Tyler and Louise - 5 min with Franny

Who are Louise and Tyler?

We’re both absolutely and fully creative to both a fault and a delight but are also fairly independent.
We’re both deeply invested in making the world a more beautiful, peaceful place through our art, our collaborations, and our daily kindness.
We enjoy bringing people together, both socially and professionally.
We live in Clinton hill and love New York but we equally relish our time at our farmhouse in Maine.

How long have you been together?

Louise: We’ve been together since march 2011, engaged since april 2011, so we “dated” for only four weeks, as I proposed to him on our one month anniversary. We were engaged for a year and a half and just celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary.

Tyler: We have been a couple for 5 years and 9 months.

Who is Tyler?

Louise: Tyler Hammond Brodie is a kind, loyal, handsome, funny, thirsty, on-time man who runs on music, MSNBC news, camel blues, Duke basketball, and of course, my love;) He’s extremely smart, heartily liberal, very politically engaged and incredibly confident in his positions. He makes beautiful video collages and delightfully experimental mixed media paintings. He loves animals and has been called a dog whisperer. Oh+he’s an astoundingly generous tipper.

When we first began dating, I deemed him a casual businessman and a dreamweaver—he started 5 companies in film and music, starting when he was about 19, and has helped launch and re-launch many people’s careers in both music and film. He puts out dance music on DFA and rock music on What’s Your Rupture, he saves films with Cinema Conservancy, and makes new ones with Verisimilitude and Journeyman Films.

He’s also just the sweetest, and has made me almost 300 mixes since our courtship began, the first one (a CD! Before itunes family sharing;) was labeled 0000001 cause he planned on making me a million more!

Tyler: Tyler is an artist, a problem solver and an animal lover.

Who is Louise?

Louise: I grow flowers and make rainbows and surround myself with sparkly, positive people and things. I make colorful mixed media paintings about peace, hope, love, fears and frustration and I make photographs to document beauty, light, fun, and the passing of time.

I love to love and I’m quite fun, I like to drink, dance, smoke and laugh a lot. I love my family like friends and my friends like family. I’m honest and kind to all (to my detriment at times).

I do my best to look on the bright side but am so deeply empathetic that I can’t get through the front section of the NYTimes without crying.

I never miss a wedding or a funeral.

I love to entertain—bringing together different groups of friends and watching them get on is really one of my most favorite things.

Tyler: Louise is an artist, a giver, a friend and a lover.

Tell us your story, how did you meet?

Louise: This is a long kinda complicated answer…Simply put, we met in Northeast Harbor, Maine when I was five and he was ten. He was one of my older brothers best friends in the small town we spent summers in. He was the first boy to ever ask me to dance, at the very first dance I went to at age 9—but I said no.
We saw each other at parties in Maine and New York intermittently and ran into each other at Swim bar in 2001, when I was in NYC for a semester working at NYLON.
We were seated at the same table at my brothers wedding in 2005 but I was with a different long-haired dude. (I do remember that my dress matched his Paul Smith suit perfectly and I was impressed that he’d hemmed his pants with staples and spray painted his shoes…I’ve heard him say that it was the first time he saw me as a grown up sexy gal.) We had a random make out (that neither of us told anyone about) in 2006, wherein he called me his dream girl but it went unheeded as I assumed he was a player.
Lastly, much to my sister-in-law, Parvin’s credit, we were once again seated next to each other at my brothers 36^th birthday. The table was full of accomplished lawyers and writers, and us. The following month felt like living inside of a crazy awesome rom-com movie. Our first proper date, two nights after the birthday dinner, was at Diner, uur second date, we both arrived too early and walked around the block, only to arrive at the opposing corners at the exact same time. It all felt uncannily synchronized, like finding our missing puzzle piece.

Tyler: We met as children. I was Louise’s older brother’s friend.

Was it love at first sight?

Louise: Initially no. He was older and I was younger, so we were (luckily) off track for dating until we’d both grown up. I mean it’s kinda weird but I still don’t know if I had a crush on him way back then? He was just too cool for school. All that said however, once we left that dinner together to go listen to music at Zebulon, and had our first (ok second but the 2006 barely counted) legit kiss, we both felt like we’d found our puzzle piece.

Tyler : No.

Who is the better dancer?

Louise: Great question, We have dance parties in our living room on the regular, so our cats might have the most objective perspective. I love Tyler’s dance moves to bits but I feel that I can confidently take this one. I was in and out of dance classes as a kid and after we got married I started pole dancing for sport and got to the top level, so my dance moves now incorporate splits, which he simply can not do;) as well as, I have more stamina for it—he tends to sit down after awhile while I’m still jumping around.

Tyler: Louise is a better dancer.

