but if you have a smile on your face, and the goal is to make them laugh. Yeah. It's pretty broad canvas that you're allowed to fill in. The guild has, the fools have, one of the early criteria for being a king, and the foundation for the, I mean, the reason the guild was formed was it was a bunch of improv actors, and they saw the fair as this open stage where they can go out and practice their chops and get that whole interaction down and do street theater, it was heaven. And they could even maybe get paid to do something. It was just, it was outrageous. And so it is loaded with people that know how far you can go. And so I've gotten to walk around with some of the extracts, Jonathan Cripple and John Mackey. And my jaw drops at how far they can go, and people are just laughing. They're just having the best time because they're being made the fool by a fool. That's one of the takeaways for me is learning how free you can be when you're honest with somebody. There's two things I think that made the fair kind of special that way. First, there were so many people that if something didn't work, you could run away or just run around the tree and there'd be another pump of people and try it out again. And the other thing about the fair that I think was really great was that everybody was invited to play. So when you created a fantasy little scenario with somebody, it was like a scenario within an already existing scenario, and they were inclined. They were encouraged to play with you rather than just sit back and watch. And then the entertainment happened around them. And so they created whatever the bit was. They had a hand in creating it. I've found it's an abysmal failure if they are not the star. Yes. You're sort of curating the whole thing or, you know, they're the focus. They're doing it. It's about them. What I often thought of it was I knew how the bit was going to start and I knew how the bit was going to end, but whatever happened in between was just whatever the other person brought to it. Did you ever do anything on stage? Well I didn't have I didn't do anything that was, okay, memorize these lines. Okay. That's what I meant. Yeah, I'm not at there. Well, let me ask the question, even though it's not strictly applicable to you, and I'm talking about how sort of the joy of performing can be felt or made manifest. You can either I do know what you're talking about there. It's addictive. But there's a difference between saying hi to somebody mom and dad and the little girl and making her the little girl, the queen and founding, you know, and making a fool out of that versus being on stage and going, okay, this is the part of the show coming up where I'm going to jump up and down and 600 people are going to laugh. And to me, the joy of making a little fantasy world with two or three other people and then selling them the new world or whatever the bit was feels to me more satisfying because we created it with somebody and I didn't have any idea what was going to happen versus sort of being on a roller coaster track going, okay, we're all going to go this way now and we're all going to go that way now. Right. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. My experience is more akin to your performer, not the latter. It's like, you know, scripted things are just, you know, that doesn't, doesn't fit. Another question, are you what makes a good prop or a street improv? I've got a little clarion trumpet as a tongue that waggles out the front. It's a little 25, 30 inch long, I cut a trumpet down so it's got, you know, it's just a straight clarion. So I'll walk around and play jazz and waggle the tongue at people and blurt farts behind them and everybody like that. That's like when nobody's playing with me, I'll do that. So I'll use that if I have to go from point A to point B here, if I want to just assault the whole food court, I'll stand up on the table and honk at them and play summertime or whatever, make jokes that I'm in Stavis and someday I, or one of my relatives will be really famous. Can you actually play the trumpet? I can now. It's amazing. You know, being short with no valves, there's definite resonant inferences within the range of notes where you just simply cannot get that note out of this instrument. You cannot do it. It is physically impossible or physics make it impossible. There's sort of-- Is it kind of like a brass kazoo? If you have a second, I'll, no, it's a trumpet. Oh, okay. I can wait. Sure. Yeah, can you see this? I can. Yeah. It's like it's got the little leather tongue and it's a proper little thing. It works the way it works. Well, I'm sure your descendant Miles will do really good work with that. I imagine you work. I've made four of those tongues. The second one I made was for David Springhorn. You could have a trumpet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was the conundrum. This was a trombone that I cut down and made a clarion out of that and left the slide