377 days - Blog #14 - I read the news today oh boy

I got online to write of a completely different subject tonight.  I was away from the computer for a few hours, giving myself the chance to finally go grocery shopping and then head up to the theater to catch up on ticket reservations.  I smiled to myself as I wrote on the envelopes and heard the director yelling at the cast to be quiet backstage… oh memories of Barre Players.  But then they would pick up the scene again and echoes of the songs of Aladdin came through the cracks of the swinging doors.

I had a lot of reservations on which to catch up.  Then I was done.  I came home.  I went on my email and saw someone in the cast had posted RIP Robin Williams on the Aladdin group.  Honestly, my first instinct was… oy someone is buying into an internet rumor.  So I went to the New York Times.  I mean, if it wasn’t legit, it wouldn’t be … it was there on the front page.

Wow.

So much wow.

Just the other day, my dad told me he finally got rid of this little black and white television set that I used to have in my bedroom when I was 8 or 9.  I kept it right next to my bed, on a TV table that was perfect for crawling beneath in a game of hide and seek.  I remember lying on my side to watch Mork and Mindy when it was in syndication on Channel 56.  I also remember watching it on the color television (sans remote) downstairs… but those Mork and Mindy episodes were a privilege in which I took a lot of pride.  My own television set in my own room.  And who cares if I couldn’t see those rainbow suspenders?  I still wanted to go to Ork.

After that point, I can’t really remember a time when Robin Williams wasn’t someone I knew.  Someone I felt like a friend who sat in my living room, telling jokes, getting silly… and even… as I got older, telling some serious tales and talking politics of my flavor.  Something about his look always reminded me of my uncle, my dad’s brother.  I think it was mostly the haircut.  But I also think it was because he was, really, just that zany uncle.

I could probably write my whole history through Robin Williams’ career.  But we can jump to 1989.  Although, it was probably 1990 when I finally saw Dead Poet’s Society on video.  That was the first time I heard the Latin mantra of Carpe Diem.  It stuck with me for the rest of my moody, stuck in a book, artistic, mildly depressed teenage years.  Maybe it even helped to lift me up.  It was the first time I think I became acquainted with suicide.  It rattled me.  

Then there was Aladdin, a film I have been revisiting a lot this summer.  I’m mostly over the Disney thing… but I remember when this movie was new.  I remember when it was a video and I nannied children who watched it on repeat.  I still have the cassette and it has a point in the spinning of the tape where overplaying (probably around the point of Friend Like Me) makes it all wibbly wobbly.  I remember that – because Disney animation was getting back on its feet at that point after a pretty drab decade in the 80’s.  And every silly trivia link I’ve been searching for Aladdin, Jr. publicity has pointed out that it was the first time an “A” list celebrity voiced a character.  And man, what a character.

Let’s skip another couple years.  Good Will Hunting.  Boston.  And he was… man, he was so subdued compared to all that comedy.  Dead Poets offered that, too.  But I think that was when I really started to understand the pathos of comedians.  No.  I mean to say, skill.  I loved that movie because of Boston.  Because of its hope.  Because I interned for the Massachusetts Film Office the year after and it was literally the poster… child.

I confess in more recent years, I don’t have an emotional connection to his works.  I have seen a few.  He did that Christopher Nolan followup to Memento film, Insomnia, where he was not a nice guy.  I watched some of his interviews.  I remember discovering his translation of Comic Relief with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal.  And knowing the British origin, I developed a social justice/ political appreciation for him.  I remember him not liking Bush.  And yeah, I liked him more for that.

He also played Osric in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.  I listen to that all the time.  Oh my God, how did I forget to mention DEAD AGAIN?  I was obsessed with that movie for years.  A very understated performance in one of my absolute favorite films.  His character defined karma for me (which had a strong influence on my vampire novel).

 Jump to 4:30 for Robin Williams, but REALLY find the movie and watch the whole thing

The last memory… because it is heading towards midnight and I have more work and another night of box office reservations and a week that doesn’t stop really… his HBO special.

And this is where I get weepy.  The gift he gave to so many of us.  I remember watching that DVD in my friend Karen’s Marlborough apartment.  Movie nights were a thing then – ten, twelve years ago.  Some of our gang had already seen it several times and decided to bring it to a night of wine or vodka punch and either Karen’s pizza balls or buffalo chicken (she was the hostess with the yummy mostess).  And we watched that…and laughed…and were dumbfounded with the hilarity.

I’m calling out my friend Derek here, because he likes to repeat the story of my reaction to it.  He claims I blushed quite a bit.  Maybe I did.  Maybe I was still innocent enough then to react so to a miming of oral sex.  Whatever.  I enjoy the fact Derek likes to tell that story.  That is an excuse to remember those movie nights soaked with laughter.  And that’s when I think… wow, Robin Williams gave that memory to me.  That excuse to smile.  That prompt, tonight, to find those friends of 2003 era movie nights and say let’s watch that DVD.  

But that was just one little group in Central Massachusetts.  Can you imagine how many other groups of friends?  How many other people of all different ages who have memories carved into those television shows and movies and comedy specials?  And how… even with that collective memory of laughter, tonight we all feel the tears ebb?

It is humbling that no matter the success or the joy one generates, there is always the darkness of our human soul.  Is that price of genius?  Or is it just, simply, an unfortunate arrangement of biology?  

Sigh…

I could say so much more tonight… but it is late.  And I think we all have some thought or other about the loss of our present world.  It binds us in such an awesome way.  Such an awesome, tragic, silly... human ... way.