Finale

Dear Alan,

I don't presume to understand the universe well enough to know if you can see these words, or feel their meaning. But I am typing them anyway, just like I keep talking to you, not knowing if you can hear my words.

Life has been tough since you've been gone. The world bears the scar of your departure, a deep gash that does not heal quickly. Mostly, it is filled with sadness, longing for better days, and questions. There is also anger -- how could you do this to us? And guilt -- if I had only... I should have... Why didn't I....

I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, I know that there are other more complicated emotions. There is the sense of drive -- the obligation to find purpose in the pain. There is the relief that your suffering is over, and that our worry about those middle of the night calls and texts is fading away. There is the guilt of wanting you back knowing that it is only for the selfish reason of what I got from your presence. There is the gratitude for having had you in my life that tempers the sense of loss. There are the smiles that come, more and more, mixed in between the sobs, from fond remembrances.

I remember trying to explain our relationship to others. They didn't seem to get it. They compared us to other siblings, and couldn't see why I felt so much more responsibility for you than most. I didn't just love you as a brother, and yet you weren't quite a son. You were my companion -- my soulmate. We traveled this life together for 22 years, and when you left, I felt like part of me did, too.

This blog has given me an outlet to work through some of these emotions. I write because I am afraid of forgetting. I write because I want to share you with the world. I write because I don't know what else to do, what else to hold onto when I know I can't hold onto you.

These performances we have on video -- they are so imperfect. They aren't even your best performances. I wish we had your Revolutionary etude from your senior recital. I wish we had the flawless transcendent performances that I remember. Even more, I wish I could have a recording somehow of the time you played for me in that practice room at Lawrence before your recital. That I could relive that realization of how far you had come.

I know in the Buddhist tradition, I may not see you again until my next life. But I am sure I will see parts of you before then. You have enriched our lives so much, shone a light upon us that will always be felt. Fleeting glimpses of that light, I am sure, will be seen still, even as its source has gone away.

I wish I could do justice to your soul, but I only ever saw the parts facing me, and even my recollection of those parts is imperfect. I hope these entries have helped others -- helped them say good bye to a deeply loved friend -- helped them know the beauty of a man who hid it well -- helped them understand a single facet of a story about pain and love, regret and release.

If you can see these words, Alan, please know that I still love you, that I will always love you. I wish you would have stuck around. Now, it is left to us to find a way to keep ourselves, and hope that you have found your peace.

Love, Hyung

Little soldiers, little donkeys, little laughs, little smiles...

Alan had to prepare pieces from different periods for his piano competitions, so in addition to big serious works, he played a lot of fun little things, often more modern. Two of my favorite:

These little pieces often gave him a chance to work on musicality and technique, sometimes even more so that the "big ones." They weren't just "throw-aways" even though it could sometimes seem that way.

It reminds me of how there were so many little things about Alan, or little things that he did, that defined him just as much as the big issue things. Those sheepish grins, the way he walked with his knees bent to keep his pants from falling down (any farther), the obsession with his hair, the ridiculous facial expressions he made, the little "huh" laugh that sort of slipped out from time to time...

In a way, I am almost more afraid of losing those things because they weren't linked to important events or life moments -- they were just the everyday quirks that made him Alan.

Follow me

This post is going to be, admittedly, a little disjointed. When I try to reminisce about Alan, things kind of run together all stream-of-conscious-y. I've thought a lot about these various musical memories, and have come upon them from multiple different directions. So, I guess I'll start with Christmas.

We've had many Christmas traditions over the years. We had Christmas bears and Christmas stockings, and of course all the things I covered in the blog entry about Great-grandma. One short-lived but dear one was Uncle Steve getting Alan the DVD sets for each of the Lord of the Rings movies, and then taking us to the theater to see them with him.

It had a bit of everything -- adventure, nerdiness, music in cool meters for me. It provided a framework for movies that came after it. When we watched Thor, his friends -- technically called the Warriors Three, were "Gimli, Asian Legolas of the Woodland Japanese, and the guy from Robin Hood: Men in Tights."

So, now I ask you to follow my tangent here. The Lord of the Rings movies were made in New Zealand, which is kind of like Australia, but they talk even funnier there. "seven eight nine" -->"seevin, ite, noin" It's like Down Under's Canada.

This is how my brain connects this memory to Kimbra and Lorde -- two New Zealand singers that had huge hits recently, and are famous for weird songs, great voices, and making absolutely ridiculous faces when they sing.

Kimbra made it big when she was featured in Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know.

She has a solo career over in Australia and New Zealand.

I warned you about the faces.

Lorde, of course, I already covered in this entry.

I guess this post goes to show how hard it is to capture even one group of thoughts about Alan and my relationship with him as a cohesive whole. This blog is but a dull reflection of its subject. I hope you are able to follow me.

Because I Can't Forget

One person whose music we both appreciated was Jack White. Alan was far more into him than I am. I always thought he looked like Michael Jackson had succeeded in becoming totally white -- hence the name.

I wish I could post all his later stuff, and the things he produced, but I was never as into those things as Alan was. It makes sense that Alan would like Jack White. He is well-rounded, eclectic, eccentric, plays guitar and drums as well as a smattering of other instruments, and he appreciates Bob Dylan and old country music.

