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.
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.
Who knew that Gangnam Style would take off like it did? Alan and I loved this song, going through the requisite stages of ironically liking, then ironically ironically liking, then just liking. It was our go-to song to play in the car to stay awake while driving. We learned the lyrics. We learned the horse dance. We talked about going as Psy and the guy in the yellow suit (see the 1:50 mark) for Halloween, but by Halloween, everyone was going as Psy, so we scrapped that idea.
Alan showed some Korean pride when Psy broke all the YouTube records, and when he broke the internet with his AMA on Reddit. He followed all the new songs, the new interviews. We had inside jokes about the song. We one-shotted coffee. No, wait, that was soju.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Korean culture, Gangnam is the fancy rich area of Seoul south of the Han River. Oppa is what a girl calls her big brother, but is also what many women call male friends. There's some subtlety here, though. If they see the male friend as much older, they may call him ajeossi, or uncle. Guys strive to be an oppa, not an uncle. This is a song about a funny looking dude explaining that he may not be sexy or popular, but he's still an oppa, and he's got style. It's pretty tongue-in-cheek. The description of the Gangnam girl he's looking for is equally tongue-in-cheek, but essentially is about someone who is all business during the day, but knows how to cut loose at night.
Alan generally wasn't seen as an oppa or an uncle. I think most girls saw him as their adorable dongsaeng, or little brother. He left behind a trail of girls that wanted to take care of him, cared deeply about him, and tried to break through his shell to help him. Many of them remained his friends, even if he pushed them away.
Alan did have his own style, and we saw it evolve over time. The first signs of sadness really came to the forefront when he started high school. He had this kind of emo thing going on. Mom called it kindergarten Goth. He let his hair grow swoopy (this was just a bit pre-Bieber). He made sure to look sufficiently puppy-dog-eyed and pathetic in all his photos. One year, he participated in his high school's haunted house. On one of the nights, Alan's makeup turned out a bit funny. Usually, thick black makeup was applied in hollows of his eye sockets following the bony ridges of his face, but that night, the black areas were made a bit too round. Instead of looking like some sort of ghoul with blood dripping out of his mouth, he looked more like a panda (with blood dripping out of his mouth). Hence, the nickname, "carnivorous emo panda."
That look required a lot of upkeep. He was showering and trimming his hair multiple times a day. As high school continued, there was a shift. He started becoming more and more hipster, but also struggled with things like sleeping and showering regularly. He wore skinny jeans and ironic plaid. He switched between Birkenstocks, Converses, and boat shoes. He wore sunglasses in all weather. But strangely, it seemed like there was still so much upkeep. How could he spend so much time primping and still look dirty and unkempt? Once, Uncle Steve told him that it looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to look metro or homeless. He suggested that his style should be called, "hobosexual."
As time went by, being hipster was too in, so he went with a more authentic homeless look. He buzzed the side and back of his hair. He wore thrift store and toss-off jackets. He wore way too many layers. His pants were sometimes more hole than fabric. Is it any wonder he struggled to find a job at times?
Through it all, he was clearly Alan, through and through. And through it all, he was my dongsaeng.
As Alan got more and more into film, he started to go through all the classic directors and tried to watch their most iconic films. In fact, going through Alan's old things, I stumbled across a piece of paper that he and Uncle Steve had written all over on one of our family Fountain City excursions. Under the name of each of several dozen directors was each of their most important films, like a checklist or a syllabus.
When Mom and Dad still lived in Waunakee, we sat down one afternoon to watch Once Upon a Time in the West, the Sergio Leone classic.
Watching it, you could totally see both sides of the perennial argument about this film: it is one of the greatest films ever made, and it is totally cheeseball. The music is clearly a part of making it both of those things.
The haunting sound of the harmonica in the movie represents the search for vengeance for the loss of a beloved brother against the man who caused his death. It's easy to see how, in times of great loss, anger can develop naturally out of the pain. Sometimes, it helps assuage guilt, another by-product of the loss of a loved one. Sometimes, in the case of suicide, blaming something or someone else allows you to be angry, but not angry at the one you lost. And sometimes, there are places those pointing fingers land that are justified, legitimate and productive.
