Host: Sarah Austin Jenness
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]
Sarah: [00:00:14] This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. This time we have a live Mainstage show from New York City. [crowd noise] We remember details from our lives through our senses. A particular song will bring back stories. A smell will help you time travel to a turning point in your life. Sense memories are the building blocks of stories. And so, here's our host for the night, Julian Goldhagen, a social worker and a theater artist, live at The Moth in New York City's Greenwich Village.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:00:47] All right, welcome to The Moth Mainstage of the NYU Skirball Center.
[cheers and applause]
Wow. So, tonight's theme is Give Me Five: Stories of the Senses. And I'm thrilled to go on this journey through the senses with you this evening. And I'm thrilled to bring our first storyteller up to the stage. Are we ready?
[cheers and applause]
So, another Moth tradition is that we always bring our storytellers to the stage by way of an introductory question. So, the question that I asked everybody was, “What was the last time you came to your senses?” Our first storyteller said on the way here this afternoon, he was gently nudged by a box truck while riding his city bike down 7th Avenue. [audience chuckle] Yikes, right? So very grateful that this storyteller made it here safely. Warm welcome for Peter Aguero.
[cheers and applause]
Peter: [00:01:56] So, I'm sitting lying face down on my living room floor, and the carpet is rough against my cheeks. And all I want to do is just burrow underneath the carpet. I want to hide. I want to dig in a hole. I want to get my body, my soul, my everything underneath to hide, to get away from everything. There is bees in my head. It's anxiety. My heart is beating. I'm crying, and it just feels terrible. The weight of the entire world is just. It feels like it's on top of my shoulders, on top of my body, pressing me into this carpet. I am trying to write a new show. I had been working for 20 years hustling as an artist.
And what I've been working on lately has been what I've been calling autobiographical first-person narrative, which is just a fancy way of saying telling a story. [audience soft chuckle] And anytime you have a fancy way of doing something, it gets all messed up. So, my wife Sarah is brushing my hair, and she's reading my tarot cards, and she's holding me like the Pieta and [audience chuckle] I'm just trying to get through this moment. I thought I was writing a comedy about myself. Turns out it was a psychological horror story, [audience laughter] and it didn't feel good. I had made the choice the medium I was going to work in my life was generally going to be pain.
I found it to be true early on that whenever I would talk about a time in my life where there was some change or some growth, it never happened in a victory or out of joy. It was always in heartbreak or pain or misery or failure is where I would grow. And so that's how I would present my medium. That was what I was working in. The pain of my past and I was tired of it. I didn't want to do it anymore. I just didn't care. I didn't care about myself or telling any more stories or doing anything. And I'm just crying, and it's just about over. And Sarah says to me, "Peter, you need to take a pottery class.” I'm 40 years old. I had never taken a pottery class.
I had played with Play-Doh when I was a kid probably. I went to Catholic school, we didn't have the money for pottery classes. It was okay, babe. I just dismissed it. Thank you so much. But we know, how's that going to help anything? And then I spend the rest of the night trying to go to bed to end that day, to get to the next one, which is the way it goes when you feel that way. At the end of the next day, “Sarah says to me, have you registered for a pottery class yet?” And I said, “No, I haven't.” She says, “I'm going to take a shower. And by the time I get out of the shower, I want you registered for a pottery class.” [audience laughter]
And I get on the computer, and I start to look for a pottery studio near where we live in Queens and I'm looking around and finding this place called Brick House in Long Island City. I'm like, “I like the Commodores.” [audience laughter] So, I register for a private lesson, and she comes out and she says, “Did you register?” “Yes, I did. I have a lesson in five days.” I said, “Why? Can I ask you, why a pottery class?” She just looked at me. She said, “I think it would be gentle. And I think it might feel like a hug.”
So, five days later, I'm in Long Island City, and I walk into this ceramic studio, a place I'd never been in my life and I don't understand what is going on. There are walls are packed with shelves and things. There are tennis balls next to WD-40, next to corn starch, next to yardsticks, next to bundles of sticks, random buttons, all kinds of weird. Just strange things. The floor feels like it had been wet and dried and wet and dried and wet and dried to the point that now it feels like stale waffles underneath of my feet. [audience laughter] I'm looking around and feeling the clay dust. I can feel it gritting in my teeth. I can smell the earth in the air. I look around and everyone in the place is working with these balls of this brown clay.
