Good Robin Hunting

                                

Perhaps the most provocative post I read this week regarding the suicide of Robin Williams came from a friend who wrote:

Breaking news: The death of Robin Williams is causing America to give empty lip service to mental illness that will result in nothing.... again.

Maybe I liked it because of my friend's cheeky cynicism, a trait we both seem to share. Instead of mentioning his favorite Mork and Mindy episode, his comment exhibited a ballsy flippancy in the face of a post mortem social media tsunami. We were all overwhelmed by the same huge wave, weren't we? I got home from play rehearsal Monday night and checked my Facebook feed to find it filled, top to bottom, with an outpouring of shock, sadness, photos copied-and-pasted from Google, clever quote memes, and bunches of this-is-my-list-of-favorite-robin-williams-movies.

I found my friend's comment refreshingly different. And basically accurate. Let's be fair here, since Monday the web has been awash with two types of stories: addiction and depression. The media has lapped up Robin's tragedy, found the root cause of it, and is now doing their damned best to package it all together into neat segments to prove they have the pulse of the American people.

I'm not suggesting the media ignore the issues. Neither is my friend. He's just reacting to the Big Wave, and its smaller after-waves, that have been hitting our shores this week and how, after it's all dried up, nothing will have really changed.

Oh stop it. I am not suggesting that if you contributed to this then you were a bad little doggy who shit on my carpet. I am not rubbing your nose in it and throwing you outside.

Besides, this blog post is not about the social politics of it. I really just wanted to talk about how his death hit close to home for me. Because there is nothing more human than personalizing someone else's personal tragedy to bring attention to ourselves. Where your attention really needs to be focused. You know you love me. Give into it. You'll feel better if you do.

The truth of the matter is that I, like 1 in every 10 Americans, suffer from depression and/or anxiety. Or, as in my case, both.

There. I fucking said it.

Depression and anxiety are the greasy-haired WWF tag team that is in constant battle with a far weaker tandem of sanity and logic. They perform their blatantly choreographed dance in the boxing ring of my psyche, all to an orchestral version of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby. 

All the lonely people, indeed.

Except, someone forgot to teach sanity and logic the choreography and the poor bastards are always caught off guard.

But you wouldn't know any of this was going on, would you? Because while my sanity is being clothes-lined and logic having his ear bitten off, I am your personal Robin Williams. I've got that zip-bang retort at the ready; a pocket full of self-deprecating one-time lozenges for you to suck on; a plethora of perfectly timed, wink-wink, double entendre face-blushers.

Me so fawny. Me yuk-yuk you long time.

If depression and anxiety are the causes of all those internal emotional wrinkles that I carry around, then humor is the facial I give myself to hide them from you.

See what I did there? I said I give myself a facial when I'm depressed.

God I crack myself up.

Here's the thing: I was just as shocked to hear the news of Robin Williams' death as you were, but not because I thought he would never ever be capable of such a thing. For heaven's sake, anyone who truly loved Robin knew about his addiction, his failed marriages, his recent financial problems, and the resultant depression.  I knew what he was going through. 

No, no, no. My shock was not based on the idea that someone so funny was so sad. I'm living that life. I know it first hand. My shock was in the sudden loss of a comic genius.

You know what I think? I think we don't like our comics being depressed, because we know deep down that if those people - the ones who make us laugh until we cry, who lift us up, who pull us up out of our own depressing lives - are depressed, then we are all fucked.

We prefer the Good Robin. We go looking for him, and people of his ilk. We look forward to the funny man at our social gatherings, because we need the hit. We crave the fix. The high that comes with being around the clown.

But when they're not on, what do we say?

"Wow. Andy wasn't himself, was he?"

The truth is, I don't choose to be funny. It is not who I am. It's actually a reaction, folks. A defense against the Dark Arts called Depression and Anxiety. A mechanism I learned from my early years being picked on as the littlest kid in my class, and honed over the years to help cope with feeling unwanted. I was once told by someone close to me that I like making people laugh because I need people to be my friend.

