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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
One of the shows that Alan and Isabelle and I all enjoyed was Futurama. It had just the right mix of Simpsons style and wit, and Family Guy edge.
When Mom and Dad lived in DeForest, we spent a lot of time in the basement watching episodes of Futurama and Star Trek. We watched weird movies. We discussed the weird little trivia about these shows, like the episode of Enterprise that seems to be ripped off from a Voyager episode. Concerning Futurama, two big things came up: that the theme song was from an old French piece from the early days of electronic music.
The other was that Leela's name was from the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen. It seems there were a lot of links to weird modern French music. When I looked more into this particular piece of music, I decided that it was one of my life goals to own an ondes Martenot.
This was a time of transition for Alan. He had really face-planted after dropping out of school at Beloit, but after a couple months of moping, he started to pull himself together. He was more goal-oriented than he had been in a long time academically. We only got little tastes of his struggles -- the injuries from jumping a fence impulsively one night, the occasional pulling away from our inquiries. We really had hope that things were going to continue to get better.
Looking through Alan's Youtube favorites playlist is pretty strange. It's a record of what he was listening to, marked loosely by dates like "2 months ago" or "1 year ago."
Oftentimes, I can find a piece of music we listened to together that soon after made it onto the list.
For instance, on the way back from Sioux City from Christmas last year, I played several pieces that we had played in the faculty-staff orchestra. I gave him commentary on what I thought about each one. We listened to Mendelssohn's first piano concerto, and I told him how I liked the slow movement's beautiful viola/cello parts better than any of the piano parts (6:56).
We listened to the Largo movement from the New World Symphony, and discussed how Dvořák was in Iowa when he was inspired to write it.
He had the whole symphony on his playlist.
The conversations we had, the pieces we shared, the Ravel, the Schubert, the pieces from my concerts -- his playlist is like a recorded echo of his life (and our time together) bounced off, and into the aether of the internet. Now, I find myself trying to hold onto that echo, straining my ears for any sound of him.
Comfort has been something hard to come by since Alan died. I have found myself talking to him, begging him for some sign that I can understand, to know that he is at peace, to know how to move forward. But the few islands of comfort I have found have been in unlikely places, and not where or how I asked for them.
The first was at his funeral. It was the first time I had seen his body since the night of his death. The funeral home did a decent job of presenting the body, but it was so obvious that he was gone -- that the body was not him. It was like looking at an oyster shell, the oyster gone, and the luminous pearl that was once within shining on our souls from some unseen place. It was so strangely comforting to see this empty vessel, free from a life of pain and anxiety, free from a mind that just couldn't hold onto happiness. Somehow, I knew for that one precious day that he wasn't suffering. I was filled with a peace that I hadn't known in a long time.
I wish that feeling could have lasted forever, but of course, it did not. I sought it out again, and asked Alan just to give me, or Mom, or someone, a sign that I could understand that he was okay. I looked forward at every little thing -- was that a sign? But what gave me that sense of peace again wasn't forward; it was from the past.
After an especially hard evening, I went to bed, practically having given up. Upon awaking in the morning, I had the strangest memory pop up, of a cat Dad owned when I was little. This cat, Dakota, was in many ways a typical cat. It hid a lot. It would show up when it wanted something. And if you were doing something it didn't like, it wasn't afraid to draw blood.
But also, Dakota was strangely patient with me, a four year old kid, letting me pet a bit too hard, even pulling its tail. If the cat fell off a table, it would land any which way, even on its back. It didn't use a litter box -- it went outside like a dog.
Dakota disappeared one day. I was too young, and not really attached enough to the cat to really have any sort of meaningful emotional reaction, but I still remember riding in the car, and Dad telling me that Dakota had gotten run over and was dead. This funny little cat was gone too soon.
I had this realization that morning. Yes, Alan was gone. And there is nobody in the world that is exactly like Alan was, especially not some silly cat from before he was even born. But somehow there were enough parallels to get me to see that some part of that pattern, some part of the quirkiness that was Alan in this life, was eternal, part of the fabric of being, and we would certainly see those funny little threads again.
It reminds me of a piece of music I introduced to Alan this spring. After I showed it to him, he put it on his Youtube favorites playlist -- a record of his listening, a ghost of his life that remains.
I had been listening to it for a lecture I was writing, where I had discussed the cases of Ann Adams and Maurice Ravel. There is a good Radiolab podcast on it. Ravel, some postulate, may have written Boléro under the influence of the early stages of a degenerative brain disease, primary progressive aphasia.
In the piece, the same snippet of melody is played again and again, but each time different, changing timbre, adding or losing overtones, all the while escalating. Alan was like one of these variations, so unique, and yet linked by a strange melody to the whole.
This thought did not take away the pain of losing him, the longing to be with him, to share with him, to help him. But somehow, it put a smile on my face, and a bit of hope in my heart.