in it. So it would go out to six feet long and it had this enormous tongue and it was so loud. It was brilliant. Oh, my God. That thing was great. What a perfect prop for David. And then on the inside of the bell, I engraved spring because it's a spring horn. Oh, I got it. And so that was good and made the case for it. And then I made a tongue for Jonathan Cripple for his regular trumpet. And then I made the fourth one for Andy Davis, the founder of the Fools Guild and on his birthday. I gave him a little read, bulb thing, took the bulb off. They had to blow on it and it had a big old waggily tongue in it. I didn't quite catch the detail when you showed it to me. Does the tongue wiggle when you blow? This is part of the skit that I use at Fair. I'll be walking around and people will laugh. And then I'll remind them that this tongue is actually an homage to the 2,000, 3,000-year-old Celtic Karnak, which is a war horn that the Celts used. And I'll ask them to imagine, if they will, this instrument. It's 10 feet tall. It comes out, goes straight up and then bends over and it has the head of a bore on it with a big waggily tongue. What they did with these was they would have 10 men, naked, painted blue, blowing on these things. And it sounds like a cross between a horn and a didgeridoo and it's horrifying. And behind those 10 men are 200 more naked men painted blue with swords streaming at the top of their voice. And out in front of these people is a legion of Roman soldiers thinking perhaps not today. So I use this to open conversations. I can see what you could also say with the end of a tongue sticking out of a 3-foot pole. I think my wife loves me. Yes. And you could say that without saying anything more. So that's fair. It's pherathy. You mentioned that you spent a lot of time with the Scots or the Celts. I do hang out at Kelp Camp. I go and build the booth. My wife sells mosaics. And so I'm pretty much unfettered. I can just go out. I don't have to sit in the booth. And so I've got all day and there's a couple of community of people I go and see in Kelp Camp. Stephen Chief is one of the people I enjoy talking to and the whole community is there. It is a cult of personality. But the life of people and they don't mind having a fool kick around and make fun of their parades. So I hang with them. I wander around a lot. As you wander the streets of Farron, what favorite spots do you like to hang out with when you have, I want to find a place where I can accost people? The busiest roads where they're just walking through food courts out, they're busy. They're doing something else. It's just usually from the front gate up to just to be specific about this fair and the layout. From the front gate all the way up around to the lake is nice because they're coming in. They're just coming in, they're looking, well what is all this? What's going on? How do I feel like I sit in? And so they're completely opened and ripe for abuse. I haven't had too many beers. It's good. Not yet. If you were to say to somebody when you go to a fair, what you really need to check out is. Okay, sure. Yeah. Of course the Mooney and Broon shows and there's certain staple shows that one needs to see. That would say kelp camp because it is immersive. They try and be as authentic as they can. Can I ask how old your daughter is now? She now is 27. Can you see the influences of fair in her? She does too. Absolutely. She's an intellectual quiet person but she'll be the first to tell you that she can walk up and talk to anybody without fear of reservation. And she directly attributes that to fair. So we were successful in what we were trying, the gift we were trying to give her is being able to just deal with people, to just walk up and talk to anybody and communicate. Did she ever go through a full stage? A full stage? In her life. Did she ever don a full costume and then it cost somebody out in the street? Oh, yeah. Well, she was doing that at five. She would sell, she would hawk fruit ice. So she would walk up and we had little skits that we would play. We would go out in the middle of food court and I'd say, so who do you think wants to? Who can go by? And you know, because you can spot them. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like, hey, come over here. If you pick the right person, you can actually from the counter point at them 50 feet away and say, you come here and buy one of these and they will. You can spot them. You really can't. She'd walk up to this big long line of people at the turkey legs and go, you know, this is a long line. Look over there. There's a short line. Go to the short line and they would. Or she would just walk up and grab somebody by the cuff, literally grab them, walk them over to the counter and say, buy this at five years old. And they would. Well, there's nothing cuter than a five year old in a peasant chemise and a little big ends cap. I mean, you'd have to be made out of a pasta iron. And what a