Andrea Gibson - Maybe I Need You

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Andrea Gibson, performing at Fine Line in Minneapolis, MN.
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Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.
We seek to showcase the power and diversity of voices in our community. By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, we hope to broaden poetry's audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form.

[@prateekaroraproF96]

Everytime. Everytime freaking time i listen to one of your poems you make me cry. Out off the world. Thank you Andrea

[@KandiBabyy]

prateek arora oh my goodness....SAME! 😪

[@bettyemachetetmi5005]

This made me feel like I am both so alone in the world yet not so very alone in my loneliness. Can you feel the Christmas lights procrastinating on my piano and reflecting on the eastern side of the house? Tell you that Ohio says hi. Been a long year but it is apparent that the sense of smell is the last one of the 5 to be fully operational in the gauzy nap coma some are blessed with before death.... Of you are in a place where you must be able to perceive and anticipate the emotional charge of the atmosphere as if you were a pilot and the aircraft that you are most accustomed to had been relieved of the entire mechanism panels and then you can hope for the best way to sense that the altitude and wind speed of the craft are not going to be arbitrarily long as the way it is not actually a very efficient.... I am sorry for the enormous amount of cryptic metaphor. Maybe I can get it right and stuff it into just one poem some day. It is not easy to be the same way as I was since the kidnapping I am not entirely over. There was something human in your reply that I just want to tell you thank you for your own vulnerable words. I am not sure what it is going to require or how much time before I can get over it and I am not really ready to be done when I was in my hostage situation because I was still IN the locked room THIS week of last year and I have to be able to grieve for that. I've been in the numb zone and I have to be able to feel something.... Your comment was just like a certain amount of the way it is supposed to be ...it was able to get the dead of my nerve endings peeled to where I felt like I was alive again and that is awesome.

[@prateekaroraproF96]

@@bettyemachetetmi5005 I get that. It's okay to express in any way that you can. It was great :)

[@andreatoerien9324]

@@bettyemachetetmi5005 I'm sorry you feel sad, but, do you have more to share? Love your writing.

[@imanimcnair973]

Whenever I see Andrea I know I'm either gonna laugh , smile or get in my feelings. I accept all these emotions.

[@MadameCasper]

I'm almost 40 and I have 2 adult kids but I dont think I have ever experienced what you speak of. I've been in what I thought at the time was love but it was an imitation. I think I've given up looking for it but this still makes me cry.

[@urmom188]

I hope you find exactly what you’re looking for

[@MadameCasper]

@@urmom188 thank you. That's very kind. Its crazy how people can hurt other people so much but now I'd just like to be happy on my own I think. Thanks again.

[@BodtAttack320]

Never give up faith. It’s all any of us ever really have

[@marysastorm7182]

Awh, I'm happy Button uploaded this, it's one of my favorites by Andrea

[@lizziem.6834]

Marysa Storm same!!

[@cynhanrahan4012]

I found Andrea at a time when I needed to know other people felt this way. This poem is from a long time ago, but it's fresh for me every time they say it. I just cry earlier.

[@lizziem.6834]

Cyn McCollum same, tbh!

[@mmoscinski8488]

Whoever this reminds you of is who you really love man.

[@iloveanimals2345]

shhhhhh

[@bqwadseertg]

I love the recent presentation of Andrea's poem. The music in the background makes it feel like it has so much more meaning. Andrea, you make me feel every emotion that I don't want to feel that I know it would be better if I started feeling them again. Thank you, Andrea.

[@tylermanthei7420]

"It doesn't matter how well I say grace if I am sitting at a table where I am offering you no bread to eat."

[@oddgirlsophie]

this is so beautiful, im crying I want to hear more of their poems

[@tommielara3241]

Honestly, this is beautiful.

[@Lilipucienne450]

This is breath-taking . 💔

[@stephanieasoh]

This made me shiver

[@christopherj9744]

Wow. I lack the proper adjectives to express how incredible that was. It hits my mind like a memory. Thank you.

