EP #56- The Pippins: Destigmatizing The Conversation on Mental Health with Brigitte and Chris Norton, CEO Equinox Hotels

(gentle piano music) - What the pipins have done, and I hope continue to do, is set the stage for the conversation. It's almost like they're punic for us because they have to put them out, and they represent Charles in his life, and he vibrates through them, and we see him touching other people. And so, you know, it's incredibly healing for us to see what his art is doing for a lot of other people that we have never met before, and we don't know. And we're just kind of a conduit for these pipins as they hang on the wall and the poetry. - Welcome back to another episode of Everyday in Dorfins. This week, I have the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Christopher and Brigitte Norton, parents to the late artist, Charles Norton, on his exhibit called The Pippins, "Delema of Colors." Charles had an incredible life where he lived in Bali, Singapore, in France, studied architecture in London, and then eventually moved to Brooklyn in 2018 as a full-time artist. Charles battled with severe depression and mental health issues leading to his death in 2019 at the age of 24. Despite his young age, Charles left his family with a prolific body of work, including paintings, with a strong love for vibrant and unusual color combinations, drawings, illustrations, sketches, poetry, and two children's books. This show is designed to raise mental health awareness, to show that it's okay to not be okay, and to also support project-healthy minds, which is a nonprofit dedicated to educating others around mental health and providing resources to those that are suffering with mental illness. In this episode, Brigitte and Chris talk about the exhibit and the art that Charles produced, the symbolism behind the pipins and how the pipins have really impacted people's lives who have stepped into the gallery and how it's helped drive this conversation around breaking the stigma of mental health. We also talk about how to engage with others who are struggling with mental illness. Chris and Brigitte's own experiences with the trauma of losing their son, how they've gone through the grieving process, and ultimately how the exhibit itself has really helped them in their healing journey and is now a physical space that is dedicated towards celebrating Charles' life and his work, and hopefully inspiring other people to open up that dialogue around mental health and normalizing the conversations on being okay with not being okay. I had the opportunity to stop by the exhibit about a month ago, and when I walked in, I was just incredibly impressed by all the work that Charles had produced and moved by the poetry alongside the artwork. So it really impacted me, and that is exactly why I wanted to have both Chris and Brigitte come on to the show today to really talk about this experience and use their platform to spread important messages around mental health. And also how no matter the fortunes that someone may be granted to them, you never know how people are feeling about themselves on the inside, and maybe how they might be silently suffering. So mental health doesn't have to look like one thing or another, it can take various shapes and forms, and I think that their story is just incredibly impactful and really helps further this conversation on. The reality around depression, how you may seem to have everything you want in your life given to you, and at the end of the day, you never know what's happening behind closed doors and how someone may be feeling on the inside. So all of these topics are very much related to what I'm trying to promote here on the podcast around redefining mental health and happiness and wellbeing. I would encourage all of you today after listening to this episode to go and visit the gallery at the Highline Nine in Chelsea. The exhibit is open until the end of February, that's the end of this month, so definitely be sure to check it out. I am so excited to get into this interview before we do so. I have a brief message from my sponsor, Inker. Hi, Chris, hi, Brigitte. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today. It is wonderful having you both as guests. Thank you, Stella. Thank you, Stella. We are happy to be talking with you today. When I came into the exhibit about a month ago, I was incredibly blown away by Charles' work and the entire exhibit around the Pipins. It was really beautiful to be there and I was very inspired and just drawn to everything that you're presenting with this work and opening up this space and this platform to talk about mental health and destigmatizing the conversation. So I would really love to start off by giving you both the opportunity to share a little bit about your son, Charles, and his artwork and the inspiration and symbolism behind the Pipins and the dilemma of colors. He was a spectacular young man with an enormous amount of talent. I like to describe him as a philosopher, a painter and a poet, who had a lot of, I think, sensitivity and sensibility and was drawn to expressing himself through art at a very young age. Towards his latter part of his life, which was, he left us when he was 24, he started developing depression. And during that time period, he, next to his other work, he developed a character called the Pipins. And the Pipins, as you saw Stella in the exhibit, are a collection of characters that he decided to draw in colored pencil. There are over 50 Pipins he created. And there are over 20 Pipins he created that have poetry attached to each one of the Pipins. They're very colorful, which could be surprising given somebody who's suffering from depression. And they're sarcastically funny without ever being mean. And the Pipins represent the duality in life that all of us face to some extent. And every one of the Pipins, who comes in forms of every human walk of life, you could imagine. But every Pipin, you see, has thumbs up in the front, which signals the good part of life and future. And that everything is OK. And