This woman comes up to me and she's wearing mismatched six shades of pink somehow, and two different colored socks and sandals. It's October. She looks like she's been happily cutting her own hair for the last 50 years. [audience laughter] She says to me, “Are you here for Peter?” I say, “I am Peter.” [audience laughter] And this confuses her. [audience laughter] And she says, “My name is Liberty Valance.” I said, “What?” And now I'm confused. [audience laughter] And then this guy who looks if the Queensborough Bridge had a troll, it would be this guy. [audience laughter] And he's got a red beard and he's chuckling in the corner, and I'm looking around like, “Oh, I get it. This is where the weirdos are. Okay.” [audience laughter]
So, then Peter comes out. He's the teacher, and he looks like me in 30 years. He's a robust older gentleman with a halo of hair loosely tied in a ponytail. Big, long gray beard that reaches the center of his chest. And he comes over to me with kindness in his eyes. He says, “I'm Peter.” I say, “I'm Peter.” And it doesn't register any confusion with him. [audience laughter] The kindness in his eyes runs deep and his hands look strong. And he says, “Have you ever done this before?” I said, “No.” He said, “Good. Here's what we're going to do.” I'm going to just teach you. There's no grades. I'm not your first-grade teacher. Don't worry about it. And the second rule is, today we're just going to have fun. And I tell him I'm not so sure I remember how that even feels. And he just nods his head and says, “Come this way.” So, he walks me over to the pottery wheels and we sit down. And he takes a ball of clay and he places it in my hand. And it's both wet and somehow dry at the same time. It's cold to the touch. In my hand, it is about the size of a grapefruit. It's heavy.
It is like when they tell you when you go to the produce section to get produce that is a little heavier than it looks and you never understand what that means. This is what clay feels like in my hand. And it's earth. It's the earth. And it's in my hands touching my skin. And Peter says, “Okay, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to center.” And I don't know what that means. He turns on the wheel, and the wheel starts going around. He puts the clay in the center of the wheel, and he says, “You can't center a little bit. You're either centered or you're not.” [chuckles] And that's blowing my mind. [audience laughter] And he shows me how to use my body, how to brace my arm up against my ribs. And to make my hands into the shape of a tool. And I would hold my hands over the clay and not let the clay. He says, “Don't let the clay.” He's got this voice. It sounds like if you drizzled honey over some soft summer thunder. [audience laughter]
And he's telling me, “Okay, it'll just be. And then it'll be centered.” He says, “You're going to learn how to do this. You're going to forget it. And then it's okay. Because I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere.” So, I breathe out, and I brace my arm and the clay wobbles and wobbles and wobbles. And all of a sudden, it doesn't. It's still and it's spinning. I raise my hands, and it's spinning so fast, but it's not moving at all. It looks like it's completely still. And he says, “There you go. You're centered.” [sighs and scoffs] And then he tells me, “Okay, you're going to wet your hands. And then you're going to drop your first hole. And you take your fingers and you put it in the center of the dome of clay and you drop your hole, and you open the clay.”
And it opens so quickly. I take to it like a duck to water. It feels so satisfying. Like when you're cutting wrapping paper and the scissors just slide up the wrapping paper. It feels like that. And he tells me that-- okay, now he shows me how to lift, and he shows me what to do. And all of a sudden, this lump of clay went from being nothing to a cup that turns into a bowl that turns into an object that exists in the whole world. And all the art I've been making has been ephemeral, just performance and it disappears and this is now a thing that actually exists.
And he cuts it off, and he puts it to the side. And he puts another ball of clay. And I centered it again and he tells me that all I got to do now is just make sure that I breathe. He said that's the most important thing. He says you're going touch the clay gently, you're going to take your hands off the clay gently. And in between every move you're going to breathe. And then that piece starts to wobble a little bit. And all I have to do is cut it off and get another piece of clay. I can just start over. There's no stakes. It just feels good. As Peter is telling me. And we go through about four different balls of clay. He tells me all these things again, these steps, over and over, because I learn them and I forget them, but he's there.
