Tonight, I went to a concert in the Old Capitol. Mark, our orchestra conductor, had invited some world class musicians to come perform. They played works by Hummel, Mendelssohn, and Dvorak, and with this vitality that filled the building to the dome.
One of the most notable things about this ensemble was how different the violinists were from each other. One seemed to push sound through his violin, as if he could channel his soul directly through the instrument, with passion and drive, letting us see his innermost emotions. The other seemed to pull the sound; I could almost imagine that he was somehow, through some mysterious workings of his hands, imbuing the violin with a soul of its own, and then coaxing from that soul a line of beauty and nuance. That these two sounds mingled with each other, and with the other instruments, was surprising. The interplay was especially interesting when the "pulling" violinist played first, and the "pusher" second.
Their last piece: Dvorak's second piano quintet (This is the second movement.)
The opening totally gets "Nature Boy" stuck in my head.
It's been a year and a half since I went downtown with Alan the last time. Sitting there tonight, I couldn't help but remember being at the Union with him the night before he died. I teared up a few times during this movement. Eighteen months, and I still haven't gone a day without shedding a tear for him.
A year ago, I posted on Facebook how part of me had been left behind the night we lost you, how the changing seasons took me by surprise. I charged myself with figuring out how to move on and reconnect the two parts of myself. Truth be told, I haven't found the magic salve for that wound, but I'm stitched together and moving forward. Maybe that's good enough.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 tolearn 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 LifeandWhile 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.
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.