in back of the Pipins, there's always the middle finger that Pipin gives to the world. And that's the darker side, the more disturbed side. And each Pipin lives with both of those things. And so the illustration, if you see them, you almost look like mid 19th century illustrative art, the very, very technical and beautifully done. And what we found, as we celebrated him, and as we exhibited the Pipins, we found that people that came into the gallery space were surprised and started getting into all these dimensions within the poetry and the Pipins. And as we engaged with people, and especially Brigitte, to have spent almost every day in the gallery, and as we told our story, we found that everybody also has their story. And this during a time when the pandemic has kind of accelerated so many trends in our lives. And one of the trends that seems to be such a huge issue for everybody personally and professionally for companies and families is the struggle society has with mental health issues. And the stigma around that subject. And so what we found is that Pipin became this platform to open up the conversation. And maybe that's the first step is to open up the conversation about this important issue. Absolutely. I agree. And I think that's why it's so incredible to see this exhibit as a celebration of Charles's work in his life, because from those experiences that he's-- he had, you've also created so much beauty in creating a platform that is really meant to be dedicated towards destigmatizing mental health and conversations around mental health. I think the duality around the Pipins is so fascinating where you see them sitting upright in these colorful illustrations with their thumbs up, but then behind them their middle finger is pointed upwards. And it shows really that on the outside, someone may appear entirely different from how they feel on the inside. And I know that art is a very personal thing. And I'm sure that Charles also drew from his own experiences with depression and mental health issues and illustrating these exhibits. How would you describe his own experiences with mental health and how that shaped the way that he actually drew these figures and put together this artwork? This is a very hard question, because I'm still searching through his writings. And today I found a letter that he had written to me when he had a breakdown in London, while he was-- studying architecture. And it was a thank you letter. And he was describing how he felt, how he was, and how everything was so hard for him, so difficult. Life was not okay. And through all the walks and talks that we did, he was thanking me for making it okay. So he was already using the thumbs up. It was really, I think, with mental illness. You have one day or one week or two weeks of phases where you are really down and some others where you are up and you don't really know why. And as a caretaker, you don't know either. You don't know how to help. How to get started if you know the person very well, you can initiate some things that will brighten their days like he says. And the show is all about colors. How to find colors in your life. How to transform the black and white from inside into a beautiful world or even a livable world for some. - Absolutely. And I think there are so many beautiful positive messages from the poetry that I've read and in the exhibit. I know when you walk into the gallery on the wall, there's this quote that Charles has that says, "When shit from the past comes and spooks you, "tell it to politely fuck off, "which is an element of humor in it, "which I find to be so great because amidst "some of the darker or heavier poetry "or commentary around the pipins, "there's still this element of humor and happiness, enjoy." And I think in that quote in particular, it's so powerful because it's something that everyone can relate to. When things start to haunt you and when things start to feel dark and scary, just tell it to go away and just tell yourself to redirect your attention to something else, to something happier, to something that is more joyous, perhaps. - You know, you say something that was kind of typical of Charles, even when he was, I think I saw him live really angry once, but even through the frustrations, he always felt that being polite was an important thing. And so it's funny that it's kind of this boxed the position of telling somebody to fuck off but doing it politely was kind of him. But it also brings up the point that, in a lot of, I think many people suffer from it is, if you would have seen Charles and met him, he was kind of checked all the boxes of what any young man could ask for, a loving family and brother and sister and parents and he was tall and handsome and he was incredibly smart, and he had a good education. So I remember doing some of the conversations we had as we went through this, we would sometimes say, "Well, but why are you depressed? You have everything." And I think there was a suicide just recently of a young woman who killed herself and she had just one, was it Miss Universe? I miss USA. - I think Miss America, I wanna say. - But you also think, here's somebody who has it all, she has everything, you know, she's smart and young and beautiful and yet internally, they suffer and they struggle. And so, you know, to Brigitte's point, you know, the caretakers, you know, you were so ill prepared to know how to react, where do we even start? And so with the pimpums we hooked up with, an organization to try to raise funds, called Project Healthy Minds. And basically, you know, in a nutshell, what they're trying to do is help people find help, people who look for help find help because, you know, sometimes if you Google, you know, something and you try to get help, you get, you know, 800 answers, you don't even know where to start. And so there's that piece also. But, you know, sometimes the listening and listening to people who seem to have it all, and maybe have the thumbs up, you know, as an outer shell, but you're not okay, actually, inside. So it's this, you know, the conversation piece, I think that that is so important in this and engaging in the conversation. And again, I think Pippin has set this stage for people to open up and talk about their own story. And it seems like everybody has a story. And then he brejit, I mean, she has been in the gallery every day meeting with hundreds of people. - Absolutely. And I've heard, you know, brejit and I speak offline about some of the people that have walked into this gallery, you know, what they've gotten out of that experience and how it's impacted them. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about what you've seen across the people that have come inside to this gallery, how Charles' work has impacted them. And, you know, I think something that's so powerful about the work that he's done and the messages that he's getting across through his artwork is that mental health is something that's universal to everyone. And it's also a spectrum that, you know, people can experience a variety of different mental health issues relative to their own life experiences and relative to their own circumstances. And, you know, no matter where you are along that journey, I think that anyone can relate somehow to the messages that he's sharing. And that's what I think is incredibly powerful, you know, how relatable a lot of this messaging is. But, you know, I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about the feedback that you've heard from the gallery and the experiences that people have had when reading Charles' poetry and seeing the work and, you know, being fully immersed there. - Well, I think when the people enter the gallery first, they look at all those people. They all have that in common, you know, the fingers. And then they're all sitting in the same direction with the foot slightly knocking off things, you know, there is one cross legs and then the foot goes really, like they don't care. And they are on a very plain background. They all look similar in the attitude and they're almost all smiling, really. And so it brings a smile to them and they are surprised. And then they, right away discover the humor of those drawings and they read the poetry that is also full of humor, sarcasm. But when I tell them that this young man is no longer here and then he was suffering, suddenly they find himself in the poetry and they ride away, almost ride away, they say, but oh, I'm very touched by the poetry and I really, I can feel, I can feel his presence, I can feel his humor and until they go to the wall where we have written, give us your thoughts, what's okay and what's not. And there is a hand of Charlie with a thumbs up and the middle finger, two hands that he drew when he was in art school. And people have been pouring and writing, what is okay for them and what is not. And then the conversation starts. It's not okay to suffer, it's not okay to not be okay. But I mean, it's endless and the conversation, yes. With them some young woman told me, but you saved my life just talking about that. Just opening the debate, some people are feel ashamed. One that told me, you are the second person. And I tell that I jump out of the window and I survive, but you are the second person I'm telling. So it's an open dialogue really. - Yeah, there's power in community and creating a space for people to be vulnerable and honest about their experiences. And it's incredibly difficult to share something that personal like that, for example. And I can only imagine how impactful this exhibit and just the work that Charles has produced is to so many people. And that's why I love that you've also partnered with Project Healthy Mines as a way to talk about how to seek help when you need it. The CEO of the nonprofit talks about how we need to democratize mental health access. And that not everyone needs the same thing. And I think there's so much value in that as well that understanding that different people need different types of resources. And so when you saw your son suffering, as caretakers as parents, how did you try to support him in his suffering and helping him to get better and helping him to feel better? And through that process, how did you also take care of yourselves because I can only imagine the immense burden and trauma that you were also going through, as parents to your son, seeing him suffer is such a great amount. - I don't know if there's an easy answer for that, Estella. Because-- - What did you do? What we did is that we had to register him because he had a psychotic episode with his brother and his sister. We tricked him into going to a hospital in London. And of course, I was with him [BLANK_AUDIO] sister and brother and they told us that they wanted him to go to a psychiatrist hospital for evaluation. So they took him and the next morning he started his first peep-in. We had an appointment with a psychiatrist and he went on a hunger strike to save the world, to save to he wanted free food. For everyone he wanted all the stigma and he was against racism. He wanted to for the world to reset somehow. And so we took him there and the next morning we had the first meeting with the doctor and he started eating again and it's when he started his first peep-in. The crayon on a little piece of paper there and the next morning we brought him the color crayon and then he started and that's the only way for him. It was the only way for him to relax and to just. But we didn't know how to start. We had a big trust in the medical field and they started to take medication. And this when you go in here we had no idea. We had no one in the family that closed by that went through that. So I was part of a group in London of people who had children suffering also but it was so painful for me to go there. We thought that love with a lot of love we would be able to. And a lot of talking and a lot of being present but that was not enough. We did it more and we parents need to be more educated because it's everywhere now. So we felt really lonely. I would add to that you try to provide a all the medical support you think