But what I hear is the subtext of what he's actually saying to me, which is, “You take a breath, you make a move and the shape changes.” The hour goes by like that and I stand up and I tell him, I say, “Peter, thank you so much. I've been depleted. I needed that so bad. My battery has been empty and I just have not been feeling good.” And he gives me a hug because me and 30 years is a good hugger. [audience laughter] And then as he hugs me, tells me he's proud of me. So, I start to cry. And me in 30 years, great crier too. [audience laughter]
And we're just holding each other and crying and the bridge troll and the pink lady are just like laughing. Everybody's having a wonderful time. And I leave the studio, I wave goodbye to the island of broken toys [audience laughter] and I go home and I get back to my apartment and I sit on the couch and Sarah says, “How was it?” And she tells me later that in this very small voice from my very big body, I just gently say, “I loved it. [audience aww] I can't believe somebody lets me do this.” And she nodded her head and she said, “Okay, I want you to go sign up for a weekly class.” So, I did.
About two weeks later, I show up for my Thursday 10:00 AM weekly class. I go in there and I walk directly to the wheels and on the wheel, that's supposed to be mine is a pile of brand-new tools. Some wooden carving sticks, wooden knife, a wire, a sponge. There's also this blue bowl, rudimentary thick-walled blue bowl. And I pick it up and on the underside of it, it's carved Peter underneath. Teacher Peter had fired it, glazed it and fired it for me and left it on my wheel. And I pick it up and the glaze is cool in my hand and it's very smooth like glass. And it feels perfect in my hands, because my hands were the things that made this. And the grooves are the grooves of my fingers and the surface of the clay. And this object is now part of the world. And I made it.
It was the earth, and I shaped it. And inside, the way the glaze melted is the universe. And I put it to the side and I get another ball of clay. And I sit down and I start to center. And I look all around me and I can see all the people working everywhere. And everyone here is taking these balls of clay or slabs of clay or pieces of clay, and they're turning into something and it's coming from a place inside their soul that is supported and beautiful and joyful. So, what I realized then is now I can make anything. I can make anything for who I am today. I can make things to honor who I had been. I can make things for what is.
And all I have to do is joyfully, mindfully, with intent and with compassion for myself, is to sit still and take a breath and make a move and the shape changes and I take a breath and I make a move and the shape changes, and I take a breath and I make a move and the shape changes. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:14:21] Peter Aguero, everyone. [music playing] Wow. Thank you for your story, Peter.
Sarah: [00:14:31] Peter Aguero is a longtime host and storyteller with The Moth. He makes his home in Queens with his wife, Dr. Fine. He does stuff, some of it quiet, some loud, all of it in the interest of finding the elusive meaningful parts. For photos of his unique ceramic art and to hear other stories from Peter, go to themoth.org. In a moment, a story that explores the sense of smell and all the ways in which senses are heightened during war when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Jay: [00:15:23] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
[crowd noise]
Sarah: [00:15:33] This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. We're bringing you stories from a Mainstage show in New York City with theme Give Me Five: Stories of the Senses. Here's Julian Goldhagen again, our host for the night.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:15:50] All right, y'all. So, our next storyteller I asked her our perennial question around the last time she came to her senses, and she said when she realized that the world could wait. [audience chuckle] Yeah. Warm welcome forward to Tighisti Amahazion everyone.
[cheers and applause]
Give it over to Tighisti.
Tighisti: [00:16:16] I'm six years old, living my best life in Asmara, Eritrea, which is in East Africa. My Sister Zodi is 11 years old and together we travel to school daily along these streets that are lined with these leafy palm trees and Art Deco architecture. I love school, but I often fall behind just staring at these giant, looming buildings and their strange architectural designs. These buildings that remain to this day a testament to a colonizer's dream of bringing a little Italy to East Africa. On the weekends, my baba, who is my father, takes me to get gelato and then afterwards, we head home, hand in hand, his pace matching that of my little legs and increasingly, I'm starting to see more and more soldiers in the city and I hear the adults speak of this war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
I hear words about liberation and freedom and independence. But in hushed tones, they also speak of an escape, of running away and going to Sudan. But I'm six years old, and I can't make sense of it. I am much more invested in play. And so, I spend my days just playing with the other children in the street before my grandmother calls us in to wash our hands and eat. And then I smell that fresh injera and spicy berbere mixed in with this sweet incense that my mother would burn. But I start to see less and less of my baba. And one day he disappears. And the adults seem to know, but they have no answers.
And then one night, my mother bursts into the room that I share with my sister, and she rushes us to get dressed and I'm not sure what's going on. And I'm thinking maybe we're going to go see my baba, but she hasn't packed any bags. She only has my infant brother strapped around her back. And I don't know what's going on, but she has us on each side, and we run to the front gate, and there's a man standing there, and I've never seen him before, and he has a walking stick and a pouch around his shoulders and a donkey. I'm from the city, y' all. I'm not sure what's happening, but I'm wondering what's going on? Is this man going to take me to see my baba?