That hurt. But it's the truth.

Being funny as a way to deflect pain is like that boat scene in Good Will Hunting. Will (Matt Damon) is the brilliant but broken Southie kid and Sean, his equally brilliant Southie therapist (Robin Williams), are sitting in Sean's office when Will notices a painting on one of Sean's shelves.

He walks up to it...

                                WILL
                    It's a real piece of shit.

                                SEAN
                    Oh..Well, tell me what you really think.

                                WILL
                    Uh, just the--the linear and impressionistic mix makes a
                    very muddled composition. It's also a Winslow Homer
                    rip-off, except you got Whitey uh..rowin' the boat there.

                                SEAN
                    Well, it's art, Monet...wasn't very good.

                                WILL
                    That's not really what concerns me, though.

                                SEAN
                    What concerns you?

                                WILL
                   It's the coloring.

                                SEAN
                   You know what the real bitch of it is? It's paint by
                   number.

                                WILL
                   Is it color by number? Because the colors are fascinating
                   to me.

                                SEAN
                   Are they really? What about that?

                                WILL
                   I think you're about one step away from cuttin' your
                   fuckin' ear off.

                                SEAN
                   Really?

                                WILL
                   Oh yeah..

                                SEAN
                   Think I should move to the south of France and change my
                   name to Vincent.

                                WILL
                   You ever heard the saying "any port in a storm?"

                                SEAN
                   Yeah.

                                WILL
                   Yeah, maybe that means you.

                                SEAN
                   In what way?

                                WILL
                   Well, maybe you're in the middle of a storm, a big fuckin'
                   storm.

                                SEAN
                   Yeah, maybe.

                                WILL
                   The sky's fallin' on your head, the waves are crashin'
                   over your little boat, the oars are about to snap. You
                   just piss in your pants, you're cryin' for the harbors,
                   and maybe you do what you gotta do to get out. Yeah,
                   maybe you became a psychologist.

                                SEAN
                   Bingo. That's it. Lemme do my job now, we still have a
                   minute. C'mon.

                                WILL
                   Maybe you married the wrong woman.

                                SEAN
                   Maybe you should watch your mouth. Watch it right
                   there, chief, all right?

                                WILL
                   Ah...Well, that's it, isn't it? You married the wrong
                   woman. What happened? What, did she leave you? Was
                   she, you know, banging some other guy?

                                SEAN
                   If you ever disrespect my wife again, I will end you, I
                   will fuckin' end you. Got that, chief?

                                WILL
                   Time's up.

                                SEAN
                   Yeah.

The storm Sean found himself in was actually the death of his wife, misinterpreted by Will as Sean having married the wrong woman. The truth was far darker, far more personal than what was on the surface.

The metaphor here is obvious to me as it relates to Robin Williams, the comic genius rowing like a bastard in the middle of his own personal storm. The guy was looking for any port, a place of safety, and many say he chose his port to be drugs and alcohol. 

I think it was comedy. That's where he anchored his little boat, to get away from a terrible youth, something he admitted to having endured, which directly led to his depression, which he medicated with drugs and alcohol. A classic example, actually, of an addict.

I'm not naive. I know the drugs and cocaine contributed to the depression. How could they not. He even said so himself.

But comedy..that was his port in a storm. That's where he found shelter, where he found acceptance. That is what people don't realize about those who make us laugh, but disappoint when they are off. They are not being funny, as if it's who they are, they are sheltering themselves.

We go hunting for the Good Robin, and when we don't find him, we're shocked to learn that he was really just one of us. Well, we're shocked but we're not...we know, but we don't.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that when your funny friend tells the joke about that time he did that thing that was so damn funny that he needs to be talked off a ledge. He's probably just telling a great funny joke.

But when he's off...

Give him a hug and be a real friend, and rest assured you'll laugh with him again tomorrow.