Most serious pianists have had, at least some time in their lives, a huge crush on Rachmaninoff, I think. Alan was trying to figure out what to play for "the big concerto" his senior year of high school, and while he initially settled on the Grieg, he briefly considered a Shostakovich concerto that I suggested, as well as several Rachmaninoffs.
By the accounts we have, Rachmaninoff was a melancholy artist type, which Alan would have gotten. He required significant treatment for depression during his life. Some of that is echoed in his use of the Dies Irae in so many of his works. There must have been some thought of death in his head at all times. Having said that, his works were full of so much life.
I had been listening to a lot of Rachmaninoff this summer. I had stumbled across his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in my iTunes folder after having heard it on the radio, and decided to look into it more. The theme he speaks of is from Paganini's Caprice No. 24, one of the greats of the virtuosic violin repertoire. Listen to how he works the Dies Irae into it. Certainly the piece is not all dark. There is even a sweet romantic theme where he turns the melody upside-down at 15:27.
This late spring, I finally moved into the house I had bought almost a year earlier. Alan had been living there through thick and thin (mostly thin given all the construction). When Alan's legal problems started, he briefly tried living on his own, but ended up back in the house. After Mom and Dad left just before my birthday in late July, I moved back into the house. Oftentimes, in the evenings, I would close the door to my master suite, and do some combination of finishing clinical notes, watching TV shows on Netflix, taking long baths in my swimming pool sized bathtub, reading Zelazny stories, and listening to classical music, in a variety of combinations.
One particularly tough day, I came home to relax. Isabelle was gone to Canada, Alan was downtown, and I was feeling a bit lonely. I laid down and started some Rachmaninoff playing. The second piece -- his second piano concerto. Fate must have been mocking me because I had forgotten what lies in the second movement:
Yeah, that would be the source for the bridge from Eric Carmen's All by Myself(1:40). Not exactly what I wanted to hear at the time. Maybe Rachmaninoff had a sense of humor.
Speaking of which, probably the fondest Rachmaninoff-related memory I have regarding Alan is the comedy act that we saw with Mom and Dad in Chicago. Alan had watched this musical comedy duo, Igudesman and Joo, on Youtube years earlier (Ed did you show him this?), and I saw that they were coming to do a CSO performance with Emanuel Ax. Um, yes please. I bought four tickets, and we went to the late night show.
In addition to this and other classic bits from their act, they had a great voice-over by Ax himself while he played a piece. In the voice-over, he checks out a woman in the front row, contemplates introducing himself to her ("I'm Manny!"), regrets not having better hemorrhoid treatment, puffs himself up ("I play with Yo-Yo Ma!), and fears screwing up the hard part, which he does.
Now, surrounded by supporting friends and family, I still find myself feeling alone sometimes, longing for another conversation with Alan. I wonder if that is a fraction of how Alan felt, deeply loved, but still somehow all by himself.
When Alan switched from music store lessons to full on Suzuki lessons with Mrs. Chang, he really excelled. As many of you know, part of the Suzuki method is active participation of the parent in the lesson and at least early on, in the practicing.
When I started violin lessons, Mom and I would read the introductory material together, learning about chin rests, shoulder rests, f holes, the names of strings, practiced where to put each foot, each elbow, each finger. When I started playing actual music, the responsibility shifted to Dad, who was still Ricky at the time. His long-distant trombone experience in high school was enough to get him through those early days.
For Alan, Mom and Dad covered the majority of those responsibilities again, but as he became more advanced, my visits home from school included helping more and more with the technique of practicing -- when to take things slow, how to feel the music, how to adjust tempo and emphasis musically, not herky-jerky.
As Alan prepared for recitals and competitions, he had to play pieces from different periods, so there were a long string of modern pieces. One of the early ones was Bartók's Evening in the Country. Alan's first take was cutesy and light. I worked with him extensively to get the feeling that the country in question was rural Transylvania, where people were of Hungarian, Romanian and German heritage, not known for their lightness. I remember prancing around the living room like an idiot to get Alan to understand the paradox of spryness with heft.
It was an important moment in his musical development. His rendition of this piece was the first time I could really truly feel something in his music. He got it.
Maybe this was the precursor to the role of music later in his life. Maybe this is why he always had music playing -- the pensive dark music to match his mood, the light happy music to try to lift it, the songs he sang over and over again, the ones he wrote (always with lyrics full of despair). Maybe these moments paved the way for the soundtrack, the music that haunts me now that he is gone.
Marianna Allen once taught me the movie version of the fortune cookie "in bed" game, you know, where you add "in bed" to the end of your fortune? "Big things are coming your way" or "Expect lots of business ahead" take on new meanings, adults giggle like adolescents, et cetera.
The movie version is to add "up your butt". Try it -- most of the Harry Potter series is hilarious. Classics like Twelve Angry Men, not-so-classics like Dude, Where's My Car, well, you get the point.
