WEBVTT - Not Where We Go 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:14.640 In the South, we're big fans of parables. There's something 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.360 comforting and knowing how a story will be told, knowing 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:23.279 the paths and the endings of all the characters. Family 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:28.120 stories aren't all that different. With each telling, the beats 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:32.400 of the story get etched into the family history. But 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:38.959 what about when someone decides to buck tradition. What if 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.080 someone wants to tell one of those stories differently. 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.880 Dunstan was a blacksmith and he was in his blacksmith 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:49.680 shop and write at closing time, an old man shows 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:51.920 up at his shop and says, can you make me 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:56.480 a chalice? So he starts pounding away at his anville, 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:00.640 and as he's doing that, he sees this old man, 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:03.040 out of the corner of his eyes, start to rapidly 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.640 change form. And he's an old man. Now he's a 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:08.440 young girl. Now he's an old man again. Now he's 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.120 a beautiful woman. Now he's a young boy. And he 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:16.520 knows instantly that that's the devil. And so he while 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:19.480 he's hammering away, he just sort of without missing a beat, 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.400 he puts his tongs into the furnace, and then when 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:24.560 he sees them get red hot, he grabs them and 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.560 then grabs the devil by the nose with the tongs, 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:30.480 who then instantly changes back into an old man and 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.080 runs out of the blacksmith shop, saying, the blacksmith just 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:33.840 attack me. 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:39.440 I'm hearing the story of Dunstan and the Devil from 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.080 Noah Saderstrom. He's the artist whose paintings about his great 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:45.360 grandfather were the focus of a major show at the 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.640 Mississippi Museum of Art. It's a Saturday in April, the 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:52.520 morning after the show's opening. He's energetic today as he 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:56.120 walks me through his work, one hundred and eighty three 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:00.000 canvases that tell the story of his great grandfather, doctor 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.080 David L. Smith. We're talking about Dunstan because the parable 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.640 also makes an appearance in one of these paintings. Right 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:10.400 there in the center, there are two men in a tussle. 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:13.400 One goes to the other's face with a red hot 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:17.120 pair of tongs. And Noah's story of Dunstan. The saint 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.480 tangles with the devil and the experience puts him at 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.040 odds with his community. And that sounded like a story 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.720 he was familiar with, that of doctor Smith, the one 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:31.200 whose own perception of reality was so different from his 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:34.680 communities that he had to be sent away to the 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:36.040 Mississippi State Asylum. 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.400 That story, next to the Doctor Smith's story, that seems 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:42.920 like a problem that Dunstan was having it. 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:47.320 I'd never heard of Saint Dunstan before Noah, but after 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:51.680 the opening I started seeing references to him everywhere, including 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:53.720 on the back of a bottle of whiskey that was 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:59.800 fire spiced. Get it. But the story there and another 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.240 is a little different. In those versions, doubt doesn't seem 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.239 to play as big a role. The townspeople are glad 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:12.239 he ran the devil out. That's the thing with stories. 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:16.840 The takeaway is up for interpretation. At a certain point, 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.840 the stories become more a product of the person telling 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:24.400 them than the people in them. Of course, not everything 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.600 that happens becomes a story. Sometimes a thing is too 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.400 mundane to even remember, and sometimes it's so painful that 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:36.680 generation after generation works to bury it. So what happens 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:41.840 when one of those generations decides to unearth that story. 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:49.080 I'm Larison Campbell and this is under Yazoo Clay A 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.760 quick heads up. This episode contains mentions of sexual assault. 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.600 Noah is the first person to admit if it were 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.240 up to certain members of his face family, and not 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.760 the curators of the Mississippi Museum of Art, the show 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:08.640 would never have gone up. Noah's closest link to his 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.720 great grandfather, that is, the only person he ever met 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:16.040 who actually knew doctor Smith was his own grandmother, Margaret, 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.000 who died in twenty fourteen. She was doctor Smith's oldest child. 