gift to give a kid this huge, you know, just agency. She can project influence on somebody and so that's the foundation she took away from it. I'm afraid to talk to people. Another thing I noticed about kids with fair in their background or to put it another way, fair sort of allowed you to take whatever management skills you wanted. And if you wanted to do something, you could just do it. I mean, no one was there to say, I'm sorry, you have to wait till you're 25 and have an MBA before you can run a booth kind of thing, you know? Exactly. Yeah. Step up, you bring your game in as good. We'll take it. And it doesn't have that whole corporate like you said right at the beginning. No, you have to do this, this and this. It's like, you know, just, just make it successful and we're all happy. Or how cute. Look at you go. Go do that. This is great. This is fair. We're all proud that you can do that. That's great. Can you tell me it with a little more detail who threw you into the Fools Guild? And did you, was there an official initiation ceremony? Well, yeah, I've got crows outside, pet crows. They're providing a nice background. The gateway to the Guild would have been Heidi Bartholomew. When she was there, her booth was a locus for the Fools. And did you tell the studio audience which her booth was? Okay. I'm sorry. That would be Pale Moon. She sells the Christopher Miller carved bone necklaces. They have, you know, moons and, you know, just all the stars and Pale Moon. It's a staple. It goes back to Agora. Her booth was the locus. It was. It was. I mean, the actors, you know, for some stage shows would hang out there. If they were in the Guild, they would hang out there. A lot of the musical bands, Britain, the Britain James Britain and his cadre of groups all hung out there. It was the focal point. Well, Heidi was the focal point and her booth just kind of was the stage for it. So I started going by and bouncing off of that and building a rapport with people and then, you know, a couple of decades later, I got elected to be King. Who's that? What did you see as the hallmarks of your administration? Of my being King? Yes. I was 21, 22 that year. It's a one year gig. And we were in the throes of the pandemic and I was 40th King. So it was 39, 38, 39 years old when I was really thinking about it. And people were old and they just thought, why are we doing this? We're, you know, we've been doing this for 30, 40 years and maybe it's time to just kind of let it die. And so the only thing I wanted to do was I wanted to stick a bobble in the sand. It's a fool's staff is called a bobble and put a bobble in the sand and say 40 years. Here's where we are. Here's here are traditions. Here are things that we value and here's things that we can hold up with pride clearly didn't want to change anything. I just wanted to dress it like a 40 year old. So I came up with a coat of arms that was Elizabethan. You can look at a coat of arms and it tells a story. And you can tell when it was made and where it's from. So the shape is specific to an era. The devices are specific to telling the story and then form out of the devices and then the little elements within personalize it. So I was very accurate and went back and researched it and so came up with this coat of arms revived a lot of traditions that were hallmarks. There's a quarterly. It's called the Joker. So it's a little newsletter and it's jokes this that the other and that it kind of degenerated. So I put out those and I just went back and revived or reminded people of all this stuff, all the depth of the culture that this group had created within itself and just gave it to them. Said here. Did you do a lot of the research for the website? The website now I didn't do the, you know, the website is now and what I was after. I was after the traditions, I just wanted documents so much as just, just give that, you know, all this, like the jokers and the tangibles, the stuff that we couldn't. What elements of the heraldry spoke to you period that, well, personally that just the whole concept that there was this not quite an ancient language, but there was this language, this visual device that was, that communicated something. There are some cultures that have tattoos on their arm or their hands and you can walk up and look at that and know everything you want to know about that person before they open their mouth. You know who their relatives are, who their tribe is. You probably could deduce in some cultures their name from their tribal tattoos. And so the idea that there could be this device, this shield, and you could tell is this person a soldier or are they a ruler or are they a maker? These are all devices, you know, within the lexicon of heraldry. And so that was interesting and then bending it foolishly to show, well, no, this is a, you look at it and go, that's, that's full right there. And it's the fool's guild. It tells that story clearly using something. It has the