Creative Lives: Artists in Iowa Life

On an early weekday morning in downtown Mason City, the community is buzzing with activity.

It's installation day for River City sculptures on Parade, a 1.7 mile loop that encourages visitors and residents to take a self-guided tour to appreciate public art.

Oh, gee.

Oh, cool.

How cool.

Is that?

It's cool.

The benefit of public art is not a new concept.

Multiple studies have shown that it drives economic development, strengthens engagement and can bring a sense of pride to residents.

Public art displays have exploded in popularity in a number of Iowa communities, including Mason City.

I think the fact that Condé Nast Traveler has twice named Mason City, one of the world's best cities for architecture, that put Mason City alongside Dubai and Miami and Paris and Istanbul.

And, you know, really the big boys.

And I think it started a sense of pride in our community that, hey, we've got something here.

River City Sculptures on Parade was founded in 2012.

They're a member of a program called Sculpture One Partner Network, a group of communities that include Mankato, Minnesota, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

We really wanted more public art in our downtown.

We have a growing reputation as an arts and culture community, so it seemed to make sense.

70 sculptures are installed along the route ranging in materials.

These were old pipe caps on.

A stainless steel handrail.

Sizes.

So what that does is it intensifies the reflective quality to it.

That's why it's so brilliant.

And subject matter.

It's a dancer, dancer pointing and inviting people to come and be part of whatever she's pointing at in this case, it's Mason City.

Artists from all over the country submit their work to be a part of the tour.

Once the artwork is selected, it will go on display for up to four years, rotating annually among the partner communities.

So for the artists, they don't have those shipping costs.

They don't have transportation costs.

Hopefully in that span of time, their piece will sell.

Be nice to have it here for a year.

Once we select the sculptures, then we have to decide where they're going to go and if they will fit.

Can we move it to here?

You want it back that way?

But it's really like a huge puzzle.

You know, it requires heavy equipment.

I mean, we've had to use cranes, we've had to use forklifts, especially the bronze pieces are really, really heavy.

And without the cooperation of the city of Mason City, we simply couldn't do it.

Now they take so much pride of ownership.

And we love that, you know, because this is really everybody's program.

The majority of residents in Mason City appreciate what the Artwalk brings to the community.

It encourages people to be more physically active.

It financially supports artists and it strengthens the town's artistic identity.

I think it's contributed to the cultural fabric of our community.

It's also helped artists to sell their work and become more well known.

So it's really nice to have my artwork showing in the cities.

It's fantastic.

It's a nice consistency and it's a lot of sculpture for us.

No, not a big city.

I mean, this it's hard work to get sculpture in.

Mason City is such a fantastic art town that it's really a thrill, really a compliment to me to be in the art walk here.

There's such a wonderful future here in Mason City, and I'm tickled to be part of it.

♪♪ There's no such thing as real zombies.

All of the things that you might see in this are fake blood, fake gore, prosthetic makeups or just makeup, none of it is actually real.

♪♪ I have to emphasize that I don't know how to make anyone look pretty at all.

♪♪ I can make you look horrible or I can age you or I can make you look scary, but I can't put lipstick on you, I don't know how to do that.

♪♪ Corey Ruby: I grew up drawing, since I can remember I would draw cartoons, I would draw things at a young age.

And I've been told throughout the years that I was exposed to horror movies at probably an unhealthy age.

Rumor has it I went to see Cujo when I was six months old, then Nightmare on Elm Street when I was three.

People frowned on seeing a child draw these horrific things with crayon or colored pencil.

But I loved cartoons, I loved comic books and that is where everything started for me is I wanted to draw.

Fast forward, a friend of mine he's like, hey, do you want to help me do this makeup on myself for Halloween?

And I was like, well, I have no idea what I'm doing, like I've never done anything like that before.

And he goes, well, I've been doing all this research online and I just need your help putting it on if that's okay.

And I was like, sure.

♪♪ Corey Ruby: And I ended up having so much fun, I started researching it more and realizing it was something that I could pursue actively and make a career from it.

♪♪ Corey Ruby: My research told me start in haunted houses.

And I did that for a long time.

♪♪ Corey Ruby: And I had a lot of fun doing that.

I got to create some amazing makeups.

Eyes closed for me.

Corey Ruby: But ultimately, I always wanted to do prosthetic makeup.