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:23.240 The grandmother that I knew would be absolutely horrified that 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:24.960 we were even having this conversation. 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.359 I think she'd be really torn. And she loved Noah 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:34.520 so much. She surrounded her room in the assisted living 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:39.479 facility with Noah's paintings on every wall, and yet the 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:43.159 very idea that this whole story is public. I don't 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:48.159 know if she could have studied. I'm Anna Sadistrom. I'm 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.920 the mother of the artist and the granddaughter of the 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:54.920 person of interest here, doctor Smith. 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.400 Anna's mother, Margaret, was doctor Smith's daughter. He was sent 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:01.880 to the asylum when Margaret was still a little girl. 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.080 His insanity trial was a big deal. Newspapers covered it, 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:10.760 but Anna knew none of this because her family decided 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.000 to never speak of him again. 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.320 I don't remember at what age I realized that I 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:21.000 didn't know anything about my grandfather, because she would talk 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.880 about her mother quite a bit. She would tell me about, 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.200 you know, what she did, and how they went to 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.320 movies together, and how she made her clothes and everything. 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.360 She never mentioned her father. And when I asked about 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.239 my grandfather, she said he lost his memory and went away, 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.160 and so I thought, maybe somebody will direct him back 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:43.920 home sometime. 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.360 I don't know if lost his memory is an old 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:51.119 euphemism for mental illness, Lord knows the South has lots 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.599 of those. But there's a heartbreaking irony here. The family's 0:05:55.640 --> 0:06:00.520 explanation for doctor Smith's absence, for their silence, is that 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.440 he's the one who doesn't remember them, which is all 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:08.480 to say that there was something incredibly moving about this show, 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:13.240 about seeing a man who'd been intentionally erased be given 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:19.640 the floor, or rather the walls. Noah's show had taken 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:22.440 over more than a third of the museum's square footage. 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.080 There's the one hundred and twenty two linear feet of 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.600 panoramic painting, yes, but there was also a giant hallway 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.920 lined with artifacts from doctor Smith's life, photos, letters he'd 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.600 exchanged with his wife Ethel, even the beat up leather 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:42.680 satchel he'd used to carry his optometry supplies and a 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:47.320 pair of his signature round wireframed spectacles, not unlike the 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:51.920 ones Noah's got on off the hallway of Doctor Smith's artifacts. 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.280 The museum was airing a short documentary about Noah's research 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.360 and process, and over the course of a week, they 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:01.599 hosted a series of panel discussions that went beyond Noah 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.400 and Doctor Smith. Topics range from the Asylum Hill project 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:11.760 to archival ethics to ideas about memory and generational trauma. 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:13.760 You know when a little kid tries to keep a 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.600 secret and finally they're allowed to blurt it out and 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:21.440 the words just don't stop. It felt like that, like 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:25.720 an easing of conscience for this whole community. So what 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:29.120 compelled Noah to spend years telling the story of a 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:33.240 man he was always told never to mention? To understand 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.600 that we're going to have to skip twenty five years 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:41.200 back and a whole continent away. Noah and I started 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:43.960 talking about his show almost a year before it went up. 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:47.000 We'd go back and forth, his telling me how the 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.280 painting was going, my prying about any new findings he 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:53.720 had about Doctor Smith. But in one of our talks 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:56.400 he let me in on a part of his own story, 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:03.320 one that changed everything. It's two thousand and one. Noah's 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:06.320 in a high level graduate program at the Glasgow School 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:09.960 of Art in Scotland. He was married and it wasn't 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:15.280 going well. It's in this moment of intense stress that 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.720 he wakes up one night in the pitch black to 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:20.400 a horrible realization. 