Robin Williams
(21/7/1951 – 11/8/2014)

It’s been a hard few days for everyone.

I awoke on the morning of the 12th of August, AEST, bright and enthusiastic for the new day – which is, let’s be clear, uncommon for me.  You see, I suffer depression and have since my earliest memories.  I have good days and bad days but I can never remember a time when I was truly free of the lingering blackness which colours my life.  That may sound self-piteous and attention-seeking but it becomes very relevant when one considers the news I was about to receive.

My partner got out of her chair and came to me as soon as she heard me get up.

“Just to warn you,” she said, her tone heavy, “Robin Williams has been found dead.”

It’s difficult to explain exactly what kind of an impact this had on me.  I didn’t know Robin Williams.  I never had the pleasure of meeting him and yet it felt like I’d lost an old friend.  I had to confirm the news with my partner a few times, get the details, before it finally sank into my sleep-addled brain.

The news of suicide hadn’t been confirmed at that point; it was still the 11th in the States.  Most people seemed to believe it was indeed suicide, however, myself amongst them.

No secret was made of Mr Williams’s depression.  He was a man of incredible depth and, as with all depths, if you go down far enough things get pretty black.  While his comic work was beyond brilliant it was his dramatic performances that, for me at least, truly shined.  He could bring an intensity to his work that spoke of a deep understanding of the darker aspects of life.  One doesn’t get that understanding, I feel, unless one has lived it.

Unlike many other performers, whose work can and often is embraced fully or universally scorned, there is something for everyone in the stylings of Robin Williams.  From Aladdin through Mrs Doubtfire, Good Morning Vietnam and One Hour Photo to What Dreams May Come, which is a lifetime favourite of mine, his work was varied and powerful.  You might not have liked Genie (being firmly within his comic work) but you might appreciate his portrayal of the damaged, striking Seymour Parrish (just as solidly within his dramatic performances) or perhaps Chris Nielsen (which combines the two aspects beautifully).

He was deeply loved, most significantly by his family, but also by the world.  It’s a hard thing to comprehend when someone you love makes the terrible choice to leave.  It leaves us deeply shocked, reeling with pain, unable to properly parse such a decision.  With my brother Colin’s death there was no doubt – he didn’t want to leave but illness took him.  My brother Brian’s, however, was a different animal altogether and so it is with the death of Robin Williams.

It seems incredible to me now that even with all the evidence, all the media coverage, that people still treat depression as a silliness.  A weakness.  I have not seen a single post, comment or article that claims Mr Williams ‘took the easy way out’ but I haven’t gone looking for them – and I have seen responses to such comments so I know they’re out there.

Such arrogance doesn’t reveal only a lack of heart, it prominently displays a lack of basic psychology (not to mention biology).  Depression is an illness, a deeply insidious sickness that clings to the sufferer more persistently than any case of the flu.  That it (and any number of other mental illnesses) still isn’t taken seriously completely baffles me.  ‘Attention-seeking,’ ‘putting it on,’ ‘exaggerating.’

What the hell is wrong with you?  Are you people just wilfully stupid?  Just because you can walk easily doesn’t mean another person’s leg isn’t broken.

Robin Williams was taken from this world by an illness.  Never doubt that.

I loved this man.  Not in the way of a friend, a family member or anything closer, I wouldn’t insult his friends and family by implying that, but I nonetheless loved him.  Just like millions across this cloudy blue marble of ours I loved him as an entertainer, a light in the dark, a genuinely kind-hearted soul.  He was a shining beacon of humour, drama and compassion.  He was a good person, and the world should never underestimate the importance of a good person, particularly in the face of so much overwhelming, crushing personal pain.

Rest well, Robin Williams.  Our skies are darker now but may we all burn the brighter for your example.

On a personal note: I know from painful experience that it’s hard to seek help – or even admit that you sometimes need it. Accepting that you have depression is a staggeringly difficult realisation.

Please, if you have depression, please talk to someone about it.  See your doctor.  Call up a friend.  Touch the world around you and ask those you love for support.  Don’t assume it will go away on its own.  Depression is not the common cold.  It is a serious, debilitating illness which and and does kill.

Even if you haven’t suffered depression long-term, please find someone to chat to; situational depression can be just as devastating as chronic depression.  In Australia we have a number of brilliant and readily available services for people who need to talk, including Lifeline, a telephone line for immediate short-term support.  The sublime beyondblue offers the same (and more) help.  Even if you don’t need advice, even if all you need is to talk and know someone’s listening, don’t hesitate.

Both beyondblue and Lifeline Australia also offer crisis support chat services over the internet.  Lifeline offers these services between 8:00pm and 4:00am AEST, while beyondblue’s chat services are open from 3:00m to 12:00am.

All of these services are available seven days a week.

Lifeline: 13 11 14 (free from mobiles, local call from a landline) || Lifeline Australia website
beyondblue: 1300 22 4636 (local call from landlines, may be more from mobiles) || beyondblue website

Marigolds – not actually what this post is about but lovely nonetheless.

Any writer with aspirations to call themselves ‘author’ hits a point where they have to start thinking critically about their own work.

