Robin Williams...Remembered!!

The Brilliant and Beloved Robin Williams

 

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

 

 

So begins the Robert Herrick poem, To the Virgins: To Make Much of Time. So also began my fascination with the great Robin Williams as he played Professor Keating in the classic movie Dead Poets Society.

 

The movie is a "coming of age" piece in which an elite but awkward group of students attending a stodgy prep school meet their new English Professor who encougages them to "seize the day"... to walk to the beat of a differnet drummer....to dare to be an individual...to defy tradition and convention. With the opening lines of this poem, Keating (Williams) begins to transform the lives of his students and greatly inspire me as well.

 

 

Seizing! Daring! Defying! Walking Differently! Williams did all those things...and that is why we loved him!!  Yes. Zany, frenetic comedic flourishes may have been his hallmark. But, if the eyes are windows to the soul, Williams' eyes spoke to his incomparable humanity, his profound vulnerablity, his dance with despair, his trysts with tragedy, his walk with joy through a world of sadness. As Mary J. Blige sang, "If you could look in my eyes and see what I've seen."

 

 

For better or worse, most of us will never experience the manic flights of his comedic genius or  suffer the depths of his depressive despair.  So, judge not! Who among us know with certainty how we might handle addiction, fame and fortune (and all its trappings), or a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease?

 

 

SUICIDE!!

 

 

Few have been personally spared by this parodoxical act of final resolution. A dear friend of mine chose this as a final act. Still, suicide remains for me "a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." And, perhaps there is no key. Maybe the herculean feat of balancing Triumph and Tragedy while performing for an adoring crowd finally got the best of Robin. Or, was it the lonely expanse of time away from the crowd that beckoned the "reaper" to Williams' abode?

 

So, is this the dissonant, inharmonius end? Is it really all that surprising? Robin Williams was always Daring...Defying...Walking Differently...Seizing the Day..and, that is why we loved him!!

 

In the end, is it  really inharmonius? Or, is it just dissonant...hard to deal with? In music theory, it's dissonance that gives music its beauty and movement....without dissonance, music becomes lifeless, hopeless and static.  Williams' life was anything but lifeless, hopeless, and static. Perhaps, it ended on the most harmonious of notes....and, as such, Williams "seized" his final day.

 

 

Robin Williams was a comedic genius, but above all he was a great humanitarian. I will always remember him as he was in this heartrending scene from the movie Good Will Hunting:

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w0Fq2UH-pQ

 

 

 

Until we rendezvous...

 

Peace!!