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.880 All of my memories felt like they were planted and fake, 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.560 and that I hadn't existed until that moment, and everyone 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.840 else was convinced that my memories were real, that I 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:36.280 was the only one who knew that they were not. 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:40.840 I mean, it was deeply, deeply frightening, and it lasted 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.560 for much longer than I would have wanted it to. 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:49.720 For nearly six months. This was his everyday reality, a 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.840 kind of mental break. He was experiencing. Has a diagnosis, 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.160 the personalization disorder. 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.240 It was NonStop. It wasn't like I'm having this weird 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.600 feeling like oh, I just woke up into reality that 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:08.000 I realized I'm not real and my memories aren't real. 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:12.400 They've been They've been crafted and presented to my brain 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:13.400 as real, but they're not. 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:17.079 He took a leave from his painting program and went 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.840 home to his parents. He started thumbing through old family 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:25.720 photo albums, hoping they'd trigger a reconnection between his memories 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:31.960 and reality. After a while, he started to paint the photos, 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:36.280 repossessing them in a way. It was in the midst 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:40.440 of all this when his great grandfather's absence really struck him. 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:45.160 When I was having my breakdown in two thousand and one, 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:51.240 if I had the full context of his experience, it's 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:52.840 hard to say I would have been more afraid, because 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:54.520 I don't think I could have been more afraid than 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.600 I was. It would have been it would have given 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.360 me something to kind of puld onto, you know, instead 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.839 of like either your normal or there's the abyss. There's 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:08.920 like normal people and then there's the abyss. Whereas following 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:13.800 doctor Smith's life, he enters the Old Asylum in nineteen 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:17.640 twenty five and he lives for forty years beyond that, 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:19.200 and he wasn't. 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.320 In the Abyss when he got started on this project, 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.360 Noah didn't have much to go on. It's not easy 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.280 to dig up a story that's meant to be forgotten, 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:32.439 a story that more than one person has taken pains 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:37.240 to bury. But some pieces had survived. His great grandmother, 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:41.520 Ethel had saved a wooden box. Inside was nearly every 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:44.560 letter she'd written during the early years of her marriage 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:45.400 to doctor Smith. 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:48.360 I know what she had for lunch every day that year. 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.680 You know every movie she saw, every interaction she had 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.800 with her parents. It's all very like young family. 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.160 If doctor Smith and Ethel kept in touch after he 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.680 went into the asside, she didn't save those letters. So 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:08.199 Noah turned to a different repository of memory, the state Archives. 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:13.839 I found a doctor Smith's name in the ledger book 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.400 from the Old Asylum, which was this giant leatherbound book 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.440 that said Mississippi and Saint Hospital B on the spine. 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:27.880 Finally confirmation, but not much else. Fortunately that was about 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:32.520 to change. At Noah's next stop, a downtown gallery, a 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.240 man buying a painting overheard him telling his great grandfather's 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:43.319 story and introduced himself. It was Stephen Parks, the state librarian. Okay, 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:47.000 small cities have big perks, and so a couple. 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.400 Of weeks later, I'm back in Nashville and I get 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:52.520 a text from Stephen and saying start sending you stuff. 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:59.200 And I was show advertisements for doctor Smith's optician practice, meeting, 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.120 notes from the State Board of Opticians, where doctor Smith 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:06.520 held a seat, newspaper articles about his engagement, his practice, 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:12.480 and later his very public breakdown. With every document, Noah 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:16.800 became more inspired. A picture of a man was taking 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:22.160 shape in his head, and then on canvas. He began 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:26.280 painting vignettes of what he read. But as much as 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:30.160 this work has brought doctor Smith back to life, I'm 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:34.160 not sure it's brought him back into the family. There's 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:36.520 a formality in the way that Noah talks about him. 