For Alan, I find myself not pointing fingers at people. But here are the things I would go after with my harmonica.
Mental healthcare barriers
Alan had full access to mental healthcare. He was lucky to be insured and to have a family that encouraged him strongly to seek it out. He had counselors and psychiatrists who worked with him hard to keep his anxiety and depression at bay.
So then, why is this on my list -- when he didn't seem to have barriers to care? The situation is so much more complicated than that. When Alan was younger, it was tough to recognize that he was depressed. He probably went much longer than he should have before getting treatment. He must have known that what he was going through was not right, but maybe he didn't realize it was not normal. And when he did, he had to convince everyone of it.
When Alan did start taking antidepressants, he did not react well to them. Most made him so sleepy, he could not function. Some made him feel so numb, he blamed them for making things worse because he would be getting yelled at, and not even be able to care about the argument going on. He felt that they made some of the worst arguments in his life worse. He had such a hard time figuring out how to adjust them, and his personality and the depression itself made it hard for him to communicate with a doctor what was working or not. Even with a seemingly long list of medications to choose from, there are really only a few classes of medications available. While many people respond well to one of the first couple they try, this is not the case for everyone.
It was even harder to get Alan to a good counselor. Talk therapy is tough business, and very individual. It can be very tricky to find the right person to work with, and for them to find the right strategy to work with the patient. He saw some that were fluffy and bubbly, not a fit for him. He saw some that were so easily intimidated by the situation that they didn't stick with him. They may have been great therapists for others, but not for Alan.
Getting good mental healthcare doesn't just mean having access to one person. It means getting hooked up to a system. Even for Alan, with the privileges he had, this was a struggle. What about for the many people out there who don't have those privileges? Or don't know in the new insurance landscape what is available to them? What about people that are so scared by the stigma of mental illness that they don't get help when they know they need it? Or that don't know enough about mental illness to know that they have it?
In other words, this is a societal problem. When having the access Alan had is not enough, it speaks to a much larger problem in the community.
I hope you will all consider taking some action here. Whether it means opening your mind to education about mental illness and healthcare, donating to good causes such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness or to smaller local causes such as this one.
Consider raising your voice politically to help protect mental healthcare parity, the idea that these illnesses should be treated, covered, and thought of like physical ailments, not as some special lesser class. Sign petitions. Go to events to show your support. Help fund research to find better treatments, to provide more resources.
Reach out to friends and loved ones that you see struggling with mental illness. As a society, we need to break the stigma. And while not everyone will want to talk about it, we can start slowly working on breaking down those barriers.
These websites work by posting your mug shot, and then a sister website will offer to remove it, for a fee. At least six states have taken action against these operations, but Iowa and Wisconsin are not among them. I know I haven't shied away from Alan's legal issues, and that's mostly because I personally do not find shame in them. Alan was a good person, and his digressions were relatively minor. But a mug shot does not tell that story.
I don't know what legal or political action can be taken to do something about this, but this is an industry that should not exist, and should be taken down.
Bullying
We make such a big deal out of bullying in grade schools nowadays. And we should. It's totally not appropriate, and for so many kids, they don't know how to get help when it happens to them. I remember growing up, and when I was bullied, I somehow ended up being the one who got in trouble. Reporting it was called tattling. Defending yourself physically was seen as unacceptable -- zero tolerance.
I remember seeing a video of a nerdy kid getting picked on by a classmate outside. When he feels physically threatened, the nerd lashes out, seriously injuring the bully. He was severely punished for this, and told that he had used excessive force. Pardon me, but that kid is not trained in self defense. He is not a professional law enforcement officer or soldier. In today's zero tolerance world, it's probably safer for bullied kids to go all out and do as much damage as possible since they will face the same punishment for lesser damage. The clear problem here is that the nerdy kid had no way of knowing how to get help. He had no way of knowing how to get the pain to stop.
