The morning of Wednesday, November 9, I (dressed all in black, as befits someone in a state of mourning) got onto my bicycle and meandered bleakly along to my art history class. There, Professor Alexander Nemerov turned down the auditorium lights, inhaled musingly, and began his lecture on the widely celebrated 18th century Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Using words akin to a poem running on two feet, he delved into the place of the dark imagination — the world our minds often lean towards; a darkly phantasmal, fantastical state of nightmarish existence. Goya, who in his later years withdrew within himself to a lonely life in a house, alone, meditated deeply on exploring where it is our demons come from. And how they would smell, and taste and look at you through the mirrored reality of a soul trapped in art. We, together in the lowlight of the lecture hall, journeyed through scenes of witches and beasts, above all examining the mind’s blackest expressions of thought. In Goya’s work, I found an embodiment for my own despair, as well as an expression of the pain caused by the nightmarish unpredictably of the human mind that America came face to face with Tuesday, late at night.
Professor Nemerov ended his lecture on Goya’s “Dog“ (1819-23). The picture depicts the head of a dog, gazing upwards, seemingly afloat in some sort of brackish water or quicksand. The background of the piece is entirely done in yellowish tones, but contains no figures or shapes of any sort. There is only empty, drained space above a drowning dog’s head. The professor then waved his hand towards that space and asked us collectively to remember all of our previous studies of art up to that point (1300s-1800s). Historically, that absent space, he told us, is where God would be. Or angels. Or any form of religious salvation. Yet, Goya has herein eliminated that possibility. No winged figures with golden hair are coming to save this small dog. God’s hands cannot be seen in this image. Salvation, in such a sense, does not exist here.
I left the room silently. I got back to my dorm, flipped open my computer and watched an ad from Obama about ‘voting for progress’ on the recently deceased Tuesday of yesterday. I thought of God, then. Of his absence, of the absence of our love, of our humanity, of our compassion. Of the abhorrently cruel state of modern America. And I cried. I cried for the defeat of such a potential figure of salvation, Hillary Clinton, to the nightmare that is Donald Trump. Goya’s empty yellowed space hit me hard.
A few days later, Leonard Cohen died. In a redoubling of mourning, I devoted a large amount of time to reliving the beauty that was Cohen’s mind. Ultimately, I settled on listening to “Hallelujah,” an extremely sentimental song which has shaped artistic and social culture a generous amount. Listening to such a ballad, I suddenly found something I wasn’t anticipating: a return of my aforementioned lost salvation. With each Hallelujah! I felt it — a growing, tumbling, vastly all-encompassing sense of empowerment. Did my country let me, alongside millions of other Americans from every walk of life, down? Undeniably. But the future — my future (and yours and YOURS) remains right here, in front of us. For, within Goya’s yellow absent space, I abruptly realized there was room for my own hands. And what an enlightening sensation it was, to understand in such a way my own potential power!
The job of all of us, in order to protect the future, is to motivate on the basis of such potential. Thus, I do, here and now, vow to be become a builder of the American future, regardless of who ascends to the presidency. Within such a hellish time, there will always remain the hope that millions of hands and minds shall find within their despair the strength to stand and shout onwards! For, though onwards inevitably we go, those who choose to do so shall always have the power to mold and shape the future, if they are so willing. Herein lies our new power, our new battle cry and, I would contend, a rebirth of a nation’s ability to fight for love like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Bring the storm; my hands are open and waiting and ready to carry the weight of progress onwards.
—Mac Taylor ’20
Contact Mac Taylor at ataylor8 ‘at’ stanford.edu.