[@keitumetsekaphiwa9224]

2 days ago the security guard at my workplace asked if I listen to poetry and I said yes, why? He replied I look like someone who does, he asked I listen to Andrea Gibson and so I did, all I can say is that you once again life for giving yourself to me 💕

[@DonnaSnyder]

the most beautiful love poem I have ever heard. ever. ever.

[@NotKekePalmer]

Oh my gosh. This is my favourite poem of all time

[@mmoscinski8488]

I keep listening to this over and over, it came just at the right time

[@mmoscinski8488]

Still listening

[@ashleyinsong5785]

I could watch this so many times and cry all of those times

[@lexuhpro]

i’ve always loved this poem

[@Kat.outofthebag]

I immediately started crying. I feel this so deeply

[@lizziem.6834]

Kat a same, fam!!!

[@babayaga4123]

Kind of in the middle of a murky relationship (dont know if we're staying together or not ) but this made me cry since we spent two years together and just recently became long distance...

[@Artoftadashi]

Hi. This is alike to what I'm going through right now, can I know how it went ?

[@KelliErinM]

The way you describe emotion is actually ineffable. I fall in love with your words with every new poem I hear.

[@odysseusofithaca1620]

The list of reasons I love Andrea Gibson grows longer every second

[@tsukisakura1]

Sweet winter brings a bitter spring

[@jamesfv1]

This broke my heart because I feel every word so strong that it hurts.

[@wakingtheworld]

Your delivery, your words... so powerful, Andrea. I can never fail to be moved by them. Would that we could all share/have shared a love like this...

[@vivianajimenez7694]

I remember I would listen to this poem almost every day to help myself heal during my first heartbreak, now it’s kind of bittersweet

[@simanthaoberg7341]

MY FEELINGS

[@ritaselimi9512]

This poem breaks my heart, profoundly felt it 💙

[@savanafehr5157]

The 4 dislikes are people's tears falling on the screen

[@MaddyAndEmily23]

This slow version of it kills me 😭

[@nandiigumbi6075]

May I start crying?

[@deIcorazon]

my heart

[@jackies4806]

Omg I FELT every bit of that!

[@lauramorel3461]

i have known this poem since sofar uploaded it and it was such a heartbreaking experience. it started out with a girl performing flume by bon iver and boy, that was good. if you ever loved someone overwhelmingly, please watch.

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

Very much enjoyed your poems and reading. Your passionate and unique choice of words enhanced the poems. I, too, am a poet ( and fiction story writer which I’ll elaborate shortly) but for now let me say I write poems that specialize in Japanese format i.e. haiku , senryu, tanka/kyoka, haibun. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a Tanka and a haiku dedicated to Matshuo Bashō’s frog with added insightful commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my haiku among her 10 favorites of all time! What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem with Jane Reichhold’ insightful commentary: Bashō’s frog four hundred years of ripples At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us that we are ripples and our lives ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain. ~~ Now the tanka: returning from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear paint on my face and turn into art ~~ Finally, the fictional story that not only should appeal to Afro-Americans but all individual and groups that experience racial discrimination. It’s based on a true incident that took place in the 1950s and has an unexpected heartwarming ending that coincides with my own belief akin to Dr Martin Lither King’s in a non-violent approach and resolution to racism. Titled “ Eloise , Edna And The Chicken Coop” ELOISE, EDNA & THE CHICKEN COOP There was once a Black woman named Eloise who inherited from her grandmother a parcel of land in the suburbs of Compton California at a time when there was strong racial prejudice against women of color-especially those Black women who owned property in predominately white neighborhoods. It happened there lived adjacent to Eloise’s land a white woman named Edna who did not like the fact that this Black woman owned land next to hers. Eloise would try to be friendly because she believed Jesus when He said “Love Thy Neighbor” and to Eloise that meant even if your neighbor was unfriendly. But whenever Eloise saw Edna, Edna would turn her back in disdain. In fact, ever since her husband died a decade ago, Edna became mean and unfriendly to everyone in the neighborhood. But to Eloise, she was so hateful and full of animosity that one night when all the lights in Eloise home were off Edna went to her own backyard where she kept her chicken coop and gathered up all the manure and dumped it on Eloise land and upon her tomatoes and her greens and everything she was growing, in an attempt to destroy it. And when Eloise realized the next morning that there was all this manure, instead of becoming angry, she decided to rake and mix it in with the soil and use it as fertilizer. Every night Edna would dump the manure from her chicken coop litter box and Eloise would get up in the morning and turn it over and mix it. This went on for almost a month until one morning Eloise noticed there was no manure in her yard. Then one of the neighbors informed Eloise that Edna had fallen ill. But because Edna was so mean and unfriendly , no one came to see her when she was sick. But when Eloise heard about Edna’s condition she picked the best flowers from her garden, walked to Edna’s house , knocked on her front door and when Edna opened the door, she was in complete shock that this Black Woman who she had been so cruel to, would be the only neighbor to visit her and bring flowers. Edna was deeply moved by Eloise kindness. Then Eloise handed the flowers to Edna who said, “These are the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen! Where’d you get them?” Eloise replied, “You helped me make them, Edna, because when you were dumping in my yard, I decided to plant some roses and use your manure as fertilizer.“ This genuine act of kindness opened the floodgate of Edna’s heart that had been closed for so long. “When I’m feeling better, I would love to have you over for tea,” Edna told Eloise. “Thank you, “ Edna replied, assuring her she would come. And then added, “I will pray for your speedy recovery every night.” And with those words Eloise departed. It’s amazing what can blossom from manure. There are some who allow manure to fall on them and do nothing. But then there are others-like Eloise -who “turn the other cheek” when abused or in this case “turn over the soil” to make something new like those bevy of beautiful red roses that opened a white woman’s heart. ~~ -All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, -Al