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:38.920 Why do you refer to him as doctor Smith. 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:44.559 Uh, that's a good question one that like, I started 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.640 referring to him as doctor Smith because that's what all 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:55.480 of his optometry advertisements referred to him as. But I 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.160 didn't realize at the beginning that he referred to himself 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.959 as doctor Smith. Smith is such a common name, and 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:05.800 he'd just get lost in like doctor Smith, there's no 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:10.040 first name, you know, it's just doctor and Smith. He 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.800 became a kind of iconic figure in my imagination from 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:14.240 his name. 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:20.360 Doctor Smith's not a paupa or even grandfather. Familial names 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:23.719 implied that their owner is just that a member of 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.720 the family. Someone had pruned his branch from the family tree. 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.439 That image of a blackboard, or you erase everything on 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.240 the blackboard with the little bits of information left. I 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:40.080 feel like that's what I got from my mother growing up. 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.800 You remember Noah's mom, Anna. She'd learned early on that 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:48.920 her own mother, Margaret, didn't like to talk about Anna's grandfather. 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:54.480 I would just say a silence, absence, this is just 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.360 not where we go. And then when I got older 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:02.760 and added started ask in a little deeper questions, she 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.719 would shut down right away. And if I got a 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.480 little too insistent, she would get either snappish or she 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.439 would tear up and say, I'm not gonna talk about it. 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:17.800 Anna tried to figure things out anyway. 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.960 My mother said that anytime she and her sister were 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:28.320 together and their voices dropped, I'd show up. But if 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:30.040 there was gonna be a good story, they were gonna 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:31.160 lower their voices. 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:35.800 And so for Noah, it's not just about understanding this man, 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:41.080 but about understanding just why exactly his family worked so 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:45.320 hard to erase him. There was shame about mental illness, 0:14:46.640 --> 0:15:04.320 but was that the whole story? That afternoon at the museum, 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:09.080 one of the Southeast legendary spring thunderstorms rolled in as 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:11.280 Noah walked me through his paintings. We'll start of the 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:14.440 first in the first section of the panels. 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:22.120 It starts with a shadow of an unknown figure, which 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.880 may be me or maybe Doctor Smith himself, or it 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:28.680 could be Doctor Smith's father is on the other side 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.080 of the wall of the room where doctor Smith is 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:37.600 being born. There's a vertical diptych kind of design. Motifs 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:38.760 are basically throughout. 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.400 In many ways, it's a visual biography of doctor Smith's 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:47.200 life from birth to burial. Doctor Smith was raised in 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:50.760 Louisiana by a single mother, and he put himself through 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:55.360 optometry school. One of doctor Smith's earliest patients was a 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:59.520 man named Gerard Brandon, a lawyer who loomed large in 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:05.000 the Natchet social scene. More importantly, Gerard had a beautiful daughter, Ethel. 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:11.040 He met Ethel Brandon, I believe because he was making 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:15.760 glasses for her father, and they pretty quickly started dating 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:17.840 and they were married the following year. 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:21.920 The young couple moved up the river to Vicksburg. They 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:24.960 were happy. These were the years when Ethel would write 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:27.680 to her family about how she and her husband teased 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:31.240 each other, but even in the rosy glow of young love. 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:35.960 Noah's great grandfather may have had his own secrets that 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:37.040 he kept from his wife. 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.960 He referred to having audio hallucinations for his whole life 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.160 and that they never bothered him, but they were always 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:47.280 there and very rarely did they make him do something 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.840 he didn't want to do. But he could have been 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.600 a fully functioning professional optometrist while being schizophrenic at the 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:54.160 same time. 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:58.640 For years, being a fully functioning professional optometrist looked a 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:02.480 little different. In the South of the nineteen twenties, there 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.280 wasn't quite enough business for a brick and mortar shop, 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:08.040 so doctor Smith took his services on the road. 