you can find. That is psychiatry, psychology. Then you try to help on lifestyle and you try to help on accommodations. You from spending time. But you're dealing with an adult also. You don't remember you're not dealing with a child. So even with a medical feedback a lot of the doctors don't actually tell you what they discuss with him because he's an adult. And so you've got to get consent. Yes, but it's very hard to align between an adult who is not well. How you have to make decision for this adult. You cannot just live him in the streets. You know, that's the problem with mental health. It's so delicate. The difficult part I think is that you're always struggling because you really don't know exactly what you're dealing with. And I think if I think of friends or family that have had physical ailment, you know, as harsh as it can be, it seems to be where you can see it and it's mechanical. So from knee and hip replacements to any other illnesses, you kind of, you're faced with it. It's a diagnosis. You know, how to treat it. And then you support it as best you can. With mental illness, you don't really know what you're dealing with. And you're not quite sure. And the doctors are not quite sure. So it's a very kind of a destabilizing and hunting for something and trying to find what it is without ever being able to put your finger on it. Also, we are, everyone is in denial when it happens. I mean, Charlie was in denial. We were in denial. We couldn't believe it that he was the top of everything. And then slowly we could see he couldn't do certain things. So it's very hard. Right. And I think it goes back to that point that you had made earlier, Chris, on how your son had everything in his life. He had a family that cared for him and he was handsome and he did well in school and he was passionate about all these things. And maybe on the outside, he appeared to have everything he could have ever imagined. And yet, that doesn't even come close to how he was feeling on the inside. And I think it goes to show how important it is to treat others with compassion and kindness because you never know the mental state that they're in and how they feel on the inside. And how you feel on the inside is what colors your perception of the world. So at the end of the day, it doesn't even matter the fortunes that are granted to you if the way that you perceive the world is something so dark and depressing and heavy to go through. You're not going to have that sense of happiness. And it's just going to make it that much harder to even wake up in the morning and have the motivation to do anything. And so, I think it ties back to that point that you made Chris around the complexities around mental health and this is the nature of happiness because it seems like in theory someone who has everything should be happy. But that's not necessarily the case all the time. I think you see it also and I know company struggle with it and the pandemic has accelerated. And I think our digital world is accelerating it because maybe even more than in the past they hide behind in the imagery, faces, Facebook, Instagram, whatever it is. But there is this disconnection from people and what you see and what they portray and how they want to feel and how they look is kind of a disconnect. That's where Pippin comes in a bit with is everything is okay and everything and it's not. The question is how can you help move things forward and we're not doctors and we're not psychiatrists or psychologists. But a long stretch we just have our story. But what is so different is that Charles as an artist left behind these Pippins and while the Pippins aren't the answer for all of it, what the Pippins have done and I hope continue to do is set the stage for the conversation. And it is almost like therapeutic for us because to put them out and they represent Charles in his life and he vibrates through them and we see him touching other people. And so it's incredibly healing for us to see what his art is doing for a lot of other people that we have never met before and we don't know. And we're just kind of a conduit for these Pippins as they hang on the wall and the poetry and hopefully the Pippins will travel and we have people who expressed interest on taking the show to Tel Aviv and to LA. We're dealing with a major corporation in New York right now and we can tell you more about it soon who wants to use the Pippins in a very large way to talk about depression and mental illness and suicide in a large format. And so we just hope that Pippins can play a larger role even on setting the platform for conversation. And so as more as we talk about it and as more we open up, it is really incredible to see that other people around the Pippins have opened up. And I don't think they would have done that necessarily with, I mean, we would have never met them without the Pippins. And so Charles has left a bit of a legacy and it has made our healing process, you know, while never complete, certainly easier, I think, because we can talk about Charles in a context that is meaningful for others. And it's something we can do for him because he left all those Pippins. He wanted, he had made cards and stickers. He was giving them away in Brooklyn all over Manhattan and he wanted people to know what was the thumbs of the middle finger. So, and we had them here with us. He said they were not in Brooklyn. So they were not with him. He wanted them to be safe and I know he wanted us to do something with this. So you know, in his funny stuff Stella, Brigitte and I never knew it. I'm sure Charlie never knew that there was a very, there was a Broadway show in the early 70s. I don't know if you ever heard it called the Pippins. No, I haven't. So you should go back and you should go and listen to it. The lyrics and the music are unbelievable. And this story about this young prince is a bit of Charlie. It's a bit of Charlie's story. And so it's interesting that, you know, I don't know if it's, you know, some connection of the out there that, you know, keeps telling the story and