[@zitavanda4640]

Andrea Gibson I think you're wonderful 💕👌

[@tessstarr7052]

Love love love!!

[@noone-re3zp]

i love you so much andrea gibson forever

[@noone-re3zp]

3 years later, here again. feel the same way. still have this poem memorized.

[@nikesky8198]

I wish there was like a translation of what these wonderful poems mean. I enjoy listening to them.

[@jsmith1176]

Love.

[@MsSexyB23]

Andrea, so love your work! 🥰

[@samanthashaw6264]

CHILLS FOR DAYS !!!!

[@dionnepoirier5837]

I cried so hard

[@annasapp3749]

stunning.

[@vanshikatrivedi8222]

Oh my lord! Is this person real? Am i really hearing to this? This is ethereal. I am in awe❤

[@adeledave124]

i got chills listening to this, it’s beautiful 💕🤧

[@elinwestoo3545]

I love this poem ❤️ and the performance! :)

[@Primaprime_editz]

Absolutely beautiful poem.

[@cheylee7209]

Speechless ❤️

[@Pariperi]

So beautiful 🍁

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

A quality small press journal called “Rattle” you may want to submit your poems to. Each issue features a section on prize winning and runner-up poems. I would like to share the following runner-up poem and when I read it, I fell in love with it. It was written by Diana Goetsch and was published in Rattle’s 2008 Issue #30. Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me sharing the poem which became one of my all-time favorites. Here’s the poem: ~~ WRITER IN RESIDENCE, CENTRAL STATE I’m writing this from nowhere. Oklahoma if you care. It’s not south, not west, not really Midwest. Think of a hairless Chihuahua on the shoulder of Texas, make an X, I’m in the middle, in an apartment above the dumpsters on a parking lot across from a football stadium. The shriveled leaves of what passes for autumn scuttle across the blacktop. Prairie Striders stand under cars saying Hey fuck you to French pluperfects in the pines. I’ve renamed the birds. They don’t seem to mind. In Oklahoma when you say a word like pluperfect, somehow you’re certain no one in the state has used it that day. Sometimes the parking lot feels like a lake, a lake with light towers and cars on top of it. Sometimes I see an Indian burial ground under there. You don’t think of asphalt as earth, but if they paved the entire prairie-which seems to be the plan-it would still curve with the horizon and shine in the sun. And no matter where you are, if you let the world quiet down you’ll start to hear the most terrible things about yourself. But then, like a teenager, it’ll tire of cursing and deliver you into the silence of graves. You’ll look out on the world and see yourself looking out. Now I know when monks retreat to the charnel ground and stay there long enough, the demons tire of shouting. No battles, no spells: you wait for them to cry themselves to sleep. If everyone were healed and well and all neuroses gone, would there be anything left to write about? Maybe just weather and death. I’d like to die on a mountain in winter in New Hampshire, the one the old man climbed, having decided his natural time was done. How alive he must have been during that short series of lasts-last step, last look around, bend of the waist, head on the ground, the soundless closing of his lids. How easy to be in love with the earth, breathing the crystalline air as he shivered and yawned and let the night take him home. Back