From Russia with Love

Dave was always fascinated with Russian life and culture. Looking back, I can't quite tell when this fascination began. Sometimes I wonder if it was when I gave him a copy of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. He gobbled this book, reading it in a matter of a couple of days. He then moved on to the longer Brothers Karamazov, but never quite finished this one. I think it was due to the fact that he had his hand everywhere: trigonometry (which he taught himself), business, religion, music. He was really exhausting his cognitive limits.

I like Tchaikovsky today because Dave loved Tchaikovsky. Even now, I can't find words to describe the enigmatic focus and intensity of Swan Lake, except but to echo Rilke's definition of music: the breathing of statues. Dave was fond of the self-taught musician who rose to prominence through sheer effort and genius. He was fond of it because he saw a little of himself in that story.

Not long ago, I saw a movie called Cold Souls that reminded me of Dave in so many ways. In the movie, Paul Giamatti plays a spiritually and professionally mangled version of himself. He deems storing his soul away in something akin to a futuristic storage warehouse the only solution to his problem. However, by storing away his soul, he only finds that his problems worsen. When he tries to retrieve his soul, he learns that it has been stolen and somehow has found its way into the Russian black market, where soul-buying, thievery and trading is quite common. His journey from this point forward becomes nothing less than the search for his soul.

I wonder if Dave sought his soul in Russian life and culture. Why was having a Russian partner so imperative? So much so that he transformed his keyboard from qwerty-English to Cyrillic Russian? Why the Russian neighbor he befriended, who was perhaps his closest link in the last months? That mystery is one that Dave took with him. No one but Dave knows where his soul was at the end, or where it went.

Sometimes I also wonder if Dave played Russian roulette with his life. I wonder if he considered the odds of dying during that fateful moment. Or, like Nick in The Deer Hunter, did he simply not care? These are questions that keep me up on sleepless nights, when the howling wind gnaws at my window.

Spirit of Dave is about life, not death. However, as a blog and as an open forum for discussion, it invites these questions; it seeks to address these contemplations, even if they are solely mine. It subscribes to Socrates' essential tenet, that the unexamined life is not worth living--not just yours, but everyone's. I'll take this further, however: the unexamined soul is not worth inhabiting. I think that that is ultimately what Paul Giamatti learns in the film. It is a lesson I can only hope Dave learned.

At the Movies with Dave

Dave and I watched many movies in our short time together. The movies were always a favorite pastime for us. Everything from Faces of Death to Spanish action films starring Jorge Reynoso with our uncle Anival to Beavis and Butthead Do America in Miami (to the horror of Dave's dad, Damian). The movies provided entertainment and escape in a way that no other media form could.

One of the stronger memories of watching a movie with Dave also included our mom. That day, we went to the theater to watch Gladiator. We'd actually somehow managed to bring a box of pizza into the theater, whose job to carry was all but mine. I apologized to a woman sitting in front of us as the large square box eclipsed her upward vision. The movie was harrowing to the end. Dave and I sat neck in neck at the edge of our seats, captivated by the story of Maximus, though I closed my eyes whenever the goriness made my stomach queasy. Years later, when a drunken Russell Crowe approached me and offered me a cigarette after performing a gig at the House of Blues, all I thought was: "Damn, Maximus just offered me a cigarette!"

About a year before Dave's passing, we'd spent much of the trip to nearby Niles (to pick up a sofa he purchased) discussing movies. He wanted my picks for the year. I told him that Battle in Seattle was really good because it used handheld cameras to tell the story of the WTO riots. At that time he was watching Che (he would watch it in snippets of about thirty to forty minutes every day, which is why he had been watching it as opposed to having watched it). I was stunned when he asked me not to ruin the ending, because I thought he'd known the life of Che Guevara all too well: after all, I had about six books of his in the library at our home, which he must've browsed through at some point or another. I finally told him jokingly: "Well Che does die," to which he responded, "I know that!"

After Dave moved out, he borrowed most of the movies in my collection to make copies. I'm guessing that he watched on average something like a movie a day, which is my current average, though he probably watched multiple movies at once as opposed to watching one movie in one sitting. I used to watch him watch movies, and his patience often wore thin.