kind of, it kind of gives it re-breath as it. And Charles is taking kind of the men's subject forward, what, 50, a half a century later. And there's a man, an Israeli art critic who's also the artistic director for the Shanghai Modern Museum, who wrote a 16-page essay on the Pippins and he had never met Charles. Charlie battle. A shy batel. And he did an unbelievable job in writing and kind of, you know, putting that all into context in a way that we could have never articulated. And he came to interview Brigitte and me, you know, I don't know. painfully for four hours and put us through the ringer to understand this young man and his art. And actually, if you go, Brigitte has created a website for the exhibit called CWN Pippins. CWN Pippins on Instagram. And so if you go to that Instagram website, you can see a lot of the Pippins. And if you go behind the squares of the Pippins, you can see a lot of the poetry. And there's a lot of music and the wall that Brigitte described where all these people came and started writing their own feelings as kind of an interactive art piece has developed in this huge, it's almost a separate piece of art that has so much energy in it and tells such amazing stories. And again, both what's okay, what's not okay. And it's almost kind of a whole ages. It's a it's a mirror of our society today. And yeah, I mean, ages, young, old, languages, French, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, everything. And actually, Brigitte did a little piece on on the CWN Pippins Instagram where you've had a little clip of video clip. Yeah, they're all there. And you can see the wall and it's been actually not what to do with the wall because when we leave the gallery, it's going to be going to do a wallpaper. Yeah, something. I think that's a great idea. I mean, I remember when I went into the gallery that wall, like the energy was just so infectious. And it's beautiful to see something, you know, in real life, like this tangible piece of artwork where people are able to share what is okay and what is not okay for them. Like when that comes to life and it's something you can actually visibly look at, I think it puts into perspective, how many people can can also, you know, understand that story and also share their own experiences around mental health and, you know, on a day to day basis, what's okay for them and what's not. And that knowing that the things that are not okay, it's also okay to not feel okay in that. And I, you know, opening up that conversation is so important. And another thing that I find really fascinating about the exhibit itself and the Pippins is that each piece of artwork is paired with the poetry. I think art in it of itself paintings drawings, whatever it may be, is so powerful because art can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on who views it. And, you know, even the drawings themselves, like the fact that we spoke about the dilemma of color, how these Pippins are, you know, appear to be so colorful and that may be synonymous with happiness, but actually on the inside they're they're struggling. And, you know, from the position of their hands and the middle finger behind them, like if you just look at the art, you can take so much away from it. But I think the poetry really helps to supplement what we see in the Pippins and the drawings because it I think it adds that depth and that that layer around explaining really, like, you know, the struggles that they're going through. And I think pairing something that's written with something that's more visual is even more powerful. And I think that's really what's getting people excited as well. You know Stella, to add to that, you know, Charles had developed the friendship with Robert Redford, the actor. And, you know, the age gap between the news, I don't know, 60 years, 75, so, but he went up to Sundance to attend one of the film labs and he he didn't really know who Bob was until he got up there kind of, you know, and Bob always when he was young, he was 18, he was actually a France and wanted to be a painter. So they had kind of this common ground. But when he when Bob came to the gallery, he looked around and he spent almost two hours looking at all the different drawings and he it's and there is one of him that Charles did for his birthday. He's 18th birthday. But he started reading the poetry and he's, oh my god, you know, I never realized that dimension to it. And, you know, and he read actually, there's a recording where he did, he read a few of the poems, including one that is about a bust, a sculpture called Freddie. And in the gallery, you'll see this, some of the sculptures that Brigitte sculpted, and that Charles painted over on on, give him another dimension of color. And Brigitte can tell more about that. Actually, that's why he wrote in one of the poems of our color. And then then would be Goldberg read a few poems and then Goldy Han read one and then Friends of Hours in Canada who are Canadian stage actors read one about a 45 year wedding anniversary. And they're all hilarious. But, you know, it's when you when people come to the gallery, they there's so many dimensions to the visit. And just on the visual side, if you look at all the costumes that Pippens wear, if Charles would have been a costume designer, they would be spectacular. And if Charles industrial designer, he did, you know, every Pippen sits on a different type of a chair. And there's so many layers. I still discover stuff. I just discovered something on a on a Pippen last week, which I never saw. And, you know, we just go back and the layers in the poetry and in the paint and the drawings are so spectacular. It's and is so rich. And he created all that within the last five years, four, five years. It's spectacular, truly. I mean, I have the book right next to me, and I'm looking at the Johnny Walker, like the red figure. And I remember when I went to the gallery, Brigitte, you had kind of pointed my friend and I towards the poetry here. And there's it's it's so powerful because you look at this image