I don’t mean ‘critically’ in the sense of disliking it, thinking little of it or holding it up to the very unrealistic expectation that the first draft will be anything like the polished work of our favourite published authors (it won’t be, of course, and you can be certain that the novel you’re despairingly comparing your own work against probably only vaguely resembles its own first draft).  I use the term to mean the process of dissecting and analysing one’s crafted words to find out why the left wheel is a bit wonky.

Let me say up front that I don’t like the process.  I don’t know many people who do (but I have heard such writers exist).

But what I do love is when I find something wrong about my writing that I know I can fix.

I was lucky enough, recently, to be introduced to a film that I now quite love.  It’s a love story, I suppose you could say – a story about finding it, losing it, fearing it gone.  It has some of my favourite actors in it and covers a few aspects about life that I think are perhaps lacking in many stories nowadays.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (for the Elderly & Beautiful) was released in 2011 and has an almost intimidatingly talented line-up: Dame Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Tom Wilkinson, Ronald Pickup, Dev Patel and the ever-brilliant Dame Maggie Smith.  Based on a novel I haven’t read called These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach, the story follows seven ageing English people who – for a variety of reasons – find themselves heading to a retirement hotel in Jaipur, India to spend their sunset years in what they think is going to be a lavish palace but instead turns out to be a dilapidated and poorly-run building owned by Sonny, the young Indian manager.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (for the Elderly and Beautiful)

I won’t spoil the movie for you.  If you’ve seen it you may understand why I enjoyed it so (Dame Maggie Smith’s performance only one reason of many, though certainly a compelling one).  If you haven’t seen it then I heartily encourage you to do so.

The reason I bring it up, however, is that it made me think.

As a brief overview, the seven principal characters are: Evelyn Greenslade (played by Dame Judi Dench), a newly-widowed housewife who also serves as the occasional narrator; Douglas Ainslie (Bill Nighy), an optimistic but hen-pecked husband; Jean Ainslie (Penelope Wilton), pessimistic and hard-to-please wife of Douglas; Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith), racist and intolerant retired house-keeper being ‘outsourced’ to India for a hip replacement; Graham Dashwood (Tom Wilkinson), a newly-retired High Court judge who lived in India as a boy; Norman Cousins (Ronald Pickup), an ageing Casanova who desires to recapture his faded youth; and Madge Hardcastle (Celia Imrie) who, sick of being a glorified babysitter to her grandchildren, is looking for new love – preferably of the rich and handsome sort.

Each of these characters has a history.  Every one of them has issues to face, realities to come to, wake-up calls to… wake up to.  Some of their stories are more thoroughly explored than others but the fact remains that they all have stories.

I’m currently writing a story about a girl in London (a city which, I hasten to point out, I have never visited).  There are friends, dangers, trials, triumphs, misery and loss.  It’s not quite half-way through and it looks like it’s shaping up to be quite a large book already.

The main character is also the principal focus.  It’s written from a third-person perspective but the action specifically follows her.  The reader sees the world largely on her terms rather than following the other characters about.  I might change that aspect but for the most part I’m largely happy with it.

Nonetheless, something has nagged me about it.  It’s a sense of wrongness, of artifice, that some writers can’t tolerate and others associate directly with treating writing as a craft as much as an art.  It’s a sign, the latter group says, that you’re treating your work as a work-in-progress, a made thing rather than your precious special baby.  I take it largely as a warning sign; if the activity within the story seems somehow forced or stilted then it rings false to me.

I was in bed last night musing all of this over when I had an epiphany: I write single-growth stories.

Dame Judi Dench as Evelyn Greenslade and Celia Imrie as Madge Hardcastle in ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’

One of the things that I’ve discovered I love about Marigold Hotel is something that I haven’t realised I’ve been in love with for a long time.  All of the characters have a story to tell, a lesson to learn, something to teach, personal growth to go through.  This is true of more than the principal characters, too – Sonny and his girlfriend Sunaina have growing to do, as does Sonny’s mother.  Even Sunaina’s protective brother has a realisation or two to come to terms with.  Growth is everywhere in that film.  It’s a regular forest.

In my writing, however, the growth is generally restricted to one character – the character I’m placing at the forefront of the tale.

This isn’t a unique issue.  I’m sure most – perhaps all – writers go through it.  Some published authors seem plagued by it (no, I’m not going to point the finger – you’ll spot them on your own) so I know this isn’t something that I alone suffer from.

But it is something I can address.  It’s not a symptom, it’s a cause.  I can work with that.

That’s the part I love and, though this post seems largely devoid of advice or even wisdom, that’s the thing I hope readers might take from this: yes, the process of analysing your own writing can be a pain in the backside at times.  It can seem like a dull chore and it can even scare you into thinking that you’re going to end up hating your own writing as much as you (probably) hated writing book reviews in high school.

Don’t let that stop you from doing it.  Don’t let it prevent you from appreciating, enjoying, loving when you find an issue with your writing that you know you can work on.  If you can’t see a way to work on it, look deeper.

Maybe you’re looking at a symptom.