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.719 While all this is going on and he's actively having delusions, 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:17.920 he starts to develop this very elaborate optical truck that, 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:23.480 by all accounts was a very highly functioning invention. They 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:26.120 check all the eyes for free, and then if only 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.760 if somebody needed glasses, he would be able to grind 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.320 the lenses on the spot. Do you know, fit the 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.679 glasses and everything, which would have been i mean, driving 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.520 around rural Mississippi in that in the nineteen twenties. You know, 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:41.400 it's hard to imagine. 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:44.000 It was cutting edge, the talk of the town wherever 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:48.040 he went. He even got it patented. Doctor Smith and 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:51.320 Ethel had four kids. He might have been away much 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:54.000 of the time, but it was clear as kids loved 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:58.480 him and he loved them. Noah's mother told us a 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.760 story about how her own Margaret, kept a pair of 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.080 glasses he'd made for her as a child. She didn't 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:08.560 need them, she just liked them, and so he made 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:13.480 them for her. Noah's work devotes a good bit of 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.159 square footage to this period of doctor Smith's life, his 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:22.880 optometry truck, rural Mississippi and Louisiana images of a growing family. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.359 In one part, he stands in a white shirt and vest, 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:30.879 facing left towards his past, as the reflection of the 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:35.360 sun makes his glasses opaque. In the distance behind him 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:40.520 a small child, a carriage, and a loose, barely discernible 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:45.160 sketch resembling a woman in the story of doctor Smith's life, 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.040 As his madness takes up more and more of the foreground, 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:54.879 something someone fades to the back his family, So. 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.040 Then the timeline splits again, and then you've got Margaret, 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:02.040 my grandmother, and Ethel back on the top. And then 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:03.880 that's when he enters the old Asylum. 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.159 At this point, a gaggle of museum goers had started 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.080 trailing behind us, listening. Noah pointed to a square near 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.480 the top. Everyone leaned in, hands behind their back, doing 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:19.360 that polite museum squint. The image he pointed out as small. Well, 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:23.120 in the context of this massive painting, just one two 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:26.439 by two foot square. There's a neat white house. 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.640 According to one of the only stories that I knew 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:35.200 growing up, grandmother and them were living in Shreveport, destitute. 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:41.760 Doctor Smith was not around at all, totally lost in psychosis. 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:44.960 Ethel and the kids there were four kids at this point, 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:48.680 the youngest being an infant. We're all sitting in poverty 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:52.399 in a house with no food, no resources, nothing. 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.280 After Noah's walked through, my producer and I tucked ourselves 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:59.360 away in a museum office with Noah, his sister Jessica, 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:04.440 and his mom Anna. Remember this project wasn't just academic. 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:10.200 This was Noah's great grandfather, a man whose absence festered 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:14.400 in the family he left behind, especially for Noah's grandmother. 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:17.040 Anna's mother Margaret, and. 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:21.440 She's the only one of their four children who had 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.359 an active memory of her father. But my mother was 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:28.960 seven when it happened, and she said she spent the 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:32.160 next several years sitting on the brick wall out front, 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:36.840 waiting for her father to come get her, because nobody 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:41.639 told her that he wasn't going to come. And I 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:46.720 think she carried the trauma of his loss throughout her life. 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.280 After doctor Smith's breakdown, his wife and children didn't stay 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:55.359 in that neat white house. His father in law, Gerard, 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.480 arrived and wisked the family back home to Natchez. Gerard's 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:03.280 home was a quiet one. That Victorian sensibility of children 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:08.080 should be seen and not heard applied to everyone. A 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:11.399 house of decorum was in some ways the perfect antidote 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:15.480 to the chaotic last years with doctor Smith. But a 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.080 house of decorum isn't a place where you could ask questions. 