and it's this guy who's in this red suit. And he seems so confident. And he seems like he has everything together. And he's, you know, standing upright. And then you read some of the poetry associated with this and, you know, like the fifth paragraph starts with, we cannot read it. It's so painful. Go ahead. Go ahead. How am I supposed to get out of debt? All I do is vent and repent the old by attempting to be bold. I can't afford rent. I can't pitch my tent outside. I'm drenched in lament. Pride went out the door to find someone who needs it more. And then it goes, it's it's so impactful. It's so beautiful. And I think when you have someone actually read it, you can hear like the melody and the rhythm. And it's it's really it's beautiful because I feel like, you know, maybe you hear this in Charles's voice. You hear it. His spirit coming through with this. And that's so powerful. And it's so authentic and real. And this is what I think is what gets people so invested in the work that he's created. And just understanding how no matter, you know, your life circumstances, if you don't feel good on the inside, you're not going to move through the world in a positive and joyous way. And to feel happy is to feel a happiness within yourself first and foremost. And I think it's just I'm blown away. Every time I look at the the drawings and I speak with the both of you just really by the work that's being done here to to move this conversation forward. I know you mentioned that just having this exhibit has really helped with your healing process as parents. And I wanted to also ask, you know, how have you managed to stay strong and to also look back on your son's life and find so much beauty and joy and celebration from that and continue to move forward because I know when he passed, it was also, you know, a huge moment in your career, Chris, with the opening of the Equinox hotel. And so I can only imagine how difficult it is to reconcile such a tragedy with also such an incredible accomplishment. Well, I'm not sure if it's in thank you for saying that. And I'm not sure but always feels like an accomplishment or you know, sometimes it feels like a failure and sometimes it feel you, you know, and everybody goes through it in a very different way. And then sometimes in life and all of us where suddenly faced with something or you know, he was faced with something, you know, if anybody had a difficult he did. And but, you know, losing a child is something that, you know, you don't push on anybody because it just doesn't make any sense. You can lose a parent or a grandparent. You can at least chronologically kind of reason with it even though it's painful. The child never makes sense. And but then you're dealt, then you then you're put in front of that and then you've got to deal with it. And, you know, I think it could pull a lot of families apart or it can make family stronger. And, you know, we lean on each other and we support each other and we listen and you then you grieve in very different ways. And, you know, you learn how to respect the other person has very different feelings or stages of grieving at different times than yours, you know, and it's not right or wrong there. This is just, you know, going through them kind of being open and, you know, and then the brothers and sisters also, you know, losing a child is difficult and I don't even want to imagine how it is to lose a brother. I think the healing part of the drawings has been, as I said, therapeutic because the beauty of what he expressed and the vibrant art he left behind and beyond just being beautiful also is so meaningful. And for us, the sense that we can take what he created in a way that might be helpful to others. If it opens a conversation, if it gets people to talk about it, if it helps caretakers to become better caretakers or society to move forward. than that's a great gift he gave all of us. And so we kind of, I think we kind of stewards of that and we feel that having the pippance and having the poetry is something that we would like to keep sharing. - I wanted to say that when you were talking about Johnny Walker, the standing red man, when Charlie sent me the poetry, he wrote the poetry after he did the drawings. He didn't resonate to me that he was speaking. It's only after he passed. And so it's a terrible illness. I mean, to have mental illness because you are hiding it in many ways and people don't see it, I see it now. So we have, I think we are learning the lesson of staying open, having our listening to other people. I think that's the most important. And talking about mental health, help us recognize some signs or some things that I knew he was not well, but this text, for example, is really powerful and the mirror image of what he felt. - You know, it's the only walking, it's the only standing pippin of all of them. - Which feels kind of ironic as well because when you think about the poetry, it's the only standing one yet, the poetry itself is so sad. And the character is so sad. - But you know, he was a great, he was very athletic and he walked all the time. And it was a, was there a beauty for him? - His brother wrote to Poim about him. - Yeah, his older brother did. But Charlie could walk all night long, all day, he'd just walk and when we were in our home in France. - He could run also. - He would run. - Very fast. - There's a mountain that it takes us about five hours to go back and forth, it would take him an hour and a half. - Running up a kilometer high mountain. - Incredible. - Like a gazelle. So he was Johnny Walker. And again, like Brigitte said, you don't hear it or your radar is sharp enough to pick up on this stuff. And maybe the next one is. And again, if people can help people to just sharpen that radar or say maybe a few minutes. - And Elf us help all the others to understand when someone or to recognize, when someone needs help or need to be listened to. - And they might not know they need help. So the reading between the lines, how do you pick up on some of those signals versus? - And I think