Do you believe it’s ok to go on separate vacations?

Louise: Initially we didn’t (his parents have never spent more than 3 days apart and I thought that was so romantic) but now we do. Or rather, we kinda have to, because I LOVVVVE to travel more than his sweet homebody self does.

Tyler: Yes.

To fart or not to fart in front of each other?!

Louise: NOPE, I’ll admit to a few silent ones and maybe a rogue toot every year or so but in general, no poop talk. We gotta keep the mystery somewhere;)

Tyler: I try not to but no big deal if it happens.

What kind of fighters are you?

Louise: Oi vey, we’re both very proud and stubborn, +did I mention passionate? So fighting can be tough for us. I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was like nine and he just started so, I’d say it’s getting better. I tend to over-communicate while he errs on the under-communicate side, depending on my mood, it’s either totally sweet and adorable that he thinks I wordlessly understand his point of view and behavior or alternatively, it seems terribly unreasonable. So, in a nutshell I think I’m usually calmer in the beginning of the argument and he goes red more swiftly, but he also moves on much faster than I do, I will percolate on a fight and what it means, whereas he seems to recover and be back to a loving space quicker. Perhaps this is our nature or it’s from me growing up with divorced parents and his still being together after 50 years of marriage?

Tyler: We are bad fighters who get defensive easily.

What is easy?

Louise: What’s easy for us is knowing that we’re here forever together, and making out is very easy and totally fun.

Tyler: Nothing but life is precious. If you are going to drink, eat.

What is hard?

Louise: The hard stuff can be seeing the other person’s perspective—we sometimes forget to see the evolution in our partner because we hang out all the time…Sometimes it difficult to remember that we are both always in flux, ever changing, always evolving in micro-ways. The best advice I got from a married couple was to remember that the person you went to sleep next to last night, might be slightly changed the next morning, and to consider that every day would encourage evolution within your marriage. The other part that’s challenging for me is knowing when to shut up and listen, Tyler is a much more succinct person than I am, (as seen through our questions I’m sure☺), so he’s much slower to elaborate. It’s historically been hard for me to not fill in the empty space with words or questions, but after 5 years, I’m finally learning that I need to give him more room in order to understand him. We also have very different tool boxes that we’re pulling from, my parents have been divorced for about 25 years, whereas his parents have been married for 50, I’ve been in therapy on and off for almost 30 years, and he’s only a year into it, so that foundational difference is great but getting more balanced by the week.

Tyler: It’s easy to love Louise. It’s hard to satisfy everyone.

Out of the billions of people in the world why each other?

Louise: The first time he came to my apartment, he said he wanted to buy every single piece in my studio, that was a massive compliment and a glimpse of his enduring belief in me and my work. I’d only ever dated people who loved either my paintings or my photos but never both, and that stood out. Aside from that, our parents know each other, he’s been friends with my brother since the mid 80’s, my grandfather taught his dad French at boarding school in the 50’s, so there were some amazing common denominators at play. We sure started on an unusual foundation, having a shared history together but each of us pursued very different directions from that point on, him coming to NYU for film and me going to College of Santa Fe for art. We both had only experienced fraught and complicated fighting love so when we met, we both were attracted to the sanity in each other. Out of billions? I really just can’t imagine being with anyone else. Our fundamental world-views are so aligned.
One of the first moments I knew I wanted to spend my life with him was getting into a taxi during our second week of dating; (the night I blurted out that I loved him, immediately getting embarrassed—but he just laughed at my embarrassment and said it right back…when they say, when you know-you just know…it’s true!). I jumped into the cab after dinner and enthusiastically said good evening and asked the driver how he was. Tyler was still outside, putting out his cigarette and upon jumping in the cab gave the driver a near identical enthusiastic and kind greeting and inquiry. I just thought, wow, this guy and I walk through the world with the same kind attitude, a rare bird to discover in this city of busy bees.

Tyler: Out of the billions of people she makes me the happiest and makes me feel the most loved.

How do you keep the romance alive?

Louise: Our brains and sexy bits…debates and dinners out…going to places neither of us have ever been…Oh and a hot tip we’ve learned, is when you go on a family or group vacation, always (or more realistically as often as we can) tag on an extra day or two for just us to decompress and get a proper bit of romance on each trip we take.

Tyler: We keep the romance alive by listening and having sex.

Any idea what the secret is to everlasting love?

Louise: Dance parties, mutual friends and belief systems, couples therapy, smiling at each other, sex and being agreeable. Always being each other’s number one champion. Also we learned from my aunt and uncle, who married us on their 50^th wedding anniversary, to say, “yes dear” as often as possible!

Tyler: Don’t forget to take care of yourself so you can take care of your spouse.