♪♪ Corey Ruby: I have worked in music videos and commercials, movies, obviously haunted attractions, Dreamland has Margot Robbie in it.

All the bullet holes in that movie are my designs.

One, two, three -- (screaming) Corey Ruby: But my first major putting me on the map kind of thing is called the Zombie Pride Parade.

The guy who was creating it, he took this younger photo of himself and he gave that version of himself a persona and gave him a false name and created him as a missing person.

He had stacks of missing persons flyers like this and we would go all over.

That scared the whole Quad Cities and the Quad Cities believed it was a legitimate thing to be afraid of.

It noticeably got made into a big deal because so many people ended up getting involved.

And the police were involved and it was like this whole endeavor.

Once he said zombie the first time everyone was like, oh, ha-ha, we get it now, you had us fooled.

They needed a makeup artist to come in and help bring these creations to life.

So many people ended up getting involved.

I think it was like 150 people done up as zombies into the Halloween parade unannounced.

That was kind of where the career kicked off bigtime, that was the moment.

I'm going to get really close up.

We're going to do some shading.

Keep your eyes closed for me.

Kim Anderson: He is very good at what he does.

Tilt your head up for me.

Kim Anderson: Of course, he has his movies and everything, but on our side, people love having Corey do body paint or prosthetics.

And then a lot of times it gets published.

Corey Ruby: So, Photography by Focal Points is Kim and Whitney.

Stop about there.

Yeah!

Corey Ruby: We had talked about collaborating for a while.

We could do different themes and stuff and offer it as different packages.

They built their own sets in a lot of cases, like all of that.

Kim Anderson: We do tiki, obviously, we do space, we do western, Halloween is our huge one.

We have a set that we built in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is based off of the cemeteries in Savannah.

We build all these by hand so no one else has this, so this is ours.

Whitney Pope: I mean, there's only so much you can do in Photoshop.

A lot of that, what he does, just can't be replicated in post.

And the detail, it really comes through in the photos.

♪♪ Whitney Pope: Photography goes pretty quick.

It's usually the prep that takes a lot of time.

Mouth open.

Corey Ruby: With Conner, when we did his zombie makeup, it was like three and a half hours that I worked on Conner.

♪♪ Corey Ruby: I'm a cinephile, I love movies, I grew up on the Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock and I had like an effects career bucket list and one of those was I want to work on a slasher movie, I want to be able to say I got to work on a slasher movie.

And that's Haunt Season.

It was a blast.

Like everybody on that crew was great.

It was a challenging project for me.

I wanted it to be something that I felt like could potentially become a cult classic.

I really truly believe that's going to be the one.

(horror music) Corey Ruby: Every single time I go to do a new makeup there's always the anxiety of starting to work with someone that I've never worked with before.

But there's usually a point about two-thirds of the way through the makeup where now they don't look like themselves anymore.

That's what I do it for is just that constant challenge of being better than my former self, you know, pushing those elements.

♪♪

Do all of you know that story about the Underground Railroad in Cincinnati?

The story goes that well, there is an underground tunnel from the creek that separates Missouri and Iowa.

Every place has a story.

Over the past ten years, a group of 67 artists and needle workers have dedicated themselves to telling the story of Centerville, Iowa.

Piecing it together line by line, stitch by stitch for the entire community to enjoy.

Oh, I think when I came to live in this area, I would go and visit families and I would always see this lovely woman in the background and stitching away, and I'd ask what she was doing, or she's making quilts for her grandchildren.

Well, how wonderful.

But imagine what all that wonderful female talent can do for the whole community.

And they've done it.

Originally from Wales, Enfys McMurry moved to Iowa with her husband and fell in love with the area.

So much so she wrote a book about it.

Centerville a Mid-American saga.

My love affair with Centerville started out.

I would hear stories of events that had happened in Centerville, a lot of which I thought, this can't be right.

I go home to Wales every so often, and my two cousins took me to a place called Fishguard on the Welsh coast.

They went to see the last invasion tapestry.

It tells the story of the last time French troops invaded Britain.

Enfys was inspired.

And I said, why not do a community one?

All you are brilliant talents with needles and needlework.

One woman, who everyone had told me in town was the best needle woman.

She said, if you think we're capable of this, you've lost your marbles.

And she walked out.

