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.