And so, in that moment, the strange man picks me up and simply places me upon the donkey. And right away, I smell this, earthy scent from the donkey, and I feel his warm fur. And so, I lean in [audience laughter] and we begin to walk and walk. And as we pass through the city streets, I see my mother and this man looking around, and they look around fearfully. And I look over at my sister, and she's on the man's back, and she looks uneasy. And the pace is so fast that I begin to get the sense that we're not running to something, we are running away from something. And as time goes on, we get to the outskirts of the city of Asmara, and the sky is beginning to change. And I'm exhausted, but I'm still on the donkey. And we stop, and the strange man finally begins to speak. And he tells my mother of all the dangers that we are going to face and he lets her know that he will be our guide to Sudan.
He speaks of bandits and bombs and soldiers on each side with guns. He speaks of wild animals. And he says, “If that doesn't get you, you'll die of thirst.” And we began to walk and walk. And it is a distance of 629 miles from Asmara to Sudan. And as we walk, we know now, based on what the guide tells us, that we need to walk at night to avoid the soldiers, and we rest during the day. And he stops. And he's always speaking of these dangers. And as we walk, he's telling us we have to be careful of the snake or this might come by, but me, I'm not afraid. I find absolute delight in everything around me. And I'm often gone exploring, from the rocks to the dirt to the twigs and the many beetles that glisten in the sunlight.
I am in love with nature, and most importantly, I'm in love with the donkey. I'm convinced [chuckle] he has been set for me. That is my friend that came with me on this journey, and because I happen to be smaller than my sister, I get to ride him a little more. So, of course, he's my friend, and I speak to him, and he speaks to me, though no one can see or hear, but he is my friend. And so, when we are resting, I am simply intermingled with the intimacy of his scent, the smell of his hide. And I can even begin to anticipate the little gruffs and grunts that he makes when we are riding. And I find great comfort when we are going on at night or in the daytime, and I'm exhausted, and I can just lean into the comfort of him and his pace and the peace that it brings me.
Well, one night, it's raining violently, and it's raining in sheets. It's the rain that feels hot and cold on your skin at the same time and my infant brother begins to cry. And as he begins to cry loudly, we hear soldiers in the distance and the soldiers are saying, “Man new, man neh? Who is it? Who goes there?” And so, we stop for a second and shots ring out, and my donkey runs through a tree, and a thorn slices the skin above my eye. And the shots stop and we stop and we're silent. And my brother stops crying.
And then the soldiers go back to their work, and my mother bandages me as she laments the effects of war. And at the same time, she's thanking God for sparing my eye and thankful that I can see. And in that moment, our guide says, “You know what? We got to rest tonight.” So, we start to lay down camp under this large tree, and my donkey friend is tied to another tree not too far from us. And the rain begins to slow down. And as we lay there under the tree, I look over and I see my donkey friend, his eyes looking down, his lashes long. And I feel deeply grounded and peaceful. And then in the distance, I can hear the crackle of the gunshots. I can hear the hyenas laughing, as if they understand the absurdity of war.
But I can also hear crickets, and I can smell the cool earth beneath me. And I fall asleep that night feeling deeply grounded and thinking about my baba, thinking about seeing him after the checkpoint and also thinking about introducing him to my friend, the donkey. I wake up to the smell of blood and hide, and I look over to my left, and my donkey friend has been ripped to pieces by hyenas. I have never seen death before. I think I'm sad, but I'm confused. I do not yet understand how it is that I could be talking to a living being and holding a living being and then see him entrenched in pieces of bone and sand and blood and flies. I want so badly to walk over and shoo the flies away and put him back together. But I am paralyzed, and my mother is making sure that we are okay. And she's thanking every saint you can imagine, St. Joseph, Mary, and of course, Jesus, for sparing our lives.
No one around me can understand that this was really my friend. When it's time to move again, my limbs are heavy. And our guide picks me up and places me on his back, and we began to walk, and he doesn't speak to me. And we don't bury my friend, but he tells my mother that we could get another donkey when we get to the next rest point. But my friend is irreplaceable to me. We continue to walk for maybe weeks, months. I don't know how long that takes, but it was a long time. Water became less scare-- more scarce, actually. And then we reached a tiny village and there was a small hut, and the man said that we needed to stop into that small hut and exchange our city clothes along with his farmer family.
