Robin,
We hardly knew ye
One could say GOK, God only knows, but that’s a faith statement, isn’t it, not an expression of knowledge; or maybe it’s an escape. I’m thinking of what’s out there and what I can keep wondering about, sad that Robin can no longer wonder. I wonder if he wondered what I wonder. Some of the characters he played knew what I knew, still do.
A tragedy of it is our loss of the Robin we knew. He made us laugh, he helped us be momentarily happy. He was so funny, not uncommon for those who are tormented by demons, if I can get you to laugh at me and with me for a while, I don’t have to live here for that while, but it’s a only a story. It’s only a story, an actor playing a role doesn’t even play the whole being, he only plays bits and pieces, “takes” that create the persona, the rest of it is in your mind, when he gets off the set or backstage the persona no longer exists and he wasn’t real, he’s back with the demons. What do I regret not saying or doing or being or living or loving and now it’s too late forever, it’s just me and the demons, and, oh, these nice folks around me who love who they saw and loved that wasn’t me, they don’t love really me, they only love what they saw. I loved John Keating, but that wasn’t Robin. Most of all, I loved and love Adrian Cronauer, whom the VC also loved enough to pull him out of Jimmy Wah’s moments before it blew. Adrian who fell in love with Trinh, then befriended and chased her brother Tuan, who turned on him and told him the truth.
It wasn’t Robin, was it. I didn’t love really Robin, I loved what Robin did for me. Robin doesn’t know the worst of himself anymore, and if grow old along with me, the best is yet to be has any truth or wisdom, now he’ll never know the best. But at least he has escaped from the worst, and from the demons. That’s something, isn’t it. I’m going to let it be good.
Robin isn’t dead, the Robin I knew, he’s alive to me, for me, I can watch Good Morning, Vietnam again whenever I want to. Billed as comedy, it is fantasy that was spot dead on serious truth.
Now I’ve got myself wondering about Gospel parallels.
TW
Some will be thinking about Robin Williams this morning. Thinking, and some will write. Those who loved him knew him in different roles and ways, evidently none the Robin Williams who ended his life yesterday, the Real Robin. We knew someone but it wasn’t Robin, it wasn’t even a person, we only knew an image, a picture, a persona. A series of characters in stories. We don’t know each other, nobody knew him, we watch each other as we make our way but no one knows another, and there are horizons, or maybe rainbows, over which we don’t even know ourselves.
TW