He was Alan's kind of musician -- not that he just had one kind of musician.

Alan's tastes helped broaden my horizons. Even though he was the little brother, he taught me so much about the world. I tried my best to try to teach him how it worked, how to exist and thrive in it. He showed me what was there under the surface. I will always miss having that influence. I will always miss the car rides and the music, sometimes forced upon me, but with such enthusiasm that it seemed worth it to see what it was all about.

Short and sweet

When iTunes allowed you to buy music and give it as gifts, this is what I sent to Alan:

I wanted Alan to know the effervescence of these pieces -- the joy. I thought maybe some day he would play these short little pieces. Each piece represents a different star in Orion's belt. Each has a different mood. But all of them sparkle.

 To be honest, though, the first thing I sent him was not this. It was a free download of the SNL digital short, "Lazy Sunday."

After nightfall

Alan and I would often go see one movie while Mom and Dad saw another when they lived in Madison. The last one I remember seeing with him there was The Dark Knight Rises.

Several times during the movie, the music would go into this funky 10/8, either 3-3-2-2 or 2-2-3-3. I would start conducting it in the movie theater, and saying in an excited whisper "the meter! Alan, the meter!" and he would tell me to shut up.

He never got why I was so excited about it. These things always brought me back to the early days of listening to meter with him. We would later get into conversations about whether Hans Zimmer was too gimmicky. When we went to see Twelve Years a Slave, it was a big topic of discussion. In the end, the music really helped those movies feel right. Whether or not Alan wanted to hear about it in the movie theater while I was waving my arms around like a lunatic or not, he did get it. He did care. Maybe not as much as I did, but...

I still find myself thinking I should tell Alan about something, and realizing that I can't, not really. But I tell him anyway.

Under Pressure

Alan liked both Queen and David Bowie. It was not infrequent that he would play this song.

To me, this was "the source music for that horrible Vanilla Ice song bass line."

To him, it was obviously more than that, an anthem. In addition to the pressures of everyday life that seemed so heavy for him, he put so much more pressure on himself. He had these expectations that I think he sometimes thought came from us, his family. We just wanted him to try hard, and had no doubt that success would come in some form or another. Depression added so much more to the pressure, too.

I finally had a dream where I got to talk to Alan about what happened. I almost wish I hadn't. He was so happy in the other dreams I had had, but this time, he was lying there actively dying. I was talking to him as life was slipping away from him. I asked him what it was like [to be dying], and he told me only, "I'm so sorry." I said, "I know." He said, "You have no idea."

I wanted to tell him that we didn't blame him. I wanted to tell him that I just wanted him to be okay now, safe from the pressure that crushed him when he was alive. But I awoke before I had the chance.

What exactly did he mean by, "you have no idea"? That we had no idea the pain he was in, how much he blamed himself for what had happened? That despite moving on and being released from this life, that somehow he still knows the weight of what he did leaving us like this? I didn't get to ask him. As in real life, my time with him was cut short.

Maybe it was just a way of saying that nothing is all good or all bad, no release without a karmic payback, but also no sadness without some hope of making it better somehow.

I choose to believe that he is at peace, but he wanted to make sure we knew he cared about us still, wanted us to find our peace, too.

Spellbound

There were so many times when I was so proud of Alan. One of those was when he was asked to play the piano in an arrangement of the Spellbound Concerto. I couldn't find a recording of the arrangement they played, but to give an idea:



His orchestra conductor put an enormous amount of trust in him to do this, and he would have been so exposed. I wish I could have gone to the concert, but I kept on top of how things were going up to and after his "big break."

He had so much potential. It's so hard to see the void left by his passing, not just in the present, but in the future.

What You Need to Live

One of the many songs Alan liked to play over and over again was Time of the Season by the Zombies. This would have been when he was living in DeForest with Mom and Dad.

It's got a funky groove, but after a while, you wonder why they keep making that sound, like someone just had their first gulp of CocaCola or something, and then let out a crisp exhalation through their throat to demonstrate how refreshing it was. Eventually, you want to find this person with their Coke, and knock it out of their hands to get them to stop.

Since Alan has been gone, the stress of losing him has made our lives a lot more complicated. Relationships that were already difficult before have become even harder. Figuring out how to navigate a life after loss is not easy. And everyone's pain, so similar, is also so different, so individual.

Looking back at Alan's life, I know that's not what he would have wanted. He would have hoped that people could come together to support each other. He wouldn't have wanted people blaming each other, relationships falling apart in the aftermath of grief, or people isolating themselves.

He would want us to all come together -- to love one another -- even when it's hard, when it doesn't mean exactly what it did before. He would want us to forgive each other our shortcomings. He would want us to see the good in each other. He would want us to find ways to be there for each other.

It isn't easy, Alan. But we are trying.

Phrasing

Alan would sometimes try to stump me with music things he learned in piano lessons. One I vividly remember was him asking me if I knew where the end of the phrase was in the fast part of Mozart's Rondo alla turca (at 1:10).

