not moderating, but explaining depression
“it’s time” can be the mantra just the same. I know exactly what BrainGlutton is talking about and you are blessed that you are just curious and perplexed. Depression is looking the second law of thermodynamics directly in its void of all-consuming chaos, knowing its inexorable pull, and moving on for just another day, never forgetting it is there.
I put the Moderating tag there by accident, so please disregard it. And I don’t know if that’s what BrainGlutton is saying. He can explain himself, but there’s no sense in you and I arguing about it.
I heard a joke once: man goes to a doctor, says he’s depressed. Says life is harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world. Doctor says,“Treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go see him. That should pick you right up.” Man bursts into tears. He says,“But doctor…I am Pagliacci.”
Some joke, huh?
-Rorschach of The Watchmen
Dude, that joke H&S already been told, like, twice in this thread.
Shit.
Well, apropos, anyway.
I wrote this 7 months before he died. Doubt he read it; its arrogant as hell to think anything we write here is seen by anyone who doesn’t post. That said…
I missed the window to comment right away. Then it was sinking in. Then I figured I had nothing to say because everyone else had already said it. But the quantity of tributes made me remember this:
“A heart is not judged by how much you love. but by how much you are loved by others.”
I wish he could have kept that in mind.
Fun Fact: Did you know Robin Williams consorted with demons?
About your last post… what were you saying?
It means that I think suicide is sometimes a good idea, at least for the suicide. I’d probably do the same if diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
Word has come out that Blizzard Entertainment will honor Robin Williams with a character in their next World of Warcraft expansion who will be called Robin the Entertainer.
Article (with pics).
Wow.
Nobody is saying that William’s death was an accident, it was a deliberate act. But it was his time?
I can’t respond in this forum.
I haven’t read this thread in a while (explanation below) so I don’t remember if this was posted. Norm MacDonald’s remembrance in tweet form.
I’m bumping this thread because yesterday I listened to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in which he interviewed Robin Williams. He reposted the interview from 2010. I suggest everyone who was even a casual fan listen to it. In it he is not the manic performer that you would see on Letterman. It was a normal conversation filled with insight and humor. It gave a really good sense of what he was like as a person. The one chilling part is when Williams talked about a brief moment when he thought of suicide while drunk. He went through the entire inner monologue he was thinking at the time. It is worth the time to seek out.
Here is a brief article about the interview. Robin Williams on WTF with Marc Maron: a powerful interview that changed how I thought about the comic.
Beautiful Billy Crystal and tribute to RW last night on the Emmy Awards. I cried.
I think what BG is saying is that Mr. Williams saw himself in a death spiral and decided to take the easy way out instead. Or maybe he’s conflating Mr. Williams with Mr. Carradine.
Sad.
It seems to me that Robin Williams made a career out of conversing with illusions.
Without the release of a suicide note, we’ll never truly know what made him do it, but he had plenty of reasons to feel depressed, not least of which was the two divorces and the endless critical panning of his last dozen films and his failed TV show.
You add the Parkinson’s Disease and a history of anxiety, depression, alcoholism, likely mixed with some anti-depressants, and then his money situation–yeah, I could see people committing suicide. People kill themselves for far more frivolous reasons, too.
A lot of comics still held a grudge against him for joke thievery which is unpardonable in the stand-up world, but at the same time there are those who praise him for his humanitarian work. I think it all balances out in the end. Very often, people in the moment of killing themselves are disrupted by another person, or some event that stays their hand, and they never get that close to it again. In this case I’m pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing.
I think Tom Paxton summed it up simply in the chorus to his song “Phil,” a tribute to his friend musician Phil Ochs, who also hanged himself:
I know I’m going to spend the rest of my lifetime a-wondering why
You found yourself so badly hurt you had to die.
Does anybody know if substance abuse causes or hastens Lewy Body Dementia?