in New York City there’s a book of Freud high on a shelf that presided over far too much. The past, it kept insisting, the past. There was also a mouse, who came out whenever I was still and quiet for long enough. She’d sniff my foot, go to the floor-length mirror, then drag her long tail into the kitchen. At first I set a trap. Then I knew her to be the secret life of my apartment, witness to everything without comment, her visit my reward for keeping still, for praying in a closet as Jesus advised. Don’t worry, said a woman last winter. I can see you’re worried. She had the wrinkled eyes of an old Cherokee, and spoke of past lives without a trace of contrivance. The silence here on weekends is so total it holds me. Even when the stadium is full, I don’t hear the people, just the PA telling who tackled who-who in Oklahoma was born and raised and fed and coached to deliver a game-saving hit. I don’t know where I will be or what I will do next year, but five miles underground in the womb of the earth there is no money, no lack of money, no decisions about dinner or weekends, friends or enemies, no stacks of unanswered mail. I’m trying to live there, so I can live here. -from Rattle #30 Winter 2009 Honorable Mention __________ Diana Goetsch: “I’m basically a love poet. I’ve started to understand that after all these years. No matter the subject, I think my mission has something to do with redemption. And I just go for the hardest thing to redeem.” Al

[@sibongileapril4979]

I'm obssesed with this😭❤

[@sibongileapril4979]

1year later and I’m still here❤️

[@artssy9481]

❤️

[@yourlonelystar5086]

@@sibongileapril4979 hey🤣

[@sibongileapril4979]

@@yourlonelystar5086 😂❤️I love you

[@yourlonelystar5086]

@@sibongileapril4979 I love you back 😭❤️

[@challengingfire8747]

Beautiful

[@ashmeetsingh1004]

That, was beautiful!

[@cleliaalbano2184]

Powerful!

[@soniashrestha859]

This does something to my heart ❤️

[@fearscrx6]

Wow this is powerful!!

[@mdsnhp]

Still one of my favourites

[@iamthefifthhorseman8994]

This is beautiful

[@NikkiRockZNikkiRockZ]

❤‍🔥❤‍🔥❤‍🔥

[@sukanyabaliarsingh6188]

Apt for the moment. :") 🖤

[@briannakratz8953]

im not crying, you’re crying

[@christinearja699]

Amazing

[@zitavanda4640]

I would like to be there to cheer her up, I would cherish a woman that loves me that deeply

[@zitavanda4640]

Very good job Gibson I really like this I live in Pittsburgh where are you from where do you live

[@lizziem.6834]

zita vanda same tbh!

[@MilkMostaches]

Andrea (Andrew) uses the pronouns they and them. 💓

[@jameswindham2360]

I seen you in Columbus Ohio...I love you...

[@dikshaverma6005]

Oh my good

[@DuckFart]

Wow

[@eggtoria]

shitt that made me so speechless. She's amazing

[@sithanel5857]

❤️🔥💯

[@shivamsidana4341]

Very nice mam love from india

[@ADecadeDrifting]

They are amazing 💕 this is so beautiful. I have always wondered, what does she mean by "I left my sweet tooth in your belly button"? Would love people's interpretation of this line.

[@19382q]

im gonna be honest, i tought the poem would be bad because i judged her clothes. but this is one of the best poems ive ever heard

[@emergency.medical.services]

They use they/them pronouns. Please respect that

[@realloveneverends11]

Would someone be able to tell me if this is in one of her books? And if so, which one?