Mrs. Chang had a special way with Alan in their lessons. Her facial expression didn't change that much during a lesson. She had this stern press-lipped half-smile most of the time. But in the subtle changes in the tightness of the press, the angle of the corners of her mouth, the expression in her eyes, she could make it clear what she was thinking. The tone of her voice, too, did not change much. But there was a huge difference between, "Good," and "You need to practice this, young man."

She taught him to understand the theory and the history, the importance of form, intention, provenance, and structure.  It wasn't enough for Alan to learn how to play a piece -- he had to learn the piece. For this one, he learned that it was the third movement of a sonata, that Turkish was in that year, code for anything that sounded exotic and eastern. And of course, he learned where the phrases began and ended.

The key to this puzzle is that the phrase ends in the middle of the string of sixteenth notes at 1:22, and what sounds like the end of the phrase is actually the beginning of the next. I knew this, not only from my own music theory background, but because I was at that lesson when she taught him that. Alan had forgotten I had been there.

Sadly, Mrs. Chang died shortly after Alan did. But, I can't help but think that she is able to help him now, to set him straight, to make sure that he bows, that the bench of his piano is set up perfectly, that his feet are positioned on the pedals, before he starts to play. I can't help but hope that what we see as the end of one phrase is really the beginning of the next.

I must be strong

When we were growing up, Mom would throw all kinds of dinner parties. She would cover the table in food, and it would just keep coming. Unless there were a lot of other kids, Alan and I usually sat at the big table with everyone else. We had this old Kenwood console with a turntable, a double cassette deck, and a CD changer. Usually, a mix of classical CDs would be in the changer, and would play during dinner. After the main course, we would usually stay at the table and eat fruit while Alan used the couch as a trampoline, much to the guests' amusement.

I remember some rather memorable parties where the music was maybe not so party-appropriate. Mom had asked me to make a CD of Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven, and to repeat it to fill the CD. So I did. And when this was in the CD changer, we would hear a solid hour of Tears in Heaven.

Another one of the CDs that made it into the changer once was this beautiful Chopin sonata:

Well, the food was always good. And the company. Maybe not the music so much.

The Last Waltz

Alan loved Korean cinema. Uncle Steve had given me and Mom books on Korean films years earlier, but for Alan, the interest grew in the last few years. He took a course on violence in Korean film, and was excited to be in this class because the professor had an interest in phenomenology.  There was a focus on the movies of Park Chan-wook.

 
I had wanted to see Snowpiercer with him, but he backed out and said he would watch it with a friend instead. I don't know if he ever made it to the movie while it was playing here. I still haven't seen it, but I think it's on Netflix now.

His movies spanned genres, and while always somewhat dark, were not all ultra-violent. His biggest success was with his Vengeance trilogy, of which Oldboy was the middle. This trilogy would stretch almost anyone's tolerance for violence, both physical and emotional. I wonder if this was the scale of emotion that ran behind Alan's quiet exterior. He was so hard to read.

College afforded Alan the possibility of being the one who knew more about a topic when he talked with me. That didn't happen very often, given my breadth of trivial knowledge and our nearly 10 year age gap. When he talked about the use of color desaturation in these films, or the phenomenological themes, he was able to teach instead of be taught. This knowledge added a new and stimulating dimension to our relationship.

Hidden in all the tough conversations about his troubles, in all the silly conversations, the mundane comments made as we passed each other in the house, was this new, more adult character to our brotherhood. I mourn the loss of his future, and selfishly what I lost in our future together.

Like I love you

Alan liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Karen O, the lead singer, is mixed Korean-American. She had a way of looking very uncomfortable, but being comfortable with that, if that makes any sense. There's an awkward charm there, an anti-charisma.

The band's sound is unique, too, with no bassist. They make it work. We used to try to teach Alan to be proud of his heritage, and equally proud of being Korean and white, exploring his Danish heritage (and German and English and a smattering of other stuff), the Iowa in him. When he was little, the school district would only let him put one ethnicity on their demographic forms. One year, they listed, "Other -- Alan." I told them to put "(Cauc)asian." I called him our little rice cracker. And I think Alan was proud of his heritage. His friends would sometimes call him "aran," lightheartedly poking at stereotypes. He ate ebleskiver and kimchi. He was a carnivorous emo panda.


We loved him just the way he was.

Way way back

Once upon a time, we had a white station wagon we had gotten from the son of a neighbor. It was not without flaws. The front seat rocked on its hinges whenever Dad got in the driver's seat. There were a variety of other problems, too. But one thing it had was a seat that folded up out of the back hatch area. This seat only fit two people, and it faced backwards. Alan used to call this seat the "way way back," a term later used for the backmost row of seats in the van.

When Alan sat in the way way back, he and I would get to goof around even more than usual. Sometimes, we would sing goofy songs.

The more annoying and repetitive, the better!

The way way back has a special place in my heart, and I sometimes wish I could go there now.

Allegro ma non troppo

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Alan and I were always sharing internet memes and YouTube videos with each other. I talked about the last one he shared with me. This is one of the first I shared with him -- the literal music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart.

