Peter Aguero - The Shapeshifter

 

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.