that's the biggest message that Charlie wanted to send through the people. - It's such a great point. Often times, if you feel like you're kind of falling into a dark hole or into an intense depression, I've found that when I've started to feel really down on myself, I tend to self isolate. And that's bad because you need people there to support you. And sometimes people aren't very aware that people are kind of going down that rabbit hole or starting to feel really down on themselves or starting to fall into some sort of depression. And I think it's so important to kind of exercise the mind in a way to be able to identify when people actually need help before they may even, they may know it or they may not know it. And I think to your earlier point as well, Brigitte, with mental illness, there could be a lot of shame and guilt and this desire to kind of shut it out and to be and denial about it. And I think if that mindset is continuously adopted, it makes it even harder to intervene for others and to intervene for yourself. Because at the end of the day, no matter how many people are there to support you and to love you and to try to get you out of that, you can only help yourself at the end of the day. And you're the only one that can make that decision. And it's heartbreaking that that's the reality because sometimes there's the case where you don't, you just can't do that in that moment to help yourself. Like with this story and I think that's why it's just so important to educate people around like how can we identify when someone needs help and what can we do as parents, as friends, as family members. As acquaintances, how can we play an active role in helping that person get better? And I think it's really interesting to see how art can be a vehicle to sharing this story. How just art and poetry can be a way to express that. And that's really exciting to me. Yes. And when someone once told me, "Can you realize all the energy Charlie put to leave you all that?" He must have worked like a crazy artist to leave so much because he knew he was that well and he was. And so he wanted to leave this legacy and we don't want. We want to use it for people. Like you said, to open the dialogue and everybody can speak about it freely. And. When they give you the thumbs up, it doesn't mean that it's all thumbs up. Behind the back, it might be a middle finger somewhere. I mean, it's like when you ask people, "Oh, how are you doing?" People say, "Oh, I'm good." Like, it's never. The answer is never, "Yeah, I'm good." That's just what we've been conditioned to respond to. And maybe how can we have more meaningful conversations where we really do check in with people and ask, "How are you doing?" Like, is anything going on in your life right now that's troubling or really listening, like actively listening to someone? Because it's so funny to me how we are just so conditioned and we just automatically respond with, "Yeah, I'm good, things are fine." When really, you know, like you said, the thumbs up isn't necessarily that thumbs up. - Well, that's why the thumbs up is in the front and the middle finger is hiding in the back of all the pippance is that the front you show yourself, it's just an appearance. And the back is where the real things happen. And then we have to look at everybody's back and see how they are really. But I think it's also the stigma around mental illness. Like if you say, my mother just had a hip replacement, you know, she's back. Or if she has two hip replacements, you carry it in a bag of honor, like, wow, how amazing is that. But if your mother suffers from depression, you know, people see that as a weakness. And so, in the other, I was society. - Oh, they don't know how to handle. A lot of people didn't know how to talk to Charlie. They didn't know if this week he would be okay or another week, you know, they were afraid. It's, they don't know. So we have to. - It goes back to the importance. The number one step is conversation and opening it up. - Awareness. - It's okay. As you said, it's okay not to be okay. So I think that's where the pippance come in. It's opening up the conversation through the global and through the poetry and hopefully. - And through time, don't think that you can fix it. Just fix it. That's one of the young person wrote on the wall. It's not okay to listen to someone that tells you you just fix it. It doesn't work. It's the wrong thing to say. So I think it's important to listen to what the people have to say about their, what's not okay. - I think sometimes that's really what, you know, all they need in that moment sometimes is just to be able to talk about it and for someone to listen. Sometimes people are so afraid to have these conversations with someone who's suffering from mental illness and who may be really depressed because they don't know what to say. Like they don't know how to be there for that person. And so maybe they feel like, oh, I can't engage with that person. I mean, one of my close friends in college, I was really good friends with all throughout college and I saw her suffer from depression and many mental health struggles and sometimes it would be difficult for me to sit down with her to have a conversation 'cause I didn't know what to say. But when I did sit down with her and I would talk to her about what she was going through, I found that, you know, the value that I added to her healing process was just sitting back and not saying anything, like sitting back and listening and allowing her that space to feel whatever she was feeling because I think, you know, people may come into these conversations feeling like they need to say the right thing to fix the other person or to help them gain this clarity and to feel like they'll be better tomorrow. But it's very much a gradual process. You don't just snap your fingers and the next day you aren't feeling depressed. It's something that is gradual and ever changing. And I think, you know, when we engage with other people who are struggling with mental illness, we need to approach those