One of the first videos he shared with me was this one (warning: a bit disturbing):

This video actually predates YouTube. He showed it to me on an earlier video sharing site, the name of which I have totally forgotten. You may recognize the animation, by Don Hertzfeldt. He does the Pop Tarts "crazy good" commercials now. And the music, by Beethoven.

Now, these videos make me remember good times with him goofing off. They make me happy, but not quite like they used to. With the passing weeks, I see a bit more fondness in reminiscence, a bit less sadness in loss. I am hopeful that this trend will continue.

Empty and Aching

Have you heard the one about the guy who wanted to name his dog America? Then if it ran away, he could say he's gone to look for America...

 
Alan didn't just listen to music in the car with me. Most of the time, he forced all of us to listen to his music. Among other things, this did allow him to bond with Dad about a lot of the old music he used to listen to. Old albums, famous live performances, trivia about groups from back then, this was one thing that he truly loved to talk about with Dad.

Sometimes, people would ask me how Alan and I were brothers, perhaps not noticing the Asian in him. Or they would ask if Dad was my real dad. And I would explain that Dad raised both of us, and that even though they were technically my stepfather and half-brother, they were as real a family as any.

Our relationships underwent many permutations over the years. Before Alan was in the picture, Dad was working out of the home, and Mom was at work in the office. He and I spent the summers together, and he was the one I wanted to tuck me in at night. He was my Suzuki "mom" and my companion, and he was so patient with me and my endless inquisitiveness.

When Alan came along, Dad was still the parent at home more, but they seemed to have more traditional parental roles with him. Dad would sometimes take Alan on his team when we played games, and we would compete "brown hairs versus black hairs." Other times, it was parents versus kids.

When Alan started pulling away hard, Mom was working in New York. In many ways, it was Dad who was most immediately affected by it. He was the one back in Appleton with Alan, trying so hard to connect with him, try so hard to keep him out of trouble. The stress of this clearly took a toll on Dad. I remember Dad counting down the days until Alan turned 18 so that he wouldn't be legally responsible for him and his escapades any more.

So, when Alan lived with them in the Madison area after they all regrouped down there, it was touching to see them connect over music again. It gave them something to talk about other than Alan's struggles.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

I know it's not yet Thanksgiving, but this is about Christmas. If the retail stores and TV shows can do it, so can I.

Christmas was always a special time for our family. We always spent it together, almost always in Sioux City. We had a tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve, and saving the rest for Christmas morning. The year Alan's Christmas Eve present was a sweater did NOT go well.

Alan and I ended up together on a hide-a-bed in the den or the basement. When he was little, he used to ask me questions about Santa. One year, he started to question whether Santa was real, and I convinced him to let it go. By the next year, he had it figured out.

This was the most consistent time we got to spend with Great-Grandma Bailey, and it was a big day for her because it was her birthday. When I was little, she was a stern and silent woman who seemed to spend more time harumphing than talking with us. But by the time Alan came along, she had mellowed. She started to joke around with us, and she and Alan definitely had a special relationship. Grandma used to have to separate them because they were poking each other under the dinner table too much.

Grandma had an organ, and would often start it up and play some hymns. As he got older, Alan would try to sight-read some of them, but then eventually ended up playing All Along the Watchtower instead. Alan was never really as into Christmas music as I was when I was little, but there was a special bond over Silent Night. This was Great-Grandma's favorite.

Still, Christmas makes me think of Great-Grandma, and the things she liked remind me of Christmas. She loved owls and cardinals. She loved ebleskiver. She and Alan were never big eaters, but they could both pack away those little pancake UFOs like nobody's business.

When she was dying at 99 years old, Alan was right there for her. He held her hand, rubbed her back. At the funeral, he fainted. Mary and I took him on a drive to find a bathroom and to have some time to recover.

Theirs was a beautiful relationship. Christmas felt so different after she was gone. And now, with Alan gone, too, it will surely change again. Maybe they're together again, poking each other under some table far away.

I love you more

Like most people, I guess, Alan and I both liked the Beatles. We had the Beatles Rock Band game, we had debates about the relative talents and attributes of each member, and talked about which songs were our favorite.

While we both like the classics like A Day in the Life and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, we each had other songs that we particularly liked. For Alan, the obvious one was Let it Be. one of his theme songs. However, it was actually a post-Beatles Lennon song that Alan probably listened to the most.

That idealistic spirit, that hope for the world to be a better place, it fit him.

For me, it was In My Life.

There was something about the piano bridge. It reminded of a piece Alan played way back when:

The words sound like they are to a lover, but for me, that person that meant more than anyone else was always Alan. When we were both young, Dad used to tell me not to parent him because he would resent it some day. He never did. As I got older, I learned how to guide him, teach him, raise him, without being seen as "one of the parents." Over the years, I have planned my vacations, my work schedule, and where I worked around him. He was a big part of why I went to school where I did, my decision to  take my fellowship offer, and my decision to buy a house. When I bought my car, I made sure he would get my old one. Now that he is gone, there is a strange sense of freedom, but not in a good way. I feel like I am floundering, rebuilding what my purpose in life is.

