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Robin Williams — A comic genius who named it all except his own depression
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Robin Williams once joked that death is “nature’s way to let you know your table is ready.” It’s not funny now that the comedian overrode nature by grabbing the table without waiting for the maitre d’.
But if his suicide has any silver lining, it’s that depression and mental illness are now being talked about more openly. In far-flung India, China and Vietnam, where mental illness, especially depression, is a taboo subject, it is now on the front pages of newspapers and TV programs reporting on Williams’ suicide.
Born in Chicago to a father who was an executive for Ford Motor Company and a mother who was a model, his was a childhood among toys. He grew up privileged but reportedly lonely.
An overweight and bullied child, Williams played alone in a large home, and no doubt his loneliness and sadness lent themselves to invention: the need to occupy others’ lives via the act of mimicking, via imagination.
So much so that it became a habit, a shield, and eventually a vocation. And his was a kind of talent that hid his own sadness by making others laugh.
As a testimony to his down-to-earth and friendly personality, but also his ability to mimic, a Vietnamese-American friend of mine who once worked as an extra on the “Good Morning Vietnam” set testified that, “We had a lot of down time in between shooting in the classroom scenes. Robin Williams would learn people’s personalities over those six days and make fun of all of us based on that. I was in awe.”
But of all things Williams could talk about, or make fun of, on stage — from sex to violence, from politics to his own divorce, from his struggle with alcohol abuse to his open heart surgery — he didn’t manage to name the thing that ailed him for what it was: depression.
Even for one of the world’s most eloquent public figures, the D word still left him tongue-tied. Saying that he was “bummed out,” in an interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, seemed as close as he could manage.
So here are some facts: Depression affects one in 10 Americans at one point or another, and over 80 percent who have symptoms of clinical depression do not seek out or receive treatment for it, according to Healthline.com. It’s most prevalent in people between 45 and 64.
In Vietnamese, there’s a phrase that is used to describe a rare talent, someone who has a golden tongue: Xuat khau thanh tho. It means to open one’s mouth and out comes poetry.
Humor at will
Robin Williams didn’t speak poetry but he spoke something more accessible in the modern world: the ability to provide humor at will, a rapid fire of comical ideas and observations that no script could match, taking on voices and personalities that seemed spun out of bright clouds. His was a genius rarely seen even among the best entertainers and comedians, and it brought joy and laughter and admiration to millions.
If genius is the ability “to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm,” as Aldous Huxley once observed, it seems a good fit to describe Williams’ man-child persona. But F. Scott Fitzgerald’s definition of genius may have come closer to capturing what Williams’ gift was all about: “the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.”
But there’s often a steep price to genius. For Williams it came along on an energy driven by what seemed to be mania, and the down time of which, no doubt, was an overwhelming darkness.
But if not curable, it is treatable, with diligence. To do so, however, means breaking the silence about depression, owning up to the disease and seeking help, and sharing one’s story. And, even for a man with a golden tongue, it’s the one thing he couldn’t articulate.
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