And so, we did that. And I was instructed to say that this man, who was a strange guide this entire time, was my baba. And that was difficult for me. But I was told that if I said that at the checkpoint, we would then pass on and eventually reunite with my baba. And so, we began walking. We got another donkey. I didn't talk to him. [laughter] He didn't talk to me. We were not friends. [audience laughter] But what I did notice is that as we saw the checkpoint, it seemed endless and you could see the soldiers at the checkpoint with their guns. But I didn't know fully to be afraid. It had just started creeping in for me. And it's the first time that I have been instructed to lie by adults.
After this tall man finishes interrogating my mother and our guide and he puts the gun to my chest, I proudly declare that “Yes, this is my baba, we're just trying to pass.” And we get through the checkpoint and the landscape begins to change. It moves from a flat heat to trees and lush leaves. I can smell mint leaves and mangoes again. I even feel my mama's mood begin to lift. And we eventually reunite with my baba, who is smiling and we have the biggest drink of water you can imagine. And we immigrate to Canada and I make my way to New York. I still have that scar above my left eye, but it serves not only as a reminder of the impact of war that we see around us on so many families around the world. It serves as a reminder of the joy and resilience and hope that we can see when we look through a child's eyes. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:28:01] Tighisti Amahazion everyone.
[cheers and applause]
Yeah. It is a scientific fact that smell is connected to emotional memory, like directly. The part of our brain that processes smell is right next to the part of our brain that processes emotion and memory. And I learned that on Reddit. So, you know it's true. [audience laughter] You know what I'm saying? So, one more round of applause for Tighisti, everyone.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:28:29] [music playing] We first met Tighisti Amahazion through The Moth Teacher Institute, which helps educators tell stories and use Moth techniques in their classrooms. Tighisti is a writer, educational leader and neuro nerd. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Shaka Zulu. In a moment, more stories of the senses, a perilous move to the big city, and a life changing pair of glasses when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Jay: [00:29:15] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Sarah: [00:29:24] This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. In this episode, we're hearing stories from a live Mainstage all about the senses. So far, we've explored touch and smell, and now we keep going. Here's our host, social worker and theater artist Julian Goldhagen with a story of their own.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:29:44] How y' all feeling? How was intermission? Feeling good? Well, onward we go through our journey within the five senses. And I love to think about sound. Sound is something that's really present in my life. I came here to go to school, and I also came here to sort of like, get out of the place that I'm from. Jacksonville is very segregated. There's not a lot going on. And as a little queer person, I wanted nothing more than just to, like, break out of that place and experience the world and kiss boys. So, when I got into school in New York, I was out of there. And it wasn't until I was on the plane at night, you know, 12 o', clock, looking over in the darkness. The whole city lit up the skyline, all those lights.
It wasn't until that moment that it really clicked for me that I didn't know a single person here. Not a soul. And I am hit with the sounds of the city. It's like there are people tucking and screaming at each other, and there's music and horns, and it's so alive. And it was like, “Whoa, I'm here. I made it. This is what I was looking for.” So, the next day, the next morning, I move into my dorm room. And when I get there, I learn that through a strange series of events, I have randomly been assigned the only single dorm room at NYU. [audience laughter] You know, fancy. So, I'm going to be living all by myself, which is like, okay.
So, the RA takes me to my room, and it's a whole situation. It's like a door off the main hallway, there's a door. Then you go in that door, and there's another hallway that you go down. And then at the end of that hallway, there's another door, and inside that door is my home. And it's a little room, it's cute. It's got a window. There's a huge walk-in closet. So, I'm feeling like, “Okay, NYU.” Like, I see you, but immediately I recognize that it's very quiet, like we're in some interior part of the building. So, you can hear a pin drop. The molecules are completely still. Very different from the bustling oasis outside.
So, I take my suitcase and I'm taking some clothes and moving them into my giant walk in closet. I'm walking inside the closet and I just like instinctually muscle memory, close the door behind me. And as I do I hear this little click. And so, then I go to the door to like investigate and it has locked from the outside. So, I am stuck inside of the closet. [audience laughter] And I don't know if this reads about me. We spent some time together already. I'm a very anxious person. And so, my mind goes from 0 to 100 in terms of worst-case scenario, I don't have my cell phone, so I cannot call and ask for help. Nobody knows me in this whole city. So, if I don't show up somewhere, who's going to notice that I'm gone? They don't even know who I am. And then my brain immediately goes to the skeletons on the side of Mount Everest. Those poor souls, they're like frozen and their clothes are still on them. I'm just picturing like, that's me.