We both watched one of the goodies for this game, There Will Be Blood, but I think separately. It isn't the movie so much that reminds me of him. It's the music.
The soundtrack features the cello version of Arvo Pärt's Fratres, a piece that he wrote and rewrote over and over again for different instruments and ensembles. Each version starts with a very mathematically arranged set of chords diverging from a center point, and then explores that series. The solo cello version sounds almost baroque, with each chord broken up into rolling arpeggios. The solo violin version is similar as well.
Some of the other versions sound quite different. The chords sing out in a ghostly manner, changing yet unchanging.
I played this version, and a few other pieces, for Alan on a longer than expected drive from my place in Chicago to Madison. I think it appealed to the part of his musical sensibility that listened to electronic dance music, capturing some of the "trance" element.
Two versions of one piece, exactly the same underneath, yet totally different. Like two brothers.
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.
One of the things we talked about often over the years was Star Trek. I had started to watch The Next Generation when it was still on air, and watched straight through to the end. In residency, I watched the entirety of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise on Netflix again. One of the hot Trekkie debates is about Enterprise, not just whether it was good or not, not whether it should ever have existed, but why they chose such a horrible theme song.
Here are the theme songs:
Listen to the themes in The Original Series. At 0:48, you have TNG, and you will hear (reduplicated) the same thematic material in the beginning leading up to a retooled main theme. At 4:08, the DS9 theme song clearly echoes the opening with a changed up rhythm. At 7:45, VOY, the opening twists the melody a bit, and then brings it back to the original series theme with the upward phrase at 8:44.
They are all thematically linked. They are all classically instrumented.
Then, in Enterprise, they went with non-classical and vocal. Even worse, there's a double negative at 9:50, much worse than the split infinitive in the first two (to boldly go). At 10:10, there's "strenth." Strenth. What the heck is strenth?
My favorite episode changes from time to time, but currently is from sixth season of DS9, entitled,"Far Beyond the Stars." In it, the actors play science fiction writers in the 1950s, in a time before the civil rights movement. There's a Taoist "who is the dreamer" theme suggestive of the butterfly story in Zhuangzi/Chuang-tzu (which both Alan and I read for school). Here's a clip from the beginning.
Alan's favorite episode of all the shows was from the sixth season of DS9 as well, entitled, "In the Pale Moonlight." In it, Sisko, the main protagonist of the series, compromises his morals for the greater good.
I strongly (or stronly) suggest you go and watch this entire episode on Netflix, but if you are 100% sure you won't, or if you've already seen it, here's the extremely powerful end monologue.
This episode briefly came up in our last conversation on Saturday night. He couldn't think of the name of the episode, but we had discussed it before, and I knew.
Maybe the first event that truly shook Alan's sense of whether he was a good person or not happened in Madison when he was working and taking community college courses. He was at a party, and a kid came out the shadows next to the house he was standing in front of. The kid started to yell, "You looking at me?" and tried to pick a fight with Alan. Alan couldn't remember what happened next, and could only patch together the details in bits and pieces. He described it as being "redded out" in anger. Alan ended up leaving the house with blood on him, and the kid had hit his head hard, ending up in the ICU. The police determined that the kid instigated it (captured on security camera), and that there was no evidence that Alan did anything wrong. They may have fallen down the stairs together while Alan was trying to get away. No charges were filed, but Alan wondered what exactly happened. He wondered what evil might be within him. What exactly did he do?
Until that point, I think his thoughts about good and evil were abstract and disconnected from reality. After that event, good and evil were real, and he didn't know which he was. That uncertainty, that ambiguity, fascinated him, drew him to things like that episode of Star Trek, but it also tortured him.
How do you convince a 21 or 22 year old deep thinker that everyone has good and bad in them, that there were more pragmatic things that he needed to focus on to get through daily life? How do you convince someone who had already started to question whether life was worth living that he shone a light into the lives of so many others -- his family, his friends, the homeless guy he befriended, the people who had nobody else?
The night he told me about his demons, we talked in an alley between two parts of Isabelle's condo building next to the air conditioners. He sat on a window ledge and smoked a cigarette. I find myself going there now, sitting in the moonlight, staring up at a flickering streetlamp, wondering how it could have gone differently. And how I will ever move on without him. I come up empty-handed.
There are some things you never finish because you run out of time. There are so many things I wish I could have done with Alan -- trips I wanted to take with him, things I wanted to share with him. But it doesn't always take something as dramatic as death to cut plans short. For both Alan and me, there were pieces of music we started playing in high school, and ran out of time to perform in a big way.
For me, it was Zigeunerweisen by Sarasate. This was Grandpa Lee's favorite violin piece, and I learned it, but never polished it for performance.