I know this.

After some deliberation, retired schoolteacher Debbie Robinson raised her hand and started recruiting.

We didn't know what we were really getting into.

I called several people that I knew that were interested.

Sandy Nam said, well, does it involve quilting?

And it didn't at the time.

And I said, yes.

And she said, well, I'll quilt whatever you need.

Elaine Spencer.

She says, Debbie, you know those tattered medallions I make all the time.

She said, do you need some of those for the tapestry?

Then, Gene Zapital.

She said, I'll draw all your garlands.

Then I said, oh, I was hoping that you'd say that.

I was kind of a naysayer at first because I kept thinking, how are we going to render these?

How are we going to get from one point to another point?

And I have to admit, when I did the first one, I thought, oh, this is going to take us a lifetime.

They worked alone or gathered in groups.

People donated money to pay for supplies.

Each panel features a moment in Appanoose County his from Enfys book surrounded by wildflowers of the region, farm and coal mining tools, country of origin flags of immigrants, settlers and brass coal miners.

Tags.

History just made itself happen for us on the on the panel.

Women's suffrage fires, the flu epidemic, a presidential visit, a jetliner crash, 52 panels in all.

Before stitching could begin.

An artist had to come up with a drawing.

I would go to the book first, read whatever it was that she had in it, and I would go through everything I could find from there.

I would try to put this together in my head and say, how am I going to illustrate something like this?

When you think of the Normandy invasion, you've got boats, soldiers, marines coming out into the water.

You have guns.

Do you have.

And I couldn't.

I couldn't feature drawing, that kind of thing.

But I thought of what was happening at home during the Normandy invasion.

Jan Van Der Linden is a watercolorist, and she.

She did this.

Like, right now I'm blending these.

And so I've got the purple that I want on top.

And now I have a lighter lavender.

And I'm going to put another light lighter color lavender under that.

And then I will evolve into yellow.

And it's supposed to look like the sky lying on the artist's rendering of plain old Iowa.

It was intimidating to me, though, to see someone like Sue Keller, Sue Sacco, that, their talent is so unbelievable.

And then I would look at mine and say, oh, dear, I don't know, but but you just keep going.

This is just kind of something that's bigger than yourself to be able to do the needlework.

That's just the small part.

You know, the artistry, the artwork that's involved, the whole vision of what it's supposed to look like is overwhelming.

I just keep plugging away at it one stitch at a time.

So now we're trying to sort out our mess, ripping panels apart that are were used to be in the right spot but aren't in the right spot now.

Bonnie's ripping.

These guys are hunting, and the rest of us are kind of arguing where we think they go.

The finished tapestry is 96ft long.

It will be displayed in the packed office on the southwest corner of the Centerville Square.

I hope you walk in the door and go, oh my gosh, can you believe this?

The people in this town made this beautiful stitching.

What is all this?

And start reading about it and learn the history and grow.

To appreciate artwork and needlework and their community and get involved.

When we started this, I did not have grandchildren and now the oldest one is 11.

I just hope someday she comes and looks at the tapestry and says, my grandma did that.

Exactly.

It's hard to imagine tomorrow when today it looks like a mountain and you're sitting on the foots and bare feet and being told to climb.

One of the biggest things is people like to think poetry has to be a certain way, but it really does.

And it's very, very free.

We all write poems.

To explain to you that sometimes people hurt people just to hurt people.

The people who sit down and pick up a pen and decide to write a poem are the people who have poems knocking at their door, saying they need to be on a page.

It's difficult to tell between.

Flesh from fabric.

And they're the people who answer the door and go, all right, this is your home now.

Do you know how it feels to snitch on your own father, to break up a bond that you thought would last forever?

But all of us have the poems.

We're all feeling them.

And that's why we feel poetry when we hear it and when.

We read it.

Poetry across Iowa is thriving, and a lot of the work I've gotten to do since moving here is bridging the gap between page poets and spoken word poets.

And when I say page poet, I mean it's written for the page for a book.

And then there's spoken word poets who are performers and spoken word.

It is meant to be heard and listened to and engaged with.

A poem for the end of the world.

Poetry palooza truly is just a celebration of poetry in not just Iowa, but across the country.

We bring in poets who have national recognition.

It's an education experience, too.

We're we're providing workshops for the community, but also we're going into the schools.