And so I just start to scream. I'm like, “Help, help. I'm stuck inside of the closet again. Help. Help. Help.” Screaming, screaming and screaming and nobody is coming, nobody is helping me. And eventually I just like give up on myself and I stop screaming and I sink to the bottom of the closet and I just sit there and I wait. I don't know for what. Just to die, I guess, I wait. And that goes on for what feels like forever and then eventually I start to hear something like rustling of feet or something and then it turns into like jingling of keys. And all of a sudden, the closet door opens and this very ambivalent security guard is there to liberate me from this chamber. And so, I get out of the closet and I'm back in my dorm room. And it feels amazing. I see the window. The sun is shining. I am so, so glad to no longer be trapped.
But then the silence kind of starts to trickle in again. And I remember, like, wait a minute, I am still completely alone, I don't know anybody. And that is not a fun feeling to sit with. But time goes on, 15ish years later, and I'm still in New York. And there are days that I still feel completely alone. It's wild in this city, how we could be surrounded by people and sometimes it can still be so lonely. But I don't always feel like that because I know there are people in this city who love me. There are people in this city that I love and I really, really believe that if this were to happen again, if I were to ever find myself trapped inside of a closet, inside of a dorm room, inside of a hallway, that somebody would notice that I was gone. [audience aww] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:34:21] My friends, are we ready for our next storyteller?
[hollering and applause]
Beautiful. So, when I asked the storyteller about the last time that he came to his senses, he said “Recently, as recent as last night, he finally had his very first slice of New York City pizza.” [audience holler] Important fact, he's not from here. Warm welcome for Bryan Kett.
[cheers and applause]
Bryan Kett: [00:34:56] When I was six, my parents received a concerned phone call from my kindergarten teacher. My class had been learning about colors, and every student had been assigned to write and illustrate a page for a class book titled as red as a blank. And you could fill in whatever you wanted. So, some students had made pages that said, as red as an apple or as red as a fire truck. But the page I had made said, as red as a pickle. [audience laughter] And so, my alarmed mother, a professor of biology, [audience laughter] took me to our local library, where she had reserved a private room. [audience laughter] The librarian had pulled these gigantic volumes and laid them out on the table. And on each page were a bunch of colorful dots arranged in clusters.
My mom asked me what number was shown inside each cluster of dots, but I couldn't see anything because I couldn't tell the difference between the dots. I couldn't differentiate between blue and purple and pink or red and green and orange. They just looked like dots to me. And I asked my mom if I practiced, if I could get better at it. And she told me no. Unfortunately, I could not, because it turned out I was colorblind, quite colorblind. And when I asked my mom if other kids, I knew, were colorblind, she said, “Probably not.” [audience laughter] “Thanks, Mom.” So, we continued to talk, and we sat there, and I just made the decision that I wanted no one at school to find out about this. And so, I created a system to help keep it a secret.
I learned the colors of common things and how to spell the names of those colors. So then, for example, if I had to draw, say, the sky, which I knew was blue, I just picked the crayon that was labeled blue and this system was brilliant. [audience laughter] And it worked until one day in the fourth grade, I was in art class, I was drawing a tiger. Our teacher had just put out a fresh box of crayons, but none of them were labeled Orange? No. They all had fun new names [audience laughter]. Names like Timberwolf and Tumbleweed and Razzmatazz. [audience laughter] And I started panicking because everything was different. What was happening? Who would do this? [audience laughter] Where was orange?
I was too scared to ask anyone for help, so I just grabbed one and I hoped I was right. And later, when I was working, my teacher walked by, saw my drawing, and said, “Well, I didn't know tigers were green.” And before I could even think of how to respond, he just looked over his glasses at me, and he said, “What are you, colorblind?” That day at school, everyone learned what I'd been hiding, and they ran with it. Over and over other kids would come up to me and say, “Oh, you're colorblind. Well, then, what color is this?” And then they would point to something, and it was a game I could not win, because even if I guessed right, they would just ask me again until I guessed wrong. This was all so everyone could get a good laugh.