The truth is, though, that most of what I did in my life did not relate to him. My decision to be a physician, to research the brain, to take care of patients, none of this really had anything to do with him. I didn't do it to provide for him; he had Mom and Dad for that. I didn't do it to set a good example or make him proud, though of course I always hoped to. Reminding myself of this, that I have a life of my own, that Alan was really only one part of it, is hard. Figuring out how to focus on myself again is tough. How did I do it before? How was I able to get all my work done and take care of myself and spend time with Isabelle, and still have time to take care of him when things went wrong? I never thought I would miss the 2 a.m. calls, but that's exactly what I find myself doing now.

I think in the end, one thing that keeps me going is knowing that the world is a better place for having had Alan in it. And that we can continue to make it a better place by honoring his memory, not just by doing things that were meaningful to him, but by keeping going, doing our own things, enriched by our years with him in our lives, fondly remembering that brilliant light he shone wherever he went, shadows and all.

Where are you going?

Alan's Korean was pretty limited. He could ask for grilled meat, water, money, and cigarettes. When he tried to ask where the bathroom was (hwajangshil), he accidentally asked where to find a famous battlefield from the year 660 (Hwangsanbeol).

But when he was little, he did learn a single children's song in Korean.

Little things like this remind me of how Korean we grew up. As American as our household was, we had kimchi at almost every meal. Some of Alan's favorite snacks as a baby were from the Korean grocery store (those little pancakes with red bean paste in the middle, for instance). He loved tteokbokki, soft rice cakes in a spicy chili sauce. He was equally as likely to make Korean ramen noodles with mandu thrown in as he was to make Easy Mac.

In the song, the mountain rabbit's response is that he is going to the mountaintop to get chestnuts to share. It's still hard to believe he's not coming back sometimes.

Dorktastic

One day, almost exactly 4 years ago, Alan did one of those Facebook things where you hit shuffle on your playlist and post what songs come up. I present his playlist below, with our comments from Facebook, but no other commentary.

1. It Aint' Me Babe (Dylan)

2. Street Walkin' (Auerbach)

 

3. I Can't Help It (Williams)

4. Shitbox  (Noisia)

5. Chain That Door (Mudhoney)

6. Queen Jane Approximately (Dylan)

7. The Last Time (Cash)

8. Spaceships (Jeremiah Nelson and The Achilles Heel)

9. Little Red-Haired Girl (Ezra Furman and The Harpoons)

10. If Not For You (Dylan)

11. Pour Me Another (Atmosphere)

12. Crumb Begging Baghead (Babyshambles)

13. Most Likely You Go Your Way (Dylan)

14. Sky Pager (A Tribe Called Quest)

15. Attention (The Raconteurs)

Me: So, I decided to do this, and discovered some artists I had forgotten about. Just to give you an idea, 5 classical, 5 jazz, 4 contemporary, 1 video game music.

Alan: you would. haha

Me: I would what?

Alan: you would have dorktastic music

Every Flavor

By the end of the Harry Potter movie craze, Alan was too old to care. In fact, by the time the last book came out, I don't think he read it. But he was totally into the early books. Once, he went to a Harry Potter event at Barnes and Noble, and won some Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans by answering correctly that the original name of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. He did have trouble pronouncing "philosopher," which came out more like "fill-officer."

Little Alan was so cute and so smart. He used to come home with flawless speed math worksheets. He was often one of the top two in his class. He was meticulously organized. He was pleasant and polite with everyone. While I had a meltdown at most of my birthday parties, he was the consummate host, making sure everyone knew how much he liked their present.

He was rigid about what was just and what was right. He got upset when that was messed with. When his friend was careless and broke the egg Alan was taking care of for an extended school assignment, he was devastated. When he caught a friend lying to him, he was ready to call off the friendship.

There were the foundations of the wall he built later in his life. Even as a toddler, he could shut out other people if he was focused on something else. When he came home from school, we never got more than a word or two about what happened that day.

He had an infectious smile, not that delayed slow to come on grin he later developed, but just an unbridled smile of pure joy. The excitement in his eyes to see me was enough to make me forget whatever other problems I had at the time.  He was game for almost anything. When I was a freshman at Lawrence, he let me close him up into a large computer box and roll it around the floor. He used to beg to go back in the box when he came to visit me. Once, while I was pushing the box around, we ran into Lara Waters in the elevator -- her getting in, us getting out. Right as the doors to the elevator were closing, she heard a tiny voice say, "Can I get out of the box now?"

That Alan was gone a long time ago, but you could see how he grew up to be the man he was. Now, in missing him, I also miss all those other versions of him as he grew up, all the facets that made him a real human being.

Oppression

Alan barely made it to college at all. With the exception of a few windows of motivation (the time he went on a tour of Columbia, for instance),  he really just kind of shut down when college was brought up. Mom really pushed him to look into Beloit. It was in many ways similar to Lawrence, my alma mater. However, Alan felt that Lawrence had become somewhat uppity since I went there. It just didn't fit his persona. I also think he wanted to break free of Appleton. We both loved many things about the town, but Alan saw it as a reminder of the tough times he had there, the limits of small cities in the Midwest. These feelings were even more accentuated by his summers and Thanksgivings in New York, which gave such a stark contrast to the Fox Valley.