We're sending our featured poets into schools, not just here in Des Moines, but across the state.

It's just a really great way to uplift our Iowa and national poets, as well as just amplify the community and show people that we're here.

We have space for you.

We want you to join us.

I can't remember a time that I didn't have poetry as part of my life.

So we are thinking about a place I went to high school and Iowa City.

And like, you can't walk four states without bumping into a writer.

So I was really lucky to be raised in a way where I understood the writers were people, and some of them were super famous and became poet laureate of the United States, and some of them just did this thing, in a way that might be comparable to just playing pickup basketball every other Sunday, you know?

And that lowered the stakes for me.

It was something that I like to do, and I just did it, and I kept doing it.

And I've had some success with it.

Writers thrive on communities, and we read each other our poems and we comment on each other's poems.

We support each other, usually a very kind of private endeavor.

You just don't really make any money ever, as a poet.

And so the real rewards are the beneficial effects of reading poetry and then writing it.

I want you to think about your least dominant of the five major senses.

I think there are a lot of reasons that you might want to come to the session.

One of the key reasons would be to broaden your skills.

Another one is to just practice differently than you might.

We all get stuck in ruts, and it's just useful sometimes to get different points of view.

We get a good mix of, I would say like 30 and 40 year olds, and then we also get a good mix of 50, 60 or 70 year old.

But we also with the education piece, we get so many awesome like high school students involved.

So we are out at Jester Park and we're doing a program for high school students on, on on poetry and mostly texture in creative writing.

So thinking about how how you create language in order to make people feel something and have kind of a mood.

So they're out right now.

Looking around, getting ideas and they're going to be writing an original poem here and in short order.

Now, trees and frogs.

Crickets.

Great kind of scarecrow.

I ate before for dignity to decay, to preschool.

Kids are incredibly, like, spontaneous and imaginative.

It's almost like we have it.

We're born with it.

Then there just comes this kind of unlearning that happens where we get tamped down and told, no, don't you know, don't say that or that's not the right way.

Or and people get more and more self-conscious about language.

Honestly, I think there's a kind of connection, especially when you're in your teen years.

There's a kind of way of expressing yourself that allows you to just like free flow.

They can, like, wield that emotion and show you what they're feeling or they can just do it for themselves and release it, which is good because that's healthy.

I think we're so busy with our lives.

We were so caught up in the city life that it's just busyness and and we're we're kind of like, distracted.

This is a way to kind of find centeredness and to find a place of calm.

And that, I think, leads to better revelations in poetry.

I think there's a common misconception that poetry is complicated.

So I always try to put contemporary poetry in front of people first because it's it's shocking to see, you know, your own experience reflected in a poem.

He couldn't live that way.

And that's why we need poets from all walks of life, because everyone is narrating a kind of different experience.

Events like this, where we get to come together as both poets and then as people who are like, just interested, like, oh, what is this?

And so these events are the moments where you get to meet seasoned poets who who have books out, and they and they do this as a living.

And then you also get to meet someone like, I've never been in front of a mic and I've never shared my poems before.

Right.

You get to have the whole range.

And what it does is it creates this community where I think you want to, like, put your hands in the air a little bit, like, just like stretch.

Those who might be more experience are kind of reaching back and pulling us forward.

And that is essential, especially if we want this art form to to continue to exist and to be seen and heard and appreciated.

After which nothing was ever the same.

♪♪ Escaramuza is the female counterpart of the Mexican cowboy.

We can do anything the man can do.

But we do it sidesaddle with one leg.

Escaramuza gives a really, really nice touch of a fiesta.

♪♪ I think it's one of the hardest things you can do while still claiming to have a good time, that's for sure.

♪♪ You can have expensive hobbies and you can have dangerous hobbies, but if you're going to have an expensive and dangerous hobby, you've got to be in it for the love of the game.

This is as expensive and as dangerous as it gets.

And for a lot of these girls this is a way of life.

♪♪ [Nebbe] The sport of Escaramuza dates back to the 1950s and is the only event for women with in the Charrería, or Mexican rodeo.

Charrería is Mexico's national sport and is deeply rooted in tradition.

Juan Piña, who is from the state of Zacatecas was born into the sport and brought it with him to Iowa in 2007.

[Juan Piña] This is a 100% family sport.