[@masegoglory4205]

😍😍😍

[@skylineuk2008]

Wooow

[@kimv9248]

😍😍

[@DeathSneezeTM]

my heart feels murdered. ow..

[@MsCinderella02]

Words please?

[@riotboi6931]

IssaUnicorn it’s the top comment now if you’re still wanting the words

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

Brief Bio: I’m Al Fogel born in 1945 and at an early age began writing poems. In 1962 I was introduced to a neighbor who just returned from Avatar Meher Baba’s “ East west” gathering and handed me a book titled “The Everything and the Nothing” that included brief but powerful passages by Meher Baba that touched me deeply and i became a “ Baba Lover” I continued writing poems and in 2010 while on Jane Reichhold’s AHA website workshopping poems I befriended a Chinese man who helped me perfect my Senryu and Haibun. Subsequently I am now considered one of the nations leading authorities on Tanka , Senryu, and Haibun. Here are some examples of each of my specialties senryu ~ dentist chair the hygienist removes my Bluetooth ~ Internet argument all his words in CAPS hers in EMOTICONS ~ after the divorce he spends more time at the dollar store ~ damsel in distress clarke kent still searching for a phone booth ~ cauliflower ears once a contender now boxing vegetables ~ under the influence - moonshine ~ Audubon sale all variety of seeds. . . early birds welcome ~ Buddhist fortune cookie the unfolded paper reads “ better luck next birth!” ~ sudden downpour. . . the adults run for shelter ** as you can see, senryu is usually humorous, but it can also be serious. For example, the following two of mine are horrific and heartbreaking ( dealing with the Holocaust): ~ cattle cars between the slats human eyes ~ stutthof - the stench of burnt hair from the chimneys ~ Tanka ( I already posted the Jackson Pollock one about painting his face but here’s another Tanka ~ Here is another Tanka: thrift store purchase inside the leather jacket a tarnished half-heart ~ Haibuns The Mathematics of Retribution “Karma is i fathomable,” I inform her It’s late and our conversation turns heavy “ Seems simple to me, “my girlfriend responds. “If I murder you, then it’s reasonable that I will be murdered in this or another life to balance the ledger.” “ Not necessarily so” I’m quick to rejoin. “What if you murdered me in this life because I murdered you in a prior life karmic debts and dues are now equalized.” “But what if I get caught and I go to jail for life. Where’s the equal payback in that?” “As I said, karma is unfathomable.” We continue discussing reincarnation and then add the possibilities of “group karma” to the mix Finally, at about midnight, we fall asleep Stutthof - the stench of burnt hair from the chimneys ~~ Mama There were days when I pretended to be too sick to go to school - - just for mamas loving embrace -her arms the heat of home Even with the onset of dementia, her cheerfulness was so contagious it was a joy being around her despite the illness. She made everyone laugh with her spontaneous unpredictable behavior. nursing home bumper wheelchair her favorite pastime Once a week I would whisk her away from the assisted-living facility and we would spend several hours together -grabbing a meal or frequenting some of her favorite second-hand stores where she loved to shop and donate clothes. When we drove to her favorite thrift in November, her dementia worsened. thrift store the dress mama donated she wants to buy On a cold December morn mama passed. The funeral was simple. There was a light drizzle as the family gathered at the gravesite. One by one, with eyes full of rain, we said our last goodbyes. autumn twilight - oh mama tuck me under hug me one more time ~ ‘Round Midnight It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a building on Broadway --an important midtown crossroads in the heart of the Great White Way. My uncle still talks with reverence about how -in his heyday -he would travel by rail to the corner of Lenox and walk inside to the beat of jungle music. Who knew what to expect? One night you might be listening with rapt attention to Theloneous Monk and Dizzy Gillespie the godfathers of bebop in their signature beret caps, or the Nicholas Brothers flashing their wild acrobatic spins and splits, or enchanted by the sweet taste of Brown Sugar -with Bojangles out front. And when the Bird was in flight, even the moon was not high enough. But in 1940 the ballroom closed its doors to make way for a commercial housing development and another kind of night. new Harlem the a-train replaced by the bullet ~ Atlantic City New Jersey I had just graduated from high school I remember stopping for saltwater taffy -as evening journeyed slowly into night. Nearing curfew, we sat on a protruded sandy enclave--holding hands, looking out at the ocean, not saying much. In the distance the lights from an ocean liner flickered as the night kept coming on in... first “french kiss” under the boardwalk “over the moon!” ~~ All love, Al

