Echoes

Looking through Alan's Youtube favorites playlist is pretty strange. It's a record of what he was listening to, marked loosely by dates like "2 months ago" or "1 year ago."

Oftentimes, I can find a piece of music we listened to together that soon after made it onto the list.

For instance, on the way back from Sioux City from Christmas last year, I played several pieces that we had played in the faculty-staff orchestra. I gave him commentary on what I thought about each one. We listened to Mendelssohn's first piano concerto, and I told him how I liked the slow movement's beautiful viola/cello parts better than any of the piano parts (6:56).

We listened to the Largo movement from the New World Symphony, and discussed how Dvořák was in Iowa when he was inspired to write it.

He had the whole symphony on his playlist.

The conversations we had, the pieces we shared, the Ravel, the Schubert, the pieces from my concerts -- his playlist is like a recorded echo of his life (and our time together) bounced off, and into the aether of the internet. Now, I find myself trying to hold onto that echo, straining my ears for any sound of him.