So, I grew up with it.

I inherit it to Alejandra in this case.

We started back then when I moved in 2007, it was only two or three teams max.

Now we have eight teams of Charros and four teams of Escaramuzas.

[Nebbe] Escaramuza consists of a team of women who perform choreographed maneuvers around a lienzo, or circular arena, while riding side saddle.

A routine can last anywhere from three to seven minutes and consists of a series of coordinated tricks such as turns and crosses.

Teams are judged on synchronization, execution, timing, symmetry and presentation.

♪♪ [Anna Garcia] The routines themselves, they are designed to impress.

You're going fast and you're in these tight, tight, tight crosses where the only thing that is keeping you from being bulled over by your teammate is a hope and a prayer and a couple of practices.

♪♪ [Anna Garcia] It's an incredibly difficult and nerve-wracking.

I'm just watching my girls do these tight cruzas where they're crossing right in front of each other.

My breath catches.

Get closer, get closer, get closer!

[Anna Garcia] As far as the things you have to do, I think the judges to expect to see an abanico.

That is a staple.

It's one of the most beautiful maneuvers and it really is one of those that consolidates all of the work and all the timing and the beauty.

When they're all in that line and you're galloping around in that beautiful, big, smooth motion it looks fantastic.

♪♪ Uno, dos, tres!

[Alejandra Piña] I would describe it as a gentle ballet with horses, but at the same time you're synchronizing it with your team.

We bring the elegance, the simplicity, the beauty of the sport into the arena.

The women, we are as fierce as the Charros are, but our outfits are very sophisticated.

There's so many rules to our outfits to our sport that they don't even know.

♪♪ [Alejandra Piña] So, these are all my dresses that I've used this term as Queen of Iowa and delegada, so the female coordinator for the state of Iowa.

This is my most recent dress that I just got here in May.

♪♪ [Nebbe] The dresses that Charras wear for competitions are inspired by the Adelitas who were women who fought in the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s.

Most of the outfits are made by talented dressmakers in Mexico.

[Alejandra Piña] Everything is handmade, so all this fabric is handmade, very detailed, made back in Chiapas.

♪♪ Today we're making history for the first time ever, the Charros and the Escaramuzas will be showing here at the State Fair.

Once you have your dresses on, come over here for a team huddle, please.

We're going to do the exact same thing we always do to the exact same level is that perfection.

We've worked on it.

We've strived for it.

We've achieved it.

Carry it over.

Do not let the nerves get you.

Okay?

[Anna Garcia] Culture should be appreciated no matter who you are, what culture you're from.

It's the same as you don't have to be Mexican to enjoy Mexican food.

You just have to have taste buds.

It's for everybody.

You'll find something that will appeal to you, you'll find something that will touch your heart in this.

It could be the horsemanship, it could be the beauty, it could be the fashion.

There is something for everybody and you don't have to be Latina or Latino just to participate.

We accept everybody with open arms, the same that we want to be accepted.

That's why we're doing all these things is to bring our culture to the forefront, it's to bring this beautiful community into the public eye.

♪♪ Thank you everyone for being here.

We're going to get started right away!

♪♪ [Juan Piña] This is our passion.

We really love it so much.

And we wanted to share it with Iowa, seeing where we came from, our culture, our roots.

♪♪ [Alejandra Piña] I love the passion.

I love the adrenaline.

It has put me in very uncomfortable positions that I would not have ever put myself in.

And at the end of the day, I grow and I learned a lot of things.

Escaramuza is about fierce women, fierce individuals that if they set their mind to it, they can do it.

[Juan Piña] Having her doing this, I just feel really, really proud of her because she got this passion for this sport and I just can't tell you enough how proud I feel.

♪♪ [Anna Garcia] It demands perfection and I think it pushes the girls to strive for that perfection.

And in doing so they truly do become better versions of themselves, able to have applicable skills that serve them well in life and as horse women and in any career, they want to do, I joke with them about it, whatever you're doing tomorrow is not as hard as you're doing right now.

So, I think it really is fantastic for just teaching wonderful, wonderful life skills.

[Alejandra Piña] Just not about Charraria, it's about yourself pushing yourself to the limit and trying new things and knowing that you can do it and have that confidence in you.

♪♪

♪♪ [Nebbe] How would you describe the environment you grew up in?