The most vivid movie-watching experience that we'd ever had actually took place over the course of a few days. During those two to three days in the summer of 2000, we sneaked into the theater everyday and watched Castaway at least twice, which amounts to about six viewings of a nearly three-hour movie. Something about this modern-day Robinson Crusoe resonated very deeply with us. And this was a saga that Dave could bear. (He often used the word saga to refer to anything that took a long time; a medical visit, therefore, could become a saga depending on how tardily the doctor saw him.)

Relationships are kept together by binding ties. The binding tie between my oldest brother, Alex, and me is sports--most of our best and most intimate conversations revolve around what trade, game, or controversy consumes the only three sports that matter to us: basketball, baseball and football. Dave and I had more than a few binding ties, but movies was definitely one of the more important ones. When we got together for any conversation that lasted over ten minutes, movie-talkin' would be on the agenda.

Dave subscribed to Blockbuster's movie-by-mail offer, and The Go-Getter was the current movie he had when he passed. He apparently had already watched it, sealed it, and only had to put it in the mailbox. When I looked at the title, it occurred to me that it perfectly described his character--he was a go-getter. When he decided that he'd pursue music, he let nothing get in his way. Additionally, the movie's protagonist is an alienated teenager. Dave suffered bouts of alienation (the song below describes this). Sometimes, I picture him and I in something like Borges' Library of Babel discussing The Stranger and The Metamorphosis. After all, I've been there too. We all have.

I'm an emotional movie-watcher, and it isn't rare for me to get red-eyed during sentimental scenes (particularly those aided by musical scores). Dave didn't share this "weakness," in his words, with me, but I could often see him tremble during climactic scenes. Now, whenever I watch a movie where a character dies, I especially have this weakness. The death of Sitka in Brother Bear was particularly distressing for me. At Sitka's funeral, I had to simply stop the movie as my emotions bubbled up. I eventually regathered myself and finished it.

One day, I hope to make a documentary about Dave. Not because he's my brother and I will always love him, but because he's a historical figure in every sense of the word. His intelligence and musical talent is unparalled in human existence, not to mention his joie de vivre, which is probably more important. I'm always reminded of him when I read Longfellow's "The Warden of the Cinque Ports":


Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited,
     The sun rose bright o'erhead;
Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated
     That a great man was dead.

Song composed and performed by Dave, "Little Girl"

Conversations with Dave

Conversations with Dave were almost always spontaneous. By this I mean that they began spontaneously and focused on spontaneous things and events. They meandered at certain points and gradually changed from thing to thing to thing. However, the things always had one thing in common: they were symbiotic exchanges of influence.

Take, for example, our last conversation in person. The conversation began where our last had finished: he asked me if I’d seen any of the pick-up material that he’d burned for me. I told him that I had not gotten the chance yet. Swimmingly (which means fueled by his chattiness), the conversation moved along to the hassles of dating Hispanic women, his attempt to learn Russian in order to court Eastern European women, an aesthetic review of my ex-girlfriend (not good), spirituality and the nature of God (he argued that Conversations with God made God seem like a white suburbanite and therefore was tacky), and his passion to create music. The jump from wanting to learn Russian to the nature of God is a leap indeed, and it certainly didn’t occur this way--however, these are the items that I vividly remember, perhaps due to my own predisposition to them.

At this point in the conversation, Dave shifted gears to something that was more important to him: music.

Dave had been a musician since roughly the age of seventeen when, influenced by Jimi Hendrix, he began playing the guitar. (This time also coincided with his spiritual metamorphosis.) He played the electric guitar at first but soon found it either difficult or boring and from then on switched to the acoustic. The guitar soon became an escape from his daily mundane existence here at home. He referred to his guitar-playing moments as “jam sessions”. He matured as an artist, began appreciating the music of Bob Dylan and Bob Marley, and played the guitar while composing his own songs until his chronic pain prevented him. He also played the piano but never quite mastered it. The song sheet in his piano when he died was “You Are So Beautiful.” Maybe due to his pain, he put his music on hold as he studied to become, and became, a radiographer.