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:23.359 For the first year after doctor Smith was gone, a 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.760 photograph of him remained on the mantle at her grandparents. 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:31.280 Margaret often stared at it. It was all she had 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:31.920 of her dad. 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:35.640 She was caught staring at his photograph on the mantle, 0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:38.840 and the next day it was gone. 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:44.960 Margaret grew up had children of her own. Gerard Brandon's 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:50.640 decorum no outbursts, no questions, no curiosity, found a place 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:54.520 in her home with her children. Gerard took his place 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:58.120 as a titan, and the family mythos. Here's Anna again, 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:01.160 Noah's mother. I was very young. 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:03.639 I sort of had him confused with God. You know, 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.960 he was the sweet old man who had all the power. 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:11.600 I never saw him angry. I never heard him say 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.680 raise a voice or say anything unkind. 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:19.240 But she never saw joy either, no outburst of any kind. 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:21.879 In fact, her mother, Margaret, saw. 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:30.439 To that composure was of absolute value. Poise, elegance, and properness. 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:34.479 Grandmother was a quintessential Southern bell in my memory. 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:39.840 Yeah, she had an elegance and a presence about her. 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:43.280 She was a beautiful woman, and when she entered a room, 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:45.520 everybody was aware of it. She was. 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:49.439 A power source in. 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:54.000 My life, and yet she wasn't. You didn't want to 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:57.119 be judged by that, that power source. 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:03.159 For a family interested less in the real world than 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:06.880 in their own created reality, perhaps there was no better 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:11.400 community than Natchez, Mississippi. This small town of a few 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:15.440 thousand sits on a bluff overlooking the river. Before the 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:18.560 Civil War, it was home to more millionaires per capita 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:21.840 than any other in the United States, because it was 0:23:22.000 --> 0:23:26.080 also home to the country's second largest slave market. Many 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:29.119 of those grand homes still stand, although the area is 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:33.560 now among the poorest in the country. Regardless of present circumstances, 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:38.640 this ideal of Confederate glory still shapes the way residents talk. 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:43.600 The writer Richard Grant has this quote in Natches, you 0:23:43.880 --> 0:23:47.760 only use the word home if it's antebellum. If your 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:52.000 house was built after the Civil War, it's trashy to 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:56.880 call it a home. Still, even in Natches, people build 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:02.000 new houses. They buck tradition. There were times Noah's grandmother 0:24:02.320 --> 0:24:05.960 let her tried and true composure slide, but it was 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:10.760 so rare. Both he and his sister Jessica remember each one. 0:24:12.640 --> 0:24:14.720 I remember you telling me about it, do you. 0:24:15.200 --> 0:24:15.400 Yeah. 0:24:16.280 --> 0:24:19.440 I was in high school and it seemed like, wow, 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:22.040 it was such a mystery in the family. I had 0:24:22.119 --> 0:24:22.679 no idea. 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:27.560 And then not long after I asked grandmother about her father, 0:24:28.720 --> 0:24:31.920 and I said, some didn't like I don't tell me 0:24:31.960 --> 0:24:32.760 about your father. 0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:39.040 And grandmother looked surprised, and she said he was an optometrist, 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:42.760 and then her eyes filled up with tears, and then 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:47.080 everything shut down, and then it was just back to 0:24:47.200 --> 0:24:47.800 the silence. 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:51.600 Exactly what happened when I asked her that they tell 0:24:51.640 --> 0:24:54.200 me about him? What can you say about him? He 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:57.920 was an optometrist. Immediately tears just filling up, and then 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:02.800 just kind of silence while she turned the page and 0:25:02.880 --> 0:25:07.480 started talking about something else. And that instant, involuntary well 0:25:07.520 --> 0:25:12.440 of emotion after ninety years, she was seven when he left, 0:25:12.840 --> 0:25:15.760 and she was in her nineties when this happened, and 0:25:15.880 --> 0:25:19.000 that being the only trigger that I had ever seen 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:24.000 of that kind of emotion, completely instant and involuntary, was 0:25:24.080 --> 0:25:29.800 such a sign that there's so much there un processed, 0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:32.879 that she lived with for her whole life, and that 0:25:33.520 --> 0:25:39.200 she unwillingly not meaning to, was teaching us like, this 0:25:39.400 --> 0:25:41.120 is what we do, your. 0:25:41.040 --> 0:25:45.480 Places deep down inside you, and if you violate that, 0:25:45.600 --> 0:25:47.080 you're going to feel bad about yourself. 0:25:47.560 --> 0:25:51.000 Yeah, that's where the shame comes in. You just had 0:25:51.040 --> 0:25:55.680 an emotional outburst. I mean my suspicion there is. The 0:25:55.880 --> 0:26:01.280 silence is the response to the shame, and it's so 0:26:01.400 --> 0:26:03.920 much padding. You don't ever get the shame. The shame 0:26:04.000 --> 0:26:06.440 doesn't make it to the surface. We don't see the shame, 0:26:06.520 --> 0:26:08.600 but we see the effects of the shame, and it. 0:26:08.720 --> 0:26:13.920