Beloit was in many ways not that different, and in many ways was more limiting than Appleton, but it had the vibe he was looking for. We first saw that vibe through Martina Pfefferle, who was graduating from Beloit when Alan was applying. Alan and my parents got to see a presentation she gave about music during times of oppression.

So, when a couple years later, I brought up the Shostakovich String Quartet #8 and played it in my car for him, he had already heard a lot about the situation.

In brief, Stalin had told Shostakovich he could only write happy music extolling the virtues of Communism. When he came up with this number, it must really have been a huge two-hands-waving-middle-fingers f--- you. He must have been willing to die for this music. Shostakovich dedicated the piece to "the victims of fascism and war," despite the clear references to Jewish folk music, the dark humor and parody that link the music not to abstract concepts from Western Europe, but to the concrete reality at home. Not only did he write this piece of vitriol in that political setting, but he signed it repeatedly with his name, the "DSCH" motif (D-Eb-C-B by their German denotations) that forms a main theme throughout.

Alan appreciated that passion, that pain, and that virtue. Maybe he understood the suicidality as well.

In filmmaking, I think he probably could have found a way to express himself in a way that would work through themes out in the open. He seemed so impatient to get to that stage. He wanted to do meaningful work, not class projects with classmates he didn't respect or give a damn about. He would have done anything to jump ship and start working in the industry if he could, if it got him a step closer to being able to make films that meant something to him. I wish he could have waited.

Like an Angel

Alan and I played a fair deal of Rock Band, but it was usually me who wanted to play. In retrospect, it wasn't playing this game that brought us together. It was talking about the music. I heard so many stories about his life that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have heard otherwise.

He told me about his friend who could, in full-out voice, sing this song.

He told me about seeing the Flaming Lips at Summerfest. He told other stories about Summerfest, things that were awesome, and things that were not so awesome, breathtaking performances, trouble he got in.

I guess it was just an opportunity to bond. Sometimes, I got the sense he was almost just doing it to humor me. Sometimes, I felt like he was testing me, seeing if he could divulge some bit of himself without my judging him. I think I usually passed the test, but other times, maybe not.

Looking to the future

One of the shows that Alan and Isabelle and I all enjoyed was Futurama. It had just the right mix of Simpsons style and wit, and Family Guy edge.

When Mom and Dad lived in DeForest, we spent a lot of time in the basement watching episodes of Futurama and Star Trek. We watched weird movies. We discussed the weird little trivia about these shows, like the episode of Enterprise that seems to be ripped off from a Voyager episode. Concerning Futurama, two big things came up: that the theme song was from an old French piece from the early days of electronic music.

The other was that Leela's name was from the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen. It seems there were a lot of links to weird modern French music. When I looked more into this particular piece of music, I decided that it was one of my life goals to own an ondes Martenot.

This was a time of transition for Alan. He had really face-planted after dropping out of school at Beloit, but after a couple months of moping, he started to pull himself together. He was more goal-oriented than he had been in a long time academically. We only got little tastes of his struggles -- the injuries from jumping a fence impulsively one night, the occasional pulling away from our inquiries. We really had hope that things were going to continue to get better.

Style

Who knew that Gangnam Style would take off like it did? Alan and I loved this song, going through the requisite stages of ironically liking, then ironically ironically liking, then just liking. It was our go-to song to play in the car to stay awake while driving. We learned the lyrics. We learned the horse dance. We talked about going as Psy and the guy in the yellow suit (see the 1:50 mark) for Halloween, but by Halloween, everyone was going as Psy, so we scrapped that idea.

Alan showed some Korean pride when Psy broke all the YouTube records, and when he broke the internet with his AMA on Reddit. He followed all the new songs, the new interviews. We had inside jokes about the song. We one-shotted coffee. No, wait, that was soju.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Korean culture, Gangnam is the fancy rich area of Seoul south of the Han River. Oppa is what a girl calls her big brother, but is also what many women call male friends. There's some subtlety here, though. If they see the male friend as much older, they may call him ajeossi, or uncle. Guys strive to be an oppa, not an uncle. This is a song about a funny looking dude explaining that he may not be sexy or popular, but he's still an oppa, and he's got style. It's pretty tongue-in-cheek. The description of the Gangnam girl he's looking for is equally tongue-in-cheek, but essentially is about someone who is all business during the day, but knows how to cut loose at night.

Alan generally wasn't seen as an oppa or an uncle. I think most girls saw him as their adorable dongsaeng, or little brother. He left behind a trail of girls that wanted to take care of him, cared deeply about him, and tried to break through his shell to help him. Many of them remained his friends, even if he pushed them away.

Alan did have his own style, and we saw it evolve over time. The first signs of sadness really came to the forefront when he started high school. He had this kind of emo thing going on. Mom called it kindergarten Goth. He let his hair grow swoopy (this was just a bit pre-Bieber). He made sure to look sufficiently puppy-dog-eyed and pathetic in all his photos. One year, he participated in his high school's haunted house. On one of the nights, Alan's makeup turned out a bit funny. Usually, thick black makeup was applied in hollows of his eye sockets following the bony ridges of his face, but that night, the black areas were made a bit too round. Instead of looking like some sort of ghoul with blood dripping out of his mouth, he looked more like a panda (with blood dripping out of his mouth). Hence, the nickname, "carnivorous emo panda."

