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.

Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell

When Alan started college at Beloit, he was assigned room 321 B. Some time during the early part of the year, someone added to it, and his room was labeled, "321 Blast off". Rarely did we see his room without other people in there. It was a combination self-serve restaurant, lounge, hotbox. Those kids would eat anything, so when we would stock Alan up on dried cuttlefish and gochujang, Korean instant ramen, or seaweed, it would disappear within days. Our parents and/or I would visit at least a couple weekends a month, usually taking a rag-tag group of friends along for dinner at Applebee's or the Chinese buffet. We got to meet Courtney, Leslie, Jack (Zack? Mom's accent made it hard to tell), Jared, Sam (briefly), Rui (how Mom spelled Louie), Rosie, and the rest of the gang.

Alan was in "piano class," where he would play duets with other students, and taking private lessons, but he never seemed to listen to classical music. He was into offbeat East Coast (or sometimes Midwest) hip-hop, by people like former Wu-Tang Clan members Rza and Gza and Das Racist.

To each his own, I guess.

While at Beloit, he kept up good grades and did well for himself despite all this. When some temporary social falling out led to missed classes, he found he had the rebound capacity of a wad of wet Kleenex (*splat*) and dropped out. But before that, he discovered a love for philosophy. Perhaps the most influential course for him there was on phenomenology, a course he described as "phenomenal." Somehow, when we talked about it, we would always end up singing:

Phenomena, doo doooooo doo doo-doo...

Since he wasn't able to bounce back, he had to rebuild. He moved in with Mom and Dad, started taking courses at MATC, and got himself back on track. Academically, despite the existential struggles that clearly tormented him, he was somehow able to keep on top of things. He had rediscovered his love of film, and decided to go to film school at Iowa. While this complicated my life quite a bit, I was happy for him to move into my house, and this ushered in our closest times since I graduated from high school.