[@leahmargaretb]

I am an illustrator and I want to illustrate a poetry book with you. The poems you curate are stunning and it would be an honor to contribute.

[@graciatobing9786]

Off key but in tune.

[@machariajoseph4072]

This is poetry...the others just rhyme words

[@komoniefe8543]

This is beautiful

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

A quality small press journal called “Rattle” you may want to submit your poems to. Each issue features a section on prize winning and runner-up poems. I would like to share the following runner-up poem and when I read it, I fell in love with it. It was written by Diana Goetsch and was published in Rattle’s 2008 Issue #30. Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me sharing the poem which became one of my all-time favorites. Here’s the poem: ~~ WRITER IN RESIDENCE, CENTRAL STATE I’m writing this from nowhere. Oklahoma if you care. It’s not south, not west, not really Midwest. Think of a hairless Chihuahua on the shoulder of Texas, make an X, I’m in the middle, in an apartment above the dumpsters on a parking lot across from a football stadium. The shriveled leaves of what passes for autumn scuttle across the blacktop. Prairie Striders stand under cars saying Hey fuck you to French pluperfects in the pines. I’ve renamed the birds. They don’t seem to mind. In Oklahoma when you say a word like pluperfect, somehow you’re certain no one in the state has used it that day. Sometimes the parking lot feels like a lake, a lake with light towers and cars on top of it. Sometimes I see an Indian burial ground under there. You don’t think of asphalt as earth, but if they paved the entire prairie-which seems to be the plan-it would still curve with the horizon and shine in the sun. And no matter where you are, if you let the world quiet down you’ll start to hear the most terrible things about yourself. But then, like a teenager, it’ll tire of cursing and deliver you into the silence of graves. You’ll look out on the world and see yourself looking out. Now I know when monks retreat to the charnel ground and stay there long enough, the demons tire of shouting. No battles, no spells: you wait for them to cry themselves to sleep. If everyone were healed and well and all neuroses gone, would there be anything left to write about? Maybe just weather and death. I’d like to die on a mountain in winter in New Hampshire, the one the old man climbed, having decided his natural time was done. How alive he must have been during that short series of lasts-last step, last look around, bend of the waist, head on the ground, the soundless closing of his lids. How easy to be in love with the earth, breathing the crystalline air as he shivered and yawned and let the night take him home. Back in New York City there’s a book of Freud high on a shelf that presided over far too much. The past, it kept insisting, the past. There was also a mouse, who came out whenever I was still and quiet for long enough. She’d sniff my foot, go to the floor-length mirror, then drag her long tail into the kitchen. At first I set a trap. Then I knew her to be the secret life of my apartment, witness to everything without comment, her visit my reward for keeping still, for praying in a closet as Jesus advised. Don’t worry, said a woman last winter. I can see you’re worried. She had the wrinkled eyes of an old Cherokee, and spoke of past lives without a trace of contrivance. The silence here on weekends is so total it holds me. Even when the stadium is full, I don’t hear the people, just the PA telling who tackled who-who in Oklahoma was born and raised and fed and coached to deliver a game-saving hit. I don’t know where I will be or what I will do next year, but five miles underground in the womb of the earth there is no money, no lack of money, no decisions about dinner or weekends, friends or enemies, no stacks of unanswered mail. I’m trying to live there, so I can live here. -from Rattle #30 Winter 2009 Honorable Mention __________ Diana Goetsch: “I’m basically a love poet. I’ve started to understand that after all these years. No matter the subject, I think my mission has something to do with redemption. And I just go for the hardest thing to redeem.” Al