Alan confided many years later that he had been bullied as a little kid. He never told us about it. Those little things -- having his backpack taken away, comments about looking funny because he was half Asian or because he was skinny, he stored all of them away until they resurfaced years later.
But it wasn't just in grade school. He stood up for his friends who got bullied on the street for being different. He was bullied by administrators at his school who, having legal degrees, you would think would know better than to casually throw around hurtful words that were not legally justified.
Frankly, I don't see a day any time soon when these issues are gone. But that doesn't mean we can't try to make the world a better place by fighting them. In the movie, the man with the harmonica gets his revenge, and shoves his harmonica in the mouth of the man who killed his brother as he lies there dying. I will never get that satisfaction, but I won't back down.
Looking back at the last couple years for Alan, I see a whole bunch of accomplishments and disappointments. From my vantage, I saw good grades, good friends, keeping appointments, and a strong effort to do the good thing. I also saw difficulty keeping on top of responsibilities, trouble sticking with a job, and too many times saying "f--- it," which inevitably led to trouble -- my bike getting stolen, an OWI mostly from being a smartass to a park ranger, blacking out in a stairwell. His life was a lot of ups and downs, but there were so many ups, and I was so proud of him.
He didn't see things like that. Those accomplishments didn't matter. His experience was that of a burden
constantly being on him. The oppressive feeling of responsibility when
you don't think you are going to live up to expectation and the fog of
melancholy were always there. When he did well, or when he was having a
good time, he truly did seem to feel good. It just didn't last; it always faded
back into the fog.
He must have felt like he was constantly hitting rock bottom, and when he hit its surface, it would shatter, revealing an even deeper chasm in which to fall. This summer, I thought he had reached the bottom. After his OWI, Mom and Dad briefly moved him into an apartment closer to downtown so he didn't have to find a way to get downtown without a car. I checked on him regularly, but his sleeping schedule was way off, and it was hard. He had quit his job and was looking for work. He was focusing on substance counseling, and we were working on getting him to get mood treatment as well.
One evening, I took him out to dinner, and we listened to his music in the car. I had introduced him to Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet, and he had put it on his phone. He thanked me for showing him the piece.
He had also discovered Mingus and Moanin'.
I think he said that Jordan had played it for him in New York. I can't imagine he had never heard it before given how many times Uncle Steve and I played and talked jazz with him, but this was an epiphany for him. It spoke to him.
I remember thinking that these two pieces were the sounds of his rock bottom. I thought he had nowhere to go but up, and he seemed to be looking that way. I had no idea how much further he would fall.
When Alan was an adolescent, he started to struggle to connect with Mom and Dad. Who doesn't? When things got really tense when I was visiting from college or from med school, I would drive him out to Barnes and Noble to let him calm down. I told him that I, too, had struggled at that age with them. It's hard to be mature enough to form all these thoughts, but not be mature enough to know when they don't matter. For me, it was Lynne Slattery Schroeder who first set me straight on that. For Alan, I felt it was my job. I told him that parents were like that -- that you couldn't change them, and that it was easier to change 5 hard things about yourself than one easy thing about someone else.
On the drive, we would listen to my Dave Brubeck CDs, and I started ear training with him. We talked about basic music theory. We used pieces with weird meters to practice hearing the beat.
Blue Rondo a la Turk,9/8 broken up as 2-2-2-3/3-3-3:
Take Five, 5/4:
I think he played a version of this at his senior recital with Ed Hou and Ryley Crowe. I am waiting to get footage of this from our parents. I also played it with our jazz band, Gyrase, in med school. Too bad we never played it together.
Unsquare Dance, 7/8:
Later, Uncle Steve and his friend Jordan would introduce him to more jazz, but this was his start. Our sharing of music went both ways. He was always introducing me to new things, but this was something I introduced to him.
In retrospect, this was the beginning of our tradition of car conversations. It often felt like we were each other's co-pilots, driving through life together. I'm sure now, I'm not the only one feeling a bit lost without Alan in the passenger seat.