checkerboard background to it kind of thing. It does. And then it has the two cross cups or something. Yeah. So it has the motley in the background. It has three juggling balls or rubber noses over the top in an arc. And we have a big grass chalice and a toilet plunger, our, you know, our bobble and staff, whatever. I don't know what the terms are. So those are crossed in the middle. And then around the outside is, you know, that's the actual device on the shield. It's the right shape. Who actually did the artwork? I did. Oh, it's very nice. I like your color choices too. Actually, the color choices I let, oh, sir, picks a lot, picks a lot. He just got knited. It's good. And, you know, we've turned him into little cloisonne pins, calded that. He took it and had these little pins made and they're not dear at all. I mean, they're, they're cloisonne, they're beautiful, but they're, they're small. And they're such that, you know, for a couple of bucks, you can give them away. And, you know, I gave one to Christina, the queen. When I was king, you know, I had a pavilion celebrating the 40th. It was the first year that we could come back to fair. And so I set up a history booth and had pictures of all the kings and there was stuff out. It was like, this was our little guild hall in a tent and people could come by and walk in and look at all the history and there was things little kiosks standing up out front that had the history of the fools, you know, traditionally going back a thousand years. So it was an educational thing with a bunch of fools and the queen came by and I pinned her. She is an official fool. It's the sort of thing that you buy a pin to be a fool and that's, you're not a fool. If you're given a pin by a fool, you're definitely a fool. It takes one to know one kind of thing. You're born that way. Before you were appointed king, what kings and or queens do you admire what they had done as king or? The election of the king is done by the X-Rex and it's done in privy council. It's a private thing and we don't pick somebody that wants to be king. So it's the best and worst day of your life. The kings I admire, they've been, I admire all of them, I mean, you know, you're given free license and several hundred people at your beck and call and you can do tremendous things. I think our current king, Kevin McGrath is doing some really beautiful work. He seems like a really nice guy. He is. Yeah, he's very sincere and he's got a deep history with the fair and also with the group and I'm not sure why he wasn't chosen earlier. There's been brilliant. Some of the shenanigans are just their epic. So I was trying to, you know, build pride and acknowledgement within the group. I went and got a several terabyte hard drive and it's called the Frugal Drive, you know. And so I put all of the old archive coronation movies and I put everything I could find and ask for contributions and just loaded this thing with photos and movies and copies of all the past jokers and everything I could find and it's chained to the royal baggage, which, you know, when you get elected king, they give you a suitcase. It's got the half and it's got the things and debris from past people and ashes and just shit in there and you shouldn't know any of that. So I have to kill you now. I was looking forward to the weekend. Yeah. I'm busy anyway. So you can get your off. Thanks. So it has this brick in there too and with the big admonishment, don't lend this out, put it back, add to it and it has all these coronation parades and party, you know, films and things. Some of the stuff that, I mean, it was just genius, just, you know, the John Mackeys and the Steve, you know, the, the spring horns, David spring horns and William Barrett, Sandy Grinn. Oh my God. Sandy Grinn. Carpe caucus, the 20th, 21st, he was the first legal kid. Just brilliant, brilliant presence, just brilliant. But other than that, I don't know. And the next guy will do exactly the same thing. It's like, oh, what's this little ball? Let's see. Yeah. That's all I wanted to do. That's what my reign was about. Well, it sounds like it was fulfilling. I had a blast. I got to, I got to have my picture posed naked on the cover of a quarter. I mean, how good did you get? No, it was good, it was great, it was great. Is there any remnants of the design engineer that you were before you came fair that still exists in your royal duties? I am a maker. It is like, it is not a faucet, you know, so I brought that to it and approached it as a design engineer and the result was archiving things and coming up with devices and revisiting traditions and just exploring it with a methodology. All of it. Okay. What did your background, what would you have designed if it wouldn't have been or fair? Was it like, were you a civil engineer or? Product design. So consumer products, medical products, surgical lighting, sports equipment, consumer electronics, industrial equipment, I did just like pretty much, you