I didn’t know him 'til my senior year. I had seen him before, of course. Dressed in black, he walked through the crowded halls. An oversized trench coat on, always, as if it were a permanent smock. But I never had the pleasure of knowing him until I took AP Art History. I say “pleasure” with the utmost sincerity. I didn’t understand, entering his class that September, how much it would impact me. How much Kavalos would impact me.
Listening to his lecture the first day was something of a culture shock that I wasn’t prepared for. A paper was passed around the room with a long dictionary definition of the word “art.” After reading it aloud, he told us to open our books. Large pictures of cave drawings and the Waterworn Pebble stretched across the pages. “This is art,” he said. I looked at the colors of the paintings, the rigid structures of the animals. Someone in the back row called out, “The rock is art even though it wasn’t created by a human?” Kavalos stared back. “It held meaning to someone. It’s art.” It was as if I was relearning my entire world.
Every day, he would probe the class with questions. First, a sly look in his eyes, a slight pause, and then the delivery, “You do realize that Hitler’s rise to power was an attempt to beautify Germany.” He wouldn’t phrase it as a question, just a perfectly understood fact. We, stunned by his statement, would sit in silence for a moment, digesting this thought until someone would come out of their amazement to ask, “How?”
His grin would become smug: you were hooked and he knew that.
He wasn’t a teacher who asked you to learn from reading the flat pages of a book, or memorizing pointless dates. You learned from his lecture; you learned from discussion; you learned from engaging with the art.
And, while I learned everything he had to offer, I frequently laughed at what he had to say.
Like, “The Greek gods were children with lots of power.” Or “The Egyptians thought that the afterlife was like life, but with air conditioning.”
However, the funniest Kavalos moment was the time that he purposefully left the conversation about Roman orgies until the class when his supervisor was observing.
Kavalos taught me how to feel, something that was missing from my education until that point. My senior year high school, I had a list of nine colleges to apply to. I applied to all of them as a biology or microbiology major, as had been my plan for a few years at that point. Halfway through the year, I started to question my motives: was this really what I wanted to do with the rest of my life? I auditioned for Berklee at one of the last audition sites left in early spring. When I came home, that was it. I knew I only wanted to study music. I am an artist now because Kavalos made me an artist.
Kavalos, you told me once that the job of the artist is to be at a distance to observe society. I’d like to think that you’re still doing that. Somewhere, perhaps on Mount Olympus, you are watching and admiring. Thank you for all that you have given me. I hope you are at peace.
