My sister texted me Monday night, asking if Robin Williams had died. I thought she might have meant Robbie Williams, former-boy-bander-turned-no-hit-wonder. Wishful thinking on my part, as it turned out.
When someone dies by their own hand, as Williams did, it tends to make their work or life before then seem like a "countdown to self-destruction." You go over their last hours, trying to make sense of what, often times, will never make any sense no matter how often you examine it. It's part of our hard-wiring to seek answers where none may reside; how else to explain how legitimate conspiracy theory turns into fringe obsession? Lee Harvey Oswald may not have acted alone, but we'll never really know the truth, so it bothers us. I imagine the same will be true of Robin Williams.
Much has been made of the "tears of a clown" thread in comedy, how performers make us laugh while masking their inner demons (or letting them out for all to see). I watched the Ken Burns documentary on Mark Twain when it re-aired recently, and his last years were full of turmoil and loss. It's no wonder that, in his last works, he was a misanthrope who held out little if any hope for humanity; he'd lost his wife, two of his three daughters (as well as a son when he was first married to Livy, who died a few months after being born), and much of his fortune (though he managed to pay off his creditors thanks to exhaustive world tours). Frankly, if you read about Twain's life, it's a miracle that he didn't kill himself.
Robin Williams, when I was a kid, was hysterically funny. Then, as I aged and he went into more family-friendly fare, his reputation became tarnished. Whether his later movies were really terrible or just had the reputation of being so, I can't say; I rarely felt that same excitement at seeing his name in the credits that I might have circa Good Morning, Vietnam or Dead Poets Society. Fact is, I'd thought that I outgrew him, and little that he did in the years since Mrs. Doubtfire really registered with me.
I guess that's why his loss hit so hard, not because I'd still treasured him but because I'd cast him aside. I have softened in my view of him of late, feeling like the good work he did from my childhood still holds up (and if you ever get the chance to see his stand-up, do). It's a little late, but still.
Depression doesn't care if you're rich and famous, or broke and miserable. It comes along to all of us, at some point, and sometimes it's just a passing phase. But sometimes it's an illness that needs treatment. I've known of two people personally connected to me who took their own lives, and let me say this: suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
I'd like to fancy myself as a "humorous fellow," and if you'll allow that (not saying I'm fricking hilarious all the time, but I have a pretty healthy sense of humor at least), I can say from experience that there's a lot of truth to the idea that comedians can be the most miserable bunch of people in the world. But humor allows for an outlet for all the rage, anger, sadness and whatever else comes with it and with life itself. What's most heartbreaking about Williams' suicide, apart from the obvious pain his family is in, is that he couldn't use that gift to help himself, not in the last days.
It's eerie to me now, considering that Dead Poets is my favorite Robin Williams performance, how that film deals with a suicide, and how it tears apart the school where Williams is the inspirational teacher. From mythology on down, through James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, through Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain, through Ernest Hemingway and David Foster Wallace, suicide has taken too many creative voices. Robin Williams is now one of those, and he will be missed.
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