And this was at a time when every single kid wore a multicolored neon jacket, [audience laughter] because the 90s were fun, and so the possibilities were endless. All of this followed me. In middle school, I had a hard time in geography class identifying the flags of different countries. In high school, I couldn't see the lines on the gymnasium floor while playing sports. But by the time I got to college, I made a peace with it. My friends saw it as no big deal. Yeah, my best friend Eric thought he was witty when he would tell me that if I wasn't careful, how I might become beige with envy. [audience laughter] Or that because I couldn't see purple, how I also probably couldn't even really appreciate the music of Prince. [audience laughter] And sure, yes, these jokes are funny and dumb, which really sums up Eric. [audience laughter] But, that was the worst of it.
Overall, my friends were cool with it. So, I created a new system for myself, and I convinced myself that I was cool with it, too. But then, in 2015, a new viral video made its way around the Internet. Maybe you've seen one like it. They're out there, everywhere but the one I first saw, a man receives a birthday gift. It's a pair of glasses designed to correct colorblindness. And he's skeptical at first, understandably so. But he puts them on, and after a moment, he just begins sobbing because for the first time in his life, he's able to see the color of his children's eyes. I was stunned.
I quickly found the company's website, and I was so disappointed to discover that the glasses cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars, which was way out of my price range. But then I realized that at the very least, I could just try the glasses on. And so, I called the company and I spoke with a very helpful customer sales representative named Tammy. [audience chuckle] And when Tammy told me that the next available appointment to try on the glasses wasn't for months, I let out a noise. Just a noise from deep within. Like a noise that sounded like bagpipes [audience laughter] falling down the stairs. [audience laughter] And the thing is, this must have really had an effect on Tammy [audience laughter] because there was a pause and then the clicking of a keyboard.
And then she said, however, we do have a small opening tomorrow morning if you can be here by 9:00 AM. I didn't wait for her to finish. I told her I would see her then I was ecstatic. And then I looked up the company's address, only to learn that it was 360 miles north of where I lived in Los Angeles, about six hours away. And immediately I started having second thoughts. But then I looked down at what I was wearing and I wondered if my clothing matched [audience laughter] because people had always told me that it didn't. And then I started thinking about grocery shopping because I always buy bananas that are not ripe. I can never tell. And then I started wondering once again just what was apparently so special about sunsets? And suddenly I was all in.
I planned on leaving at three in the morning, but I couldn't sleep. So, instead I got on the road around 2:00 AM when traffic in Los Angeles is only pretty terrible. [audience laughter] And as I rattled up the coast, fueled by nerves and watery gas station coffee, I felt different, like I felt hopeful. When 6:00 AM hit, I couldn't contain my excitement anymore. And I called my best friend Eric. And when he picked up, his voice was just ragged with sleep as I said to him, “Hey, man, guess what I'm going to see later, Purple.” And then I told him everything. I told him about the glasses and about the cost and about how I was finally going to get to see what he saw. And I expected him to be overjoyed for me, but his excitement seemed lacking as he just said, “Oh, cool, good luck.”
And I thought, well, did he not even really understand? So, I then called all my other friends from college and I told them the same news, but I kept getting the same sort of subdued response. And I wondered, “Did my friends not care? Or was it possible that I just never told them what this would have meant to me?” And for a moment I started to question everything, spiraling as I drove, thinking, “Well, wait, was this really that big of a deal at all?” Like, I would never be able to even afford the glasses. So, did it really matter? I'd just be getting a glimpse. But then I caught myself. No. No. No matter what anyone else thought, this was my moment. This was my moment, more than 25 years in the making, and I deserved it.
I mean, the grass was literally going to be greener [audience laughter] on the other side. So, I arrived at my destination early, and I went to a nearby coffee shop. And in the coffee shop, I looked at into the pastry case, and I thought, after this, will blueberry muffins look different? And I just kept staring long enough to make all of the baristas uncomfortable. And then I headed around the corner to meet Tammy. She radiated positivity. She gave me a smile that somehow showed all of her teeth. And the two of us went inside, and we walked up this winding staircase to their offices, where all these boxes and papers were stacked haphazardly from floor to ceiling. But amidst all the clutter, there in the corner was a display case. And on each tier was a pair of glasses. And they looked like sunglasses, but when they caught the light, their lenses flared a bit.