[Rachel Yoder] This was an intentional Mennonite community of sort of leftover hippies.

It was on a land trust, so many, many acres all adjacent.

Everyone built their own houses.

Everyone gardened.

You know, there was like a swimming hole.

It was actually really idyllic in a lot of ways.

♪♪ [Rachel Yoder] I was so ready and so confident and wanted to get out in the world.

I was sort of like, I can do anything.

I'll take on anything.

I had this moxy that I don't know where it came from.

[Nebbe] When did you first think that you wanted to be a writer?

[Rachel Yoder] I grew up in the library.

My mom was a librarian.

So, it was always something that had been with me.

And it wasn't until I met my writing mentor in Arizona.

And she said, you know, there's grad programs and people teach and people can be writers.

Not until that moment when I really thought oh, I could maybe do something with writing.

[Nebbe] I want to talk about Nightbitch.

[Rachel Yoder] Sure.

[Nebbe] It is a novel that kind of defies genre.

I feel like I've seen it referred to as horror, comedy, speculative fiction.

How do you describe it?

[Rachel Yoder] It's about a one-time artist turned ambivalent stay-at-home mom who thinks she might be turning into a dog.

Nightbitch.

(laughter) [Nebbe] Where did this idea come from?

[Rachel Yoder] It came, you know, it came from a joke my husband and I had when I became sort of feral at night and would maybe snarl when awoken.

And so, it was something we joked around about.

And then, as I was getting back into writing after having stopped once my son was born, I thought wow, it would be a really bad idea to write a book that literalizes this nightbitch joke that we've been making.

But it seemed really fun.

It seemed like a fun challenge.

It seemed ridiculous.

And so, I dove into it.

He's super cute!

Do you just love getting to be home with him all the time?

♪♪ Yeah, I do, I love it.

[Rachel Yoder] So, right after I sold the book in January of 2020, literally maybe two weeks after it sold, I started talking to producers who were interested in optioning it, which had not even been on my radar.

I didn't understand how they got the manuscript.

It was very confusing.

But we wound up striking a deal with Annapurna, which is a production company, and the film actually for films got made very quickly.

♪♪ Mama fuzzy.

(boy laughs) I'm not fuzzy.

I just feel off.

Look at my teeth.

See how sharp they are?

It's a little bit weird.

Motherhood, it changes you and connects you to some primal urges.

(making dog noises) Marielle Heller, the director, came on the next year and the film was really wrapped by 2022.

So that's two years.

The stars just really aligned.

Even the producers on the film would say to me, I don't know how this is getting made.

And I'm, I don't either.

It was produced by six women, which is also not the norm.

I only really worked with women on this film, which was an incredible experience.

[Nebbe] Now, you got to be at the premieres, different premieres of the film.

But there was an Iowa City premiere at the Refocus Film Festival at the Englert Theatre and you were there and got to be part of the conversation afterward.

What was that experience like?

[Rachel Yoder] That was such a dream because I have lived here for 15 years.

These are my people.

This is my community.

The book really grew out of very literally this community.

There are identifiable locations in the book that people can kind of map onto Iowa City.

So, being able to share that with everyone, it really felt like the movie is not mine to a certain extent, the book is not mine either and being able to say we all sort of own this, you know, felt incredible.

And what a long way I've come to feeling so isolated, so alone in early motherhood and now to have this incredible community is really, really touching.

[Nebbe] In writing about motherhood in that way, how did your own experiences influence the characterization?

[Rachel Yoder] Yeah, I definitely relate with this feeling of isolation and loneliness and not really knowing where to find my group, my pack of support.

And I think that's really one of the main engines that drove the book was if there were a book I could have read when I was in that loneliness what would it be?

What would it sound like?

[Nebbe] And you hear from a lot of moms who say, I identify with this.

What do you want women in particular who read this book to take away from it?

[Rachel Yoder] I mean, I think that.

I think if moms, women feel less lonely, feel seen, feel witnessed, that is one thing about Nightbitch is that she has no one to sort of witness her story.

She doesn't really show up.

None of her experience is tracked really by anyone.

And there's something about that.

Inside of that you sort of feel like you're disappearing.

You can feel like you're disappearing in motherhood.

And so, when I hear from women and they say, you see me.

I understand how powerful that can be.

♪♪