When I started medical school, it was the first time living more than a mile from Alan. This was in the days before everyone was on facebook, so it was hard for me. He gave me a paper cutout of Kirby he had made, and I had a few other things to remember him by. We would talk occasionally (mostly on land lines -- we shared one cell phone.), and would chat on instant messenger.
Every summer, we would try to go as many times as possible to Six Flags Great America. He would come down for long weekends, and I would come up. He met my med school friends, and we would even share CDs of episodes that he or Linda had burned of anime episodes.
If you're not familiar with J-pop and K-pop, you're not missing out too much. But all these shows had starting and ending credits with songs, oftentimes with broken English lyrics, or with silliness that totally didn't match the content of the show.
"Oh no! Kikyo just fell off a cliff into a raging river!"
[translation: playful/mischievous kiss]
When I started med school, Alan and Linda were the same height (four eleven and three quarters?). He was a little kid. When I graduated, he was still the shortest person in the family, but he had started to shoot up. The first hints of the darkness had set in, but really hadn't established themselves firmly yet. By the time I had reached residency, things were clearly different. We couldn't go to Great America because he couldn't get his sleep schedule straight. He had migraines all the time. He was missing school for them. He never really seemed excited to go.
I would never have guessed that his slide would just keep going down, deeper and deeper into this dysphoric pit. Cue the silly pop music.
While Alan maybe preferred Bob Dylan, in my book, it was Chopin that best mirrored his soul. He played quite a few pieces over the years, each seeming to reflect some different part of him.
Fantaisie-Impromptu
This was not his first Chopin piece, but perhaps the first he heard performed. A med school classmate, Linda Abcede, had come over to our house for Thanksgiving, and played it for my family beautifully, but accented with the occasional "oops, sorry" and topped off with an "I'm ruuuusty...." She was always far too humble. In his early piano-playing days, being able to play this piece was a goal he would strive hard to reach. When he was able to play it well, I promised him a game system. A computer game addiction in high school would interfere with that plan.
The piece is a show piece, and served as that for Alan as well as for Linda. He would whip it out to show he still had his "chops," which he amazingly never seemed to lose despite not having a piano since high school.
The piece itself is heavily based on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, echoing its rolling arpeggios with the notes of the first giant tumble at 0:10 coming directly from the third movement of Beethoven. The structure and mood are similar, with two soul-searching sections sandwiching a tender middle section (though Chopin's tender middle section's melody at 1:12 always reminded me of "Thank Heavens for Little Girls" which is perhaps the most creepily pedophiliac song there is. Don't you think?). While Beethoven's piece arrived at its moniker due to a description of its sound evoking moonlight on a lake, Chopin's evokes more of a frantic struggle to stay afloat in the lake, while being repeatedly pulled down to its depths.
Regardless, mastering this piece marked a new level of piano performance for Alan. When he started playing it, he played like a child -- it was just a race to the finish. But over time, it became something deeper and infinitely more beautiful.
Nocturne op. 9 no. 1 in B flat minor
Of all his Chopin pieces, this is the one that Alan had in his youtube favorites playlist.
Unlike its more famous mate, Opus 9 number 2, which can be sweet, this nocturne seems to stay in the realm of melancholy. When it sounds sad, it sounds sad. When it sounds resolute, it sounds sad. It continues with the same relentless left hand pattern until the last two measures, where the piece resolves with a strangely peaceful Picardy third. This is quite apparent in Rubinstein's performance.
I wonder why Alan chose this piece for his playlist. Maybe it reflected his mood, with a full range of emotions, but somehow still always colored with an undertone of melancholy.
Étude Op. 10, No. 12 (Revolutionary)
Alan played this for his senior recital in high school.
For me, his performance of this piece demonstrated a maturity that I didn't know he had. Every pause had a reason. Every tempo or dynamic added to the impact. When he played this for me in the practice room at Lawrence before his recital, I told him I had no idea he could play like that. On a side note, he may have been stoned.
Waltz Op. 69 No. 1 in A flat (L'Adieu)
I have had this stuck in my head. To me, it seems a fitting farewell for my brother.
This classic recording in particular reminds me of how he used to play it. While it too is pervasively sad, there is hope and beauty in it.