And Tammy opened the case, and she removed a pair, And I reached for them, but she, ever so gently, just pushed my hand away. She slipped the glasses into a silk pouch, and she told me that we were going to go try them on outside because she, “Wanted my first time to be special.” [audience laughter] It's classic Tammy. [audience laughter] So, the two of us went behind the building, to a garden. A garden full of all these flowers in bloom, so I could see the vibrant array of pinks and purples and blues and Tammy handed me the glasses, and just trembling, I slipped them out of their pouch, and I closed my eyes, and then I put the glasses on and then I opened my eyes, and I saw nothing.
There was no change. There were no bursting flowers in bloom with their vibrant array of pinks and purples and blues. And I was so confused, and I asked Tammy if we could go back to the display case and get a different pair of glasses. But her demeanor changed entirely. And she told me something that was not advertised on their website. She said, “Well, it looks like you are what's known as a strong protan,” which is only like 10% of the colorblind population. And some strong protans have an impairment that's just too severe for our glasses. And so, five minutes after we got outside, Tammy thanked me for coming. She took the glasses from me, and she walked back into the building, leaving me alone in a garden, surrounded by flowers that I could only assume were really something special.
And that was it. I presumed it is over and just numb. And not knowing what else to do, I got back in the car with a six-hour drive ahead of me and absentmindedly I turned down the radio and Adele was on singing about heartbreak really fit the mood. And when I was at my lowest, my phone rang. It was Eric, my best friend. And I just watched his name flash on the screen over and over again as I wished that I hadn't even opened myself up to this possibility because it had made everything so much worse. And I let the phone ring a couple more times than I picked up. But before I could even speak, he did. And he said, “Hey man, I want to hear what you think about purple. But first, I've got a surprise for you.”
After you called all of us so very early on your drive up today, we all talked and we are all going to chip in and we are going to buy you the glasses. And hearing that, everything just came pouring out of me because none of my friends had a lot of money. And after I told Eric everything that had happened, there was no snide comment. He just said, “I'm so sorry. Let us know however we can help.” And I thanked him. We hung up and I drove home.
Over the next few days, I thought a lot about this and about how much it surprised me. There was the experience itself. There was my friend's generosity. But I think what surprised me the most was how much I wanted this. How much I wanted to see color. I had never admitted that to myself before and acknowledging that is scary. And today I have a lot of questions that I'm still trying to answer. Was all of this worth the heartache? I don't know. Will there be technological advancements in the future? Maybe. And if there are, will I have the courage to try them? I hope so. Thanks.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:47:42] Bryan Kett everyone. Bryan Kett.
[cheers and applause]
You know, I honor-- I honor the emotional complexity of that story and I honor the emotional complexity of what it must be to move to the world as a person who experiences colorblindness and also strong protan. That is a very sexy diagnosis. [audience laughter] I'm like I think I am a strong Protan. [audience laughter] Wow. I just have eczema. You know what I mean? [audience laughter] It's like not the same thing. Not the same thing at all. One more round of applause for Bryan Kett, everyone.
Sarah: [00:48:21] [music playing] Bryan Kett is a former high school science teacher turned writer. Recently, Bryan co-launched a project called Unfair Share. It's a chocolate bar that fractures into the shapes of real gerrymandered congressional districts to highlight Democratic inequity. It's very cool. I've seen these chocolate bars and tasted them just to throw some of my own senses in there. We're all out of time, but to hear the story of the fifth sense, taste and one about the sixth sense, go to themoth.org. Here's Julian Goldhagen to close us out.
[cheers and applause]
Julian: [00:48:57] And my friends, that brings us to the end of our evening. It has been such a joy to share some space with you. Truly, truly thank you for being here. Thank you for being the receiving bodies for these sensational sensory stories. And we will see you next time. Bye, bye.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:49:13] That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]
Jay: [00:49:29] This live New York City show was hosted by Julian Goldhagen. Julian is a resident artist at the Public Theater and therapist at Grounded Therapy. They're based in Brooklyn, New York.
This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison and Sarah Austin Jenness, who also hosted and codirected the stories in the show along with Larry Rosen and Jodi Powell. Coproducer is Viki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch.
The rest of The Moth’s leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Lee Ann Gullie, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza.
This live event was produced by Charlotte Muth from The Moth and it took place at WNYU's Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.
Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Bruce Cockburn, Airelle Besson, Thomas Fonnesbæk, and Justin Kauflin. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Audacy, including Executive Producer Leah Reis-Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.