That look required a lot of upkeep. He was showering and trimming his hair multiple times a day. As high school continued, there was a shift. He started becoming more and more hipster, but also struggled with things like sleeping and showering regularly. He wore skinny jeans and ironic plaid. He switched between Birkenstocks, Converses, and boat shoes. He wore sunglasses in all weather. But strangely, it seemed like there was still so much upkeep. How could he spend so much time primping and still look dirty and unkempt? Once, Uncle Steve told him that it looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to look metro or homeless. He suggested that his style should be called, "hobosexual."

As time went by, being hipster was too in, so he went with a more authentic homeless look. He buzzed the side and back of his hair. He wore thrift store and toss-off jackets. He wore way too many layers. His pants were sometimes more hole than fabric. Is it any wonder he struggled to find a job at times?

 Through it all, he was clearly Alan, through and through. And through it all, he was my dongsaeng.

Time in a Bottle

I mentioned before that Alan was my movie buddy. The last two movies we saw were X-Men: Days of Future Past and Guardians of the Galaxy. I guess this makes sense; we both loved Marvel Comics growing up. In fact, I recently found a drawing he made me when I moved away for medical school that included the things we shared, which apparently were: Marvel Comics, music, Great America. I guess this is what was important to 10 year old Alan.

For Alan, it was usually Spider-Man. I guess that makes sense. He was a loner who was misunderstood and under-appreciated, driven by a deep need to be good. He was haunted by the consequences of failing to do so. He was pensive, and had a constant inner dialog.

For me, it was the X-Men. Also misunderstood and under-appreciated, they banded together to make the world a better place.



Neither of us had read the relatively obscure comics that led to the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but we both looked forward to it. Here's the trailer -- the most iconic part at 1:51, if you want to skip ahead.



As you can see, the soundtrack was big on oldies.

Anyway, I guess we both outgrew comic books, but this was still something we shared. It's funny, the more I think about it, Alan was always the person I wanted to spend the most time with. He wasn't sociable or pleasant all the time, and he clearly didn't always want to be around me. We each had our own lives with our own friends as well. As much as I know he cared about me, it's clear I always cared more about him. Ours was a difficult relationship to describe. We were clearly brothers, but we were truly friends as well. He saw me as another parental figure, but not exactly as a parent. He was able to tell me things he wouldn't tell Mom or Dad. He would come to me for help when he didn't want to go to someone else.

Part of this was because he seemed to want to compartmentalize his problems -- to split them up into ones he could tell me, tell them, tell his friends. Each of us got a different little part of the picture. Maybe he did it to prevent any of us from seeing to whole thing, his pain in its entirety. Maybe he was afraid of what we would do to try to help him. Regardless the reason, it's made for a complicated task now that he is gone to figure out exactly who he was. I was poised in a position to see more of the picture than most, but of course, my view, and this blog as its outgrowth, is so limited -- such a small fragment of Alan.

I want to believe...

Alan often watched shows that I had watched when I was younger. When I got Netflix, the whole family started mooching off my account. Alan went through a lot of the old X-Files episodes, and it was great to be able to share this with him.

He was far too young when the show was on, but he seemed so interested in what I was into back in the day. My favorite story about this theme song is a story told by David Duchovny on some talk show. Apparently, Mark Snow, the composer, told him that there are lyrics to this song:

  " The X-Files is a show
   With music by Mark Snow...."

I find myself wanting to believe things about Alan -- to assign significance to every little thing. But the Scully in me shuts it all down. One thing I have learned in this time of grief and recovery is that it's okay to be a bit out there. If it gets you through the day, go with it.

Thinking 'Bout Me

One of the first bands that I listened to, and got Alan into, was a group called Jim's Big Ego. I had heard them at NACA (the same place we booked Retta), and the mix of self-deprecating humor and wit just struck me as cool.

They have never been a huge mainstream hit, but NPR kind of adopted them for a while. Alan and I loved some of their sillier songs. This was the first song...

Alan and I had matching Jim's Big Ego tee-shirts. Alan's was a medium, and he still had it all these years later. He could still fit into those shirts from when he was 9. I found it in his dresser last week. Another example:

Despite our very different styles, there was a surprising large segment of the Venn diagram in the middle -- the stuff we both liked. Of course, the classical, the cartoons, the jazz, the dorky stuff, but also this stuff -- the random, goofy stuff that managed to be both happy-go-lucky and dark.

Stay With Me

Our last big road trip was to New Orleans this May. Alan invited Laura to come along as well. We took two cars, and drove all the way from Iowa City, stopping in Memphis on the way down, and in Little Rock on the way back up.

On the way down, Mom rode with us for much of the way, and I helped her edit some translations she was working on. Having a blog entry about New Orleans and Memphis without any jazz or blues seems like kind of a travesty, but there really wasn't that much on our trip. There was this, which you could argue fills the role, kind of.

