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.