I saw a spark turn on inside of Dave as he described to me the type of music he wanted to create: music that would “move the masses.” He used countless hand gestures as he recounted the story of an old, frail Pablo Casals who, stricken with rheumatic pain, would nevertheless walk to his piano every day and play till the pain drained out of him. He continued: “When asked why he kept playing the same Bach concerto well into his nineties, he replied that he always noticed a little improvement.” He loved that story, and would use it to inspire himself whenever he felt pain or lacked inspiration.

Dave didn’t discuss his pain too much with me and I never asked him about it. I never thought that he was anything other than okay, which is why I’d question my mom whenever she used words such as “sickly” to describe him. Maybe he spoke to her more about it than to me. But deep down, I don’t think I would’ve ever been able to see him as sick. After all he’d always been my older, stronger brother, something nearing a superman. The knowledge that he had pain was always intellectual, but the reality that he was indeed sick didn’t come to me till I saw him lying on the floor dead that fateful night. It was then that all my mom had ever said of him came flooding back into my ears. I wonder, though: even if I would’ve broken through to his illness, what would that have resolved? Was Dave unreachable?

What Dave talked about was just about everything else. He was a really no-holds-barred, nothing-off-limits type of person. I guess what I really enjoyed about conversations with him was just that: that they were about every and any thing. And also that he brought a level of intelligence and rationality that not many people I’ve known have been able to bring. In short, he was my intellectual counterpart. In areas where he lacked, I teemed, and vice-versa. I often see us as a Hispanic, low-budget version of Frasier Crane and his younger brother Niles. I know he would’ve liked that one, especially since it was him that coined “low-budget” among us two.

On trips to the Dominican Republic with our mom, we’d pass the long hours talking. On top of that, we talked the only language we ever talked, which was English, beautiful and alien to hear in Dominicana. Once, a conversation ignited a daring game where he agreed to walk the rat-congested floor in our aunt’s house in Higüey for a peso, which amounts to about six cents in American currency. He won the bet (and therefore the peso from me) and yet I still didn’t wanna give it to him, though he ultimately forced me to do so--I was giving him what a peso could buy: cold water pouches, with the occasional flavored water choice.

What conversations with Dave ultimately represent is the influence that he was able to exert on me. Though he also used his life as a glowing example, his conversations more than anything helped construct my worldview. Maybe our worldviews are such that if looked at through an external lens, it is difficult to tell where his end and mine begin. To be sure, the conversations and the flow of knowledge was always symbiotic.

Les Brown often makes the observation that cemeteries are the wealthiest places on earth because they hold all the intrinsic worth of people’s deferred dreams. Dave died before he could really get started. He often referred to Malcolm Gladwell’s belief that true mastery of anything is gained only after 10,000 hours of practice, and he surmised that he was at 2,000 hours as of March 31, 2010, just two months shy of his passing. When his ex-girlfriend Gina told me that he told her that he enjoyed talking with me, I was happy to know he likewise enjoyed our conversations and to such an extent that he’d say so aloud. I think that more than the intellectual exchanges, he loved the fact that I believed in him. It kept him driven.

Every year on June 5, the day that Dave passed, we should all remind ourselves of our life’s priorities and whether we are living up to them. The reality is, that we should do this every day. See June 5^th as a new New Year’s Day. The resolutions will be the priorities. There will be no fireworks and confetti, there will only be silent observation.

Song composed and performed by Dave, "Come Home"

The Ever-Changing Dave

Change is hardly noticeable when it occurs in front of your face over a long period of time. That’s what happened to Dave: he changed forms but was only caught long after the act. He went from being thin and strongly-built to being husky, bespectacled and slightly hunchbacked. The irony of it is, that he actually became more handsome as he got older. It is too hard to explain this phenomenon in words, so I will shortly tell it in pictures.



Dave was never too muscular, but during the time that he spent living in Miami with Alex and trying to make it on his own, he managed to etch out what he himself would call “the body of a Greek god.” That, however, did not last long; he quickly lost the physique.


Dave began to wear glasses almost exclusively because he was bothered by the general discomfort of eye contacts. He didn’t like the process of having to put them on, either. He much preferred to have his eyes at will. Though my eye sight has also been poor, his was poorer, and I know this because I have put on his glasses before and felt numb from their power. This is ironic because I was the reader of us two. He read, but he didn’t have the same patience as me to dedicate to reading. Additionally, during the last three years of his life, he did do much reading; it just wasn’t in book form. His readings consisted of blogs, online encyclopedias, news outlets, instruction manuals (for his various gadgets), and The China Study. I don’t know if he ever learned to read music, but he could definitely play a mean guitar.