know, it's all made out of the same stuff by the same machines with the same methodology. So, you know, I've done just exquisite non-radiological medical scanners, I've done keychains, guitars. It's delightful and as a consultant for most of my 50 years, it was extremely varied and I got to work with some wonderful people, doctors, you know, PhDs and machinists and it's been a joy. So it was it basically just making whatever they were thinking of, practical and makeable. Or gleaning what it is they're thinking of, it's like, we need something that kind of handwave, handwave does sort of this and then translating handwaves into, I mean, like this and just exploring it like that and then taking it all the way through manufacturing, sometimes devising the means of manufacture, certainly describing it for manufacture and then taking it all the way up to putting it on the shelf and designing the display. Because I believe, come into existence three times, they're made three times. The first is when they do their hand waving and somebody can describe it so that another person understands exactly what you're talking about and that expands out to describing it in descriptive geometry or a computer model or, you know, whatever, so that somebody else can take that and actually make it manifest it. So you describe it, it's real in the abstract, perfect world of the intellect. You can then bring it into the imperfect physical world and actually make it and put it down but the third time it comes into it's being made is when somebody uses it and they decide what it is for themselves. So that's the third time it is created. It's like, well, what does this, you know, what do I think this is? What does it do for me? How can I hack it? What can I do with this? Let me go out on a metaphysical limb here and say that's kind of what happens at fair. It is exactly. Yes. I mean, somebody has an idea. There's no real making it, if they just say it and becomes real and then somebody plays with it. It's exactly that process. Those are the three points. That's it. Yeah. You know, well, how did fair effect or being a fool that had changed or like, no, it's all the same liquidity of that stuff as that's, it's all, no, it's there's no faucet there. It's on. But do you think having felt that process at fair or in the fool's guild makes yourself more easy to do it outside of the fair? It does. It expands it. I've mentioned the word therapy. It is. It's like I'm frightfully reclusive. I've had clients for 10 years and never met them face to face and they've made many things that I've designed and I've never met them and sometimes we don't even exchange. I don't send drawings to them. They'll get digital files. They'll make direct deposits. The files will go off to some other country and they'll get turned into something. They'll send me a sample of it or whatever. I'll see it in the store and so the fair is it balances that delightfully. It's like, you know, who are these people? Who are these human people and what can you ask? How can you actually deal with them and how far can you go and what will they put up and what do they want and how far will they play? When gets to explore all that, everybody's given agency. It's like, you can run a booth? Please do. We need somebody for this parade. Can you step in? That's the value of fair to me. Well, I'm kind of running out of words. When you were kind enough to do this interview, when you said yes, did you have the thought? I have to remember to talk about X, Y, and Z. This is your chance to do X, Y, and Z. I know that the second we stop recording, you're going to go, "Oh, wait." This is your first time to gasp and go, "Oh, yeah, there was always." I want to thank you for approaching me and also for giving me enough time between asking me to do this and actually saying, "Oh, wait, you forgot to actually check into the Zoom thing. Oh, I'm waiting." That all of my anticipations and expectations, I've forgotten them and so I don't remember probably. This has been charming, extemporaneous, and delightful. I will put that on my website because customer approved five-star review by a king and X-Rex. The only Rax that's worth their shed is an X-Rex, so there you go. The best Rax is an X-Rex. Well, I think I will try and now find the stop recording button unless there's anything else. I can't think of anything. And on that philosophical note, I will stop recording. Let's see. Well, that's my September 2024 interview with John Young. I've been your host, Dan McLaughlin, and this has been another episode of Fair Folk at Work. If you would like me to pass along questions or comments to John, email me them at DJNG@Earthlink.net. Questions or comments for me about the podcast can also be emailed to me at DJNG@Earthlink.net. But if you, or somebody you know, would like to be a guest on Fair Folk at Work, you can email me at DJNG@Earthlink.net. But that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye!