Robin Williams . . .

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Amskeptic
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Robin Williams . . .

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Aug 13, 2014 6:40 am

. . . has died at the age of 63 by suicide.

A deep loss, made deeper still by his apparent rejection of his own talents.
Were you surprised?
Colin
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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by Cindy » Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:22 am

A few years back, knowing what I know about personal defenses, I wondered why we only saw him ON. Yesterday, a friend of his said, "I knew him for twenty years but I didn't know him."

I've been looking for footage that shows him out from under that wild persona and there's precious little. But I did find a video of him interacting with Koko the gorilla. For those of you who haven't seen it, the gorilla knew sign language. She had lost her best friend a month before and hadn't smiled since. The thing that stabbed me in the heart was that he didn't get all zany and make her laugh. He was a little silly (and so was she) but mostly he was calm and finely tuned in.

I wish I'd known him.

Cindy
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don't.” ― Stephen King, The Stand

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by Cindy » Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:33 am

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don't.” ― Stephen King, The Stand

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by asiab3 » Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:45 am

Cindy wrote: I've been looking for footage that shows him out from under that wild persona and there's precious little.
I don't know how much of that exists. I imagine it would have been hard to capture....

When my father was working on the set of Dead Poets Society, he was dealing with some hundred-plus-year-old birds nest of an electrical panel in a hallway late one night. After repeatedly pulling and metering different connections with no success, he stepped back and looked at it, frustrated. At that point my dad said:

"I didn't hear him walk up, but Robin Williams just stuck his head in the panel, yelled "AAAAGHHHRRAAAAHHHHHLLLLL" for a few seconds, stepped back, looked at me, and said calmly, "It's like my brain in there!" and walked away."

I was told that story as a kid and barely remembered it, but he told me again yesterday, and had nothing but positive words about how at ease Mr. Williams made the whole crew feel around him.

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by Amskeptic » Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:46 am

Cindy wrote:A few years back, knowing what I know about personal defenses, I wondered why we only saw him ON.
I am familiar with the ON personalities. They make me nervous.
I grew up with one, a very positive one who could not just say "good job", when
"that is FANTASTIC! that is SUPERB! that is SO SPECIAL! how WONDERFUL!" would do.

Robin Williams looks like he exhausted his soul in the service of appeasing the devil of success.
Colin
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by Spezialist » Fri Aug 15, 2014 8:40 pm

Fisher King finally came to life, huh Bobcat?

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by JLT » Sun Aug 17, 2014 11:31 am

Amskeptic wrote: Robin Williams looks like he exhausted his soul in the service of appeasing the devil of success.
Colin
Actually, I don't think that success or failure had anything to do with it. One of the hallmarks of "clinical" or "organic" depression is that there's no correlation with it and the circumstances of a person's life. This is markedly different from what is called "situational" depression, which is a response to adversity. Everybody has had spells of the latter at times, and for those who've really been through the wringer, it's a pervasive part of their personalities. And, more often than not, it's treatable these days, in the sense that some drugs can help people cope until the underlying adversity goes away.

With clinical depression, on the other hand, there's no environmental cause, and hence no hope of a cure by removing the things that cause the depression. It just IS. In these cases, drugs may provide temporary relief for a while, but then they stop working and the roller coaster starts all over again until, perhaps, some new drug or combination of drugs proves to be effective. And these drugs work ... until they don't.

Clinical depression can masquerade as environmental depression, particularly for people who are desperate to see the condition as treatable. When a person with clinical depression hits a rough spot in his or her life, the depression deepens and may cause that person to seek treatment. And it's easy to identify the rough spot as the cause of the depression; very often, the patient is led to believe that by those who are looking for an easier cure. But the rough spot didn't cause the depression, and its mitigation won't cure it. With luck, some of the symptoms can be treated, but not the cause.

And because most people have experienced environmental depression at some point or other in their lives, they equate their condition with that of those suffering from clinical depression. I suppose I could make an analogy to the pain in my knee whenever I put weight on it, due to incurable neural damage. It's been that way for close to fifty years, and it's going to be there until I die. You, on the other hand, hurt your knee when you twisted it falling off your bike. The doc gave you ibuprofin and told you to stay off the knee for a few weeks. You did, and it got better. But that diagnosis isn't going to help me. And you would be gravely mistaken to think that all I have to do is stay off my feet for a while and all would be well. But that's exactly the mistake that many people make when thinking about clinical depression. They tell the sufferer to look on the bright side, put on a happy face, grow up and face it like everybody else (meaning them), and so on. And they're dismayed when that advice seems to be ignored.

Maybe it would be best to ditch the terms "clinical depression" and "organic depression" entirely and call it something else.

I'm going to miss Mr. Williams, but I'm not going to judge his decision to end his life. Nor do I judge his use of alcohol and cocaine and God knows what else. When you're in pain, you do what you can to alleviate it. And when these things no longer alleviate the pain, what is there left to do?
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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by Cindy » Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:44 pm

His success had little to do with it, if anything. If you look closely, you can see his fragility. I believe he had a very deep and vivid consciousness, the kind that can make beauty and love and humor exponentially intense. But that same consciousness can make pain and suffering more intense too. Maybe it was unbearable.

I'm still not over it. In the link I posted above the guy said he couldn't ever remember feeling as alone as he did when Williams suddenly left his dressing room. People have come back from near-death experiences and brushes with God to report the same thing. I don't think Robin Williams was a god, but I do know his given spark of divinity (which we all have) was right there, every day. That can be both a blessing and a burden.

Cindy
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don't.” ― Stephen King, The Stand

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by Spezialist » Sun Aug 17, 2014 3:18 pm

I've read many forum posts, blogs and news articles about Robins death. And it appears that most people feel like I do about him, He was an inspiration to many and many feel lost because of his choice. I guess that's the difference between a Great Performer and an Icon.

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by hippiewannabe » Mon Aug 18, 2014 7:21 pm

I always thought suicide was a very selfish act, taking the easy way out and leaving behind distraught loved ones, like his daughter. But I have since learned that when you are in that state of depression, you honestly think your loved ones would be better off without you, and you are doing them a favor.
Truth is like poetry.
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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:23 pm

JLT wrote:
Amskeptic wrote: Robin Williams looks like he exhausted his soul in the service of appeasing the devil of success.
Colin
Actually, I don't think that success or failure had anything to do with it. One of the hallmarks of "clinical" or "organic" depression is that there's no correlation with it and the circumstances of a person's life.
I'm going to miss Mr. Williams, but I'm not going to judge his decision to end his life. Nor do I judge his use of alcohol and cocaine and God knows what else. When you're in pain, you do what you can to alleviate it. And when these things no longer alleviate the pain, what is there left to do?
What I wrote was not a psychological analysis. I done did the DSM-IV clinical vs environmental labelling. I don't even look at depression through the medical or psychological lens. I sense that experiences can change the chemistry.

My analogous example to yours might be that I can adjust an engine to meet emission numbers by an intuitive asking process. I am the same way with human beings with real complex environmentally affected and effected electrochemical miracles in their skulls that actually respond to thought to talk to ideas to shared experience to empathetic witnessing, and I will not stop at the door of "it's chemical and structural".

The same Will that wants to live in one, may want to die in another. I hope you did not read judgment in what I said about Robin Williams. My comment was delivered from an empathetic conscious place, not a clinical one.

We, I hope, do agree that no one joyfully commits suicide. I could not categorically state that there is no correlation between success/failure and thoughts of suicide. Some commit suicide because success is overwhelming, some commit suicide because failure is overwhelming. I don't think people commit suicide because they woke up with genes or imbalanced brain chemistry that said "commit suicide." If there is a personal ideation that gets associated with certain emotional states, then we human souls have the power to intervene with each other and change the associations without attempting to change people's Self or intrinsic emotional make-up or chemistry.

I meet "despondents" and invite them to enjoy their rotten day, to glory in it, to see the strength in it, to revel in that facet of seeing the world (they are not alone!) and to know that these facets naturally occur and change in all of us like our own internal weather.
The circumstances of their lives that they have attached their emotions to, those can be tweaked, adjusted, changed, dealt with.

As for Robin Williams, I could only offer an ear to someone in his particular circumstance, not pat advice or pills, but an ear is a mighty powerful thing, too.
Colin :cyclopsani:
BobD - 78 Bus . . . 112,730 miles
Chloe - 70 bus . . . 217,593 miles
Naranja - 77 Westy . . . 142,970 miles
Pluck - 1973 Squareback . . . . . . 55,600 miles
Alexus - 91 Lexus LS400 . . . 96,675 miles

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Re: Robin Williams . . .

Post by JLT » Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:52 am

Amskeptic wrote:
What I wrote was not a psychological analysis. I done did the DSM-IV clinical vs environmental labelling. I don't even look at depression through the medical or psychological lens. I sense that experiences can change the chemistry.
I understand. My comments were directed mostly to those readers who are unaware of the distinction between the two types of "depression."

The same Will that wants to live in one, may want to die in another. I hope you did not read judgment in what I said about Robin Williams. My comment was delivered from an empathetic conscious place, not a clinical one.
Also understood. My point was that, like you, I believe that no one joyfully commits suicide. And I also agree that some commit suicide because failure is overwhelming.
Many of these are people who succumb to environmental depression. Where I would gently differ from you would be in saying that some are overwhelmed by their success. It is true that they are successful in most of the ways by which we (and even they) judge success, but who really knows what Mr. Williams was going through? We know that he'd recently remarried, and it may have been that he realized that that marriage was not going to work any better than the previous two. For somebody who held the status of marriage very dear, that would have gone very far in pushing him over the edge. I can speak from that, because I was perilously close to that same mind-set when my first marriage collapsed at the same time I was laid off from my job. I escaped with a nervous breakdown, but could have easily gone another way.
I meet "despondents" and invite them to enjoy their rotten day, to glory in it, to see the strength in it, to revel in that facet of seeing the world (they are not alone!) and to know that these facets naturally occur and change in all of us like our own internal weather.
And that is an important and valuable thing to do. In many cases, it makes all the difference, just being able to tell people that while I can't help them or heal them, I can be there for them.
-- JLT
Sacramento CA

Present bus: '71 Dormobile Westie "George"
(sometimes towing a '65 Allstate single-wheel trailer)
Former buses: '61 17-window Deluxe "Pink Bus"
'70 Frankenwestie "Blunder Bus"
'71 Frankenwestie "Thunder Bus"

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