We spent quite a bit of time trying to teach Mom the acceptable pronunciations of the name of the city, New Orleans. We discussed that most northerners used the acceptable "new ORlins" pronunciation, but that "NAWlins" was the local pronunciation, especially casually. We discussed the much debated "new orLEENZ" as likely not acceptable. And that "new OH-lee-ins" was definitely wrong. Other than that, and a few street performers, the closest we got to jazz and blues was when I was whistling this little tune I had stuck in my head. Alan thought it was an old blues classic, and tried really hard to place it, but in truth, it was just from the intro to something very different:

(radio-safe version)
The trip was a blur of activity. We ate Memphis barbecue, boudin, boudin balls, jambalaya, fried chicken, po'boys, and drank hurricanes, even Grandma (especially Grandma?).  I bought pralines for Isabelle. We saw alligators on the bayou, visited the pharmacy museum, went on a cemetery tour, and went to a crawfish boil. For Grandpa's birthday, we got chocolate cake.

One day, I ventured off on my own and went to not one, but two different hot sauce bars. These places had counters full of hot sauces to sample, including ones that required signing waivers. I made a horrible mistake at these hot sauce bars: I tried the waiver-signing hot sauces on an empty stomach. I left to join the rest of the family, and suddenly, a couple minutes after walking out of the store, the mix of habanero, red savina, Carolina Reaper, scorpion pepper, capsaicin aquaresin, capsaicin oleoresin, and  ghost pepper made its way from my well-lined stomach to my not-so-well-lined duodenum. I decided to sit town on the curb outside Jackson Square to let it pass, and it did. So, I got back up and joined Mom and the grandparents at a bar. As they finished and we went to leave, the next batch of hellfire hit my small intestine, and I felt myself being turned inside out from within again. This time, I was afraid I was actually going to pass out from the pain, so I sat down again, and then had to lie down on the sidewalk. Now, the police are pretty used to seeing people lying on the sidewalk in the French Quarter, so they were immediately at my side asking my family if I had been drinking. Mom had to explain that I was a doctor, that I was fine, and that it was hot sauce-related. I got up, and met the rest of the family at the restaurant where I slammed a glass of milk and ate some food. The family asked if I had learned my lesson, and I said I had. I would make sure there was food in my stomach before trying the hot sauces again. I'm not sure if that's the lesson they were talking about.

Alan started his search for tarot cards, but couldn't find what he wanted. He ended up ordering some online, and did many a reading this summer for himself and his friends.
 
One night, we went swimming. Alan had been a competitive swimmer as a kid, but Laura didn't know how to swim, so she waded with us. On the way back up to the hotel rooms, I saw myself in the mirror, and was kind of horrified. My hair had become a stringy wavy mess, my eyes were bloodshot from the chlorine, and I reminded myself of something I had seen before, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I remembered.

At 2:09. Yeah, not good.

I had to leave early, so Mom stayed in New Orleans with Grandma and Grandpa, and I left with Alan and Laura. On the drive back, we read stories, entries on this weird website about strange monsters and phenomena, and talked. In Little Rock, we went to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.

This trip was an island of getting along in a time of a lot of tension. Alan and Laura, my parents and me, there were lots of things going on. That's not to say that we got along perfectly all the time, but it was nice. We truly got to connect and mend. But, again, it was an island. Afterwards, real life returned, and things fell apart.

I'm slowly learning to be thankful for the good times we had instead of focusing on the fact that they will never happen again. In dreams where I catch glimpses of Alan, he's always having fun, and we're never serious. It's never about him being dead. As much as I long to have another serious conversation with him, maybe these dreams are the universe's way of showing me that he's okay. Or his way of giving me another little good time, even now that he is gone.

Bebop

Alan and I loved watching the anime work of Shinichiro Watanabe. He usually stumbled across them on adult swim on Cartoon Network, and I on the internet or through my nerdy med school friends (shout out to Linda!).  The two we bonded over were Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Both were just as much about the soundtrack as they were about the story and visuals, Bebop with its jazz and Champloo with its hip hop.

Memories include:
-- watching part of an episode in Steve and Twyla's basement on one of our solo trips to Minneapolis without Mom and Dad
-- watching Bebop sitting on the couch in the living room in Appleton, trying to explain the concept to Dad, with limited success
-- watching Champloo in Galena with the cousin when we had a mini family reunion there. That was same trip where Anna said her head looked too big in a photo because she was "more fronter," and where I won Hide and Seek by hiding in the cabinet under the counter in the kitchen.
-- Debating with Alan that Bebop was one of the few anime where the English dub was better than the original Japanese voices (which I still believe)
-- Debating which series was better. Alan originally thought Champloo, but I think he came around to my view on that one eventually.
--  Listening to the opening theme to Bebop in Alan's room in my house, reminiscing about the old times.
-- Discovering the music on his favorites playlist in preparing this blog.

Looking back at the themes of the series, Cowboy Bebop is about loneliness, betrayal and loyalty, and love gone wrong. Samurai Champloo is about quests for the unattainable, persecution, and the meaning of dignity. We watched them before these concepts would have much real-life meaning to Alan. It's almost as if they presaged the struggles in his life. Or maybe the seeds were already there, the roots starting to make their way into his heart.