I also don’t know if his gait ever changed much; he sort of always shuffled his way through. He wasn’t fond of tight-fitting (or even remotely tight-fitting) clothes; he was more loving of loose, baggy jeans and joggers (never shorts). Maybe as a result of this, his walk was never quite right. But that was ok. That was Dave. As with everyone else, his antics and quirks were what made him uniquely him. These were the things that made him distinguishable and loveable.


Shortly prior to graduating from Town Baptist, Dave entered a pivotal phase of his life in which he began to question everything. I say pivotal because it was the first time that he really began to grow spiritually and mentally (though it wasn't immediately apparent). It was from the dazzle of these confused thoughts that he began to carve out his worldview, which ultimately was simple and beautiful.


During this time, Dave listened almost exclusively to alternative and heavy metal rock music. He was rebellious and would lash out when challenged. He also worked several dead-end jobs, unable to find something comfortable. He didn’t do much dating but I don’t think that this was intentional; it was merely a result of not having much of a dating pool. (You see, Town Baptist High School is small with very few students. And dating at that age, in any event, was looked down upon unless it was light and accompanied by the services of chaperones.)


Dave’s religion tumbled when confronted--in reality, bombarded--by the secular world. I think that at the heart of this tumble was his sexual angst. He was a 19-year-old virgin who was increasingly in the company of women--at work, school, and wherever he and his best friend, Ramon, went. Biblical quandaries began to bother him; for example, how was the Bible holy if it was written by man? If salvation was permanent, didn’t that then mean that people like Hitler could go to heaven? Holy Baptist Church was never able to give him satisfactory answers to these questions, and he was never able to reconcile his doubts again, resulting in his stopping to attend. (He also wasn’t all too happy when one of the members of the church, who came closer than anyone else to being a father figure to him, broke all of his rock CD’s--well over a hundred dollars’ worth of music.)


Dave never converted to atheism, but he did embrace his agnosticism and would flaunt it like a medallion whenever the topic of religion came up. He’d graduated from Town Baptist only a few months back, and he was being pressured by the church members to continue on to their college. But he was stubborn in his agnostic stance. Marilyn Manson was too entrenched in his brain to even allow a consideration of HBC’s college.


From this point forward, Dave matured and began to look for a career that would provide him a great income and job security. He found that career in radiography, and as soon as he knew that that was what he wanted to do his will became ironclad. He immediately raised the necessary money to have his criminal record, resulting from a shoplifting charge, expunged. He took all the necessary prerequisites and in seemingly no time had been accepted into Malcolm X College’s radiography program.


When in the program, Dave's friendship with Ramon was practically put on hold as he toiled his way through homework, projects, quizzes and tests. He attended school full-time and was only able to work part-time up until he began his clinical training. After that point, it was all Malcolm X. He attended classes and clinicals practically all day Mondays to Fridays, and spent the weekends locked up in his room studying. For the first time ever, I saw a side of him that I’d never seen before: the studious side. His study habits were more than impressive. It wasn’t rare for him to briefly step out of his room to fetch something from the refrigerator while going over his lesson aloud. He also tape-recorded his lectures, and I’d often hear his professors chattering away in fuzzy voices while passing his room.

Eventually, Malcolm X College participated in a Jeopardy-like contest to determine what was the best radiography program in the state of Illinois. Not surprisingly, Dave was chosen to be the captain of his team. This made him very happy, and he accordingly stepped up his study habits. Instead of studying four hours a day, he would now study five; instead of merely tape-recording his lectures, he would actually go out and rent telecourses that covered the same material.


During the last few years, Dave was quiet and introverted. While he still had his signature sardonic sense of humor, full with his sharp sallies and witty social observations, he kept this mostly to himself unless prodded. In conversation, however, he was often chatty and run-on. I realize now that this may have been an attempt to compensate for his introvertedness.


He didn't leave with neither a bang nor a whimper. He simply shuffled his way through.








Old Dave

New Dave

Dave on his graduation