For Alan, it was the Grieg piano concerto. By this time, he was spending more time playing the chords to I Shall Be Released or All Along the Watchtower (more on that soon) instead of working on the Grieg. He still practiced, and made a lot of progress with his classical playing, but it was no longer his top priority. Here is Evgeny Kissin's interpretation:
When I moved to Chicago, Evgeny Kissin came to play the Grieg with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the whole family came down to see it. It was a mild March evening, and we walked from my apartment to the Symphony Hall. At some point, he broke a string, and had to take time during a long rest to pull it free from the others. Very rock star. His control over his hands made it seem like he could alter the gravity over the keys. There was a series of encores, and later in the program, the original version of Petrushka. This ballet is proof that there is humor in classical music. The contrabassoon is the most flatulent sounding thing ever, and there were some muffled laughs (see 5:17)
Both of us continued to play in the beginning of college, but then let it go a bit. When Alan moved in with me a year ago, we tried to get him a keyboard, but he never really wanted to go do that. His organ stayed in its case, too. Somehow, he did keep up his skills though. For me, music has been an important outlet, both before Alan's death, and especially in this time after.
The mother of one of Alan's good friends posted on his obit that the music in Heaven just got better. If he's up there jamming in Heaven, I'm sure he's disappointed that he beat Bob Dylan there.
This is the story of the last night I spent with Alan. Actually, let's start with a few days earlier. He wasn't spending much time at the house. He was busy with school and friends, and not having a car made being at the house hard for him. Thursday was a particularly rough day, and there was a flurry of texts and calls with Mom and Dad that I inevitably got sucked into. I asked him to touch base with me, so we went out to eat at China Star together. On the drive, he told me how he felt that he had lost two things in the last year: his independence and his dignity. I encouraged him to stick with it, and acknowledged that things must really have been sucking for him.
On Friday, Isabelle and I were downtown for the Soul Festival, Iowa City's marginally African American cultural event. Al Jarreau was singing, and we were looking at vaguely African crafts in a tent. On the way there, Isabelle had seen a poster for Retta performing the next night in the Union.
Now, let me explain the significance of this. I first saw Retta perform on a promo reel back in 2000 at Lawrence University as part of the Student Organization for University Programming. She was the funniest comedienne of the group, and I made sure we booked her. A decade later, she was a cast member of the TV show, Parks and Recreation. If you have not seen this show, let me try to describe it to you. The first season is horrible. It's a cheap knock-off of The Office with a female Michael Scott with even more obnoxious comedians as the actors. Somehow, magically, this show, still all those things through its run, became one of the funniest half hours on television. If you haven't seen it, I'm going to ruin it for you with this clip, the funniest joke of the whole series, delivered by now superstar Chris Pratt as a throwaway ad lib right at the end.
Alan loved that show. He tried unsuccessfully to get me to start watching it, but I wouldn't. One day a couple months ago, I decided to give it a try while I was writing notes for work at home. I powered through the first season, and started to appreciate how he could love this show so much. We bonded over the stupid jokes, and he was constantly asking if I had seen the one where so-and-so does or says this or that. Retta was extremely underutilized on this show as the office manager, Donna. For several seasons, she just sat there and said a joke or so an episode. Then, finally, seasons later, she became Aziz Ansari's sidekick, and manages at times to totally outshine him. I texted Alan and asked if he would go to the show with me. Things like this were hit or miss with Alan, so I had no idea whether he would go or not. Isabelle even agreed to be his backup if he didn't want to go. He did agree, and I picked him up Saturday night to go see the show. Retta was on fire. She started her act with telling us that she had this song stuck in her head, but did not know the words. The song, below, turned out to be one of Alan's favorites for reminiscing about childhood, and also, I do happen to know the words. As a linguist, I couldn't pass up learning the little bit of Zulu at the beginning.
For your reference, it starts, "Nants ingonyama bagithi baba," which you might translate roughly to "Sir, there is a lion coming." Retta said the words could have been, "Iiii'm an asshole, I'mma punch ya-in the throat," and she wouldn't know any better. This movie held a special place in our lives. We got a VHS copy when Alan was maybe three. That meant that for the next three years, we got to watch it several times a day. Now, for a three year old, that doesn't mean that much, but for a thirteen year old, let's just say I might know the whole movie by heart still.
Her act was filled with jokes, culled from her experiences of late, and from her old standup act from years ago. It was honestly one of the best comedy acts I have ever seen. She ended the act with another musical joke, one that I remembered from my college years.
Aaand of course being a nerd, I also knew the words to this song, the "Laudamus te" from Vivaldi's Gloria.
After the show, Alan needed his film equipment from the house, so I drove him there to get it and dropped him back off downtown. I would only ever see him again briefly the next day as I was on my way out to the Walk to End Alzheimer's, and he was on his way in to start editing film from an apparently crappy morning of shooting. I am so thankful to have had this evening with him.