conversations with compassion and a willingness to listen, a lack of judgment and, you know, support just knowing, okay, I'm here for you. And it's okay that you feel this way and you won't feel this way forever. Like what are some steps you can do today to feel 10% happier or to feel like there's a little bit more brightness that's emerging from all the darkness because it's not like it's going to happen in a 180 shift. It's small changes I think that you need to make and small wins to celebrate to help you feel a bit better in yourself and to help guide that conversation. with someone who's suffering. - She battle really well said it right in that text in this philosophical essay. He said, "We are old pipans. You and me and all around. We all suffered sooner or later of mental busy killibra a little bit. So we have to be aware of that and use that to understand others. We are deeply suffering." - There's also the line when you know when, so if you think of a mental illness versus a physical illness, there's a point where you need medical intervention and you need psychiatrists, psychologists to help you like, if you have a need a root canal, you need to go and see a dentist. You can't just tell buddy, it's gonna be okay to worry about it. And even that, that transition to when you need to help versus, you know, sometimes we're ill, we have a cold and then three days later we're better. And I think we've all gone through like good days, bad days. And there's a moment when this doesn't need medical attention and then there's moments when it doesn't. Just being able to recognize some of those signals, I think in society versus shaming it. And I think this whole conversation, and I said before, this whole stigma around mental illness, where it's seen as a weakness and something you don't wanna talk about. And you know, you don't wanna say you have a brother who subverts from mental illness, you, you, you. Okay, I have a brother who has a knee injury, but you know, that is a big step to take, I think, for all of us in both the personal context, family context, the company corporate political context, all of us need to be able to embrace that somehow better. - And don't give up on anybody who has mental illness, don't give up on people who are suffering of something that is not so well-defined, you know, that you cannot pinpoint. - These are all such incredible points and important things to remind ourselves of daily, because it's easy to forget these things. And you know, my podcast is all around mental health and happiness. And one of my favorite quotes is from Adam Grant, which is that he says, you know, the absence of mental illness does not mean that there's the presence of mental health. And I think when we think about mental health, we have to really recognize the whole array, like the entire spectrum of what falls under our mental health and happiness. And so in the last part of my interview tonight, I wanted to end on speaking a bit more broadly around happiness and well-being. So, you know, throughout the course of your lives and, you know, with this gallery and this exhibit, how has your perception of happiness changed? And what are some things that you do to stay happy and to keep your mind healthy? - We are really blessed because we all have a great sense of humor, Charlie had a great sense of humor. And so that helps us thinking about him and some of his writing really help us through. But I think it's love, I think to listen to, the struggle that the other one is having. And we didn't have, we don't have the grief in the same, the same level of grief. And I felt really depressed myself. Christopher was very patient with me, but I'm still very emotional. And I think of my children and we have, our two other children and thank God we have been able to talk about Charlie. They love him so much. So he's still here, he's still with Philly's energy. We talk about him and I think that's really helped us to see the other side and not live in the past, but live in all the legacy, all the great memories and all the things we can do with Charlie, when he left. Yes, tell us, tell if you could help us to make through your, listen through your, the listeners of your podcast. And you have, you have been amazing. But you know, encourage them to come and visit the gallery and encourage them to come and see what we talked about. And visit the Instagram and help us move this conversation forward. I will absolutely link the Instagram to the episode notes. And I know that the gallery has been extended until the end of February, which is incredibly exciting. So we'd love for my listeners to come out and see the exhibit because it's really incredible. And you know, my final question for the both of you, which is something that I ask every guest that comes onto the podcast is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day. You did. You were, you were an amazing young woman and you're smart and intuitive and intelligent in the way you approach these various subjects. And just the fact that you have come to the gallery and then took it forward and we met and we talked and that you bringing this to the forefront is enormous joy and that, you know, for us to see that there is a new generation that takes sincere interest in this subject and that you move this forward is, has been great joy to us. So congratulations to you and your parents can be very proud of you. So thank you so much. That is a very kind answer. I really appreciate that. And again, it's been an absolute pleasure having both you and Brigitte on the podcast. I am so excited for my listeners to hear this episode and for them to check out the gallery, which will be open at the Highline 9 until the end of February. So thank you again so much Chris and Brigitte. This was a pleasure. Thank you. We'll see you soon. (upbeat music) Thank you for listening and remember to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. Don't forget to keep spreading endorphins and find things that bring you endorphins every day. See you next time. (upbeat music)