The official obituaries are disappointing. Descriptions of his humor rely heavily on “you had to be there.” They are unable to use words to describe the manic madness that was a Robin Williams performance in full flight (improvisational probing of the uncaged and directionless zeitgeist of the youth of the times, 1978–80).

Robin Williams by acjub

Robin Williams’ early work—zany stand–up comic then hitting big-time with prime time network sitcom—is followed by an appreciation of his skills as a comic actor in the Hollywood studio feature films that followed, the places where most of Robin Williams’ millions of fans worldwide came to know and love him: places like The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow-on-the-Hudson (1984), Good Morning Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), The Fisher King (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Good Will Hunting (1997). Robin Williams’ good–natured optimism and genuine love for humanity shined brightly on the big screen.

But to achieve such success in the movies meant disappearing the demonic anarchic spirit that animated Robin Williams’ early comedy club days—the very thing that electrified a lost and “stagflated” post-punk generation. Robin Williams in the movies was all of his wild energy minus any danger. He might have been the next Lenny Bruce, or even at least the next George Carlin, had his be-all, end-all work ethic not dictated that he accept roles in one studio picture after another, regardless of quality. His need to always be on, always pleasing people, resulted in so many of his movie roles being so insultingly far beneath the potentials of his true talents. Edgier projects never had a chance of organically evolving to emerge from his febrile imagination. He had to be constantly working instead of nurturing. It defined him.

Tragically, the same intense drive to always be working plus a ton of sudden wealth resulted in a cocaine addiction that took a serious toll on his health. He suffered through decades of rough divorces, of being on and off the rehab wagon, and a major heart surgery.

For those familiar with his career from his earliest stand–up days, this once whirling dervish’s gradual loss of comedic velocity was as painful to watch as it no doubt must have been for him to endure.  His final HBO special shows him to be just as funny as other HBO star stand-ups, the sadness being he was once pure genius, light-years ahead of the usual stuff. To see him falling back on bits of decades-old improv when new jokes died was a bit of irony the young Robin Williams would have savored and savaged.

Tribute to Robin Williams by NicChapuis

The official chroniclers of our society tend to focus on “success” (especially financial) and how a person attained that success as the core narrative of an individual’s life. But very often a performer’s importance in influencing society lies not in being a role model over the lifetime of a successful career (e.g., the emphasis on how much money Robin Williams’ decades of movies made) but in some spark they provided to the inchoate consciousnesses of their audiences in the early days. The no-limits comedic freedom and anarchy represented by Robin Williams in his first few years on the stand-up scene may have been his lasting legacy, the TV and movies that followed reflecting a mere single facet of his talent, rather than a laboratory for honing his improvisational magic.

The word comes in that it was a Parkinson’s diagnosis that finally made Robin Williams fall to Earth. After having lived through his college roommate Christopher “Superman” Reeves’ quadriplegia and his friend John Belushi’s drug overdose death, this final cruel joke on him—this physical comedian extremis gradually losing half his language with his audience—was one cosmic irony he could finally find no humor in.

What will live on forever will be the pure unadulterated, sheer joy the mere sight of Robin Williams’ smiling face brought and will always bring to his fans. This joy is reflected back in an inundation of the deviantART website with over 5000 portraits and other “Robin-pieces” made and shared by the worldwide deviantART community of artists just since his passing. An evening at the movies with this man, even in his most formulaic “dramedies,” will always mean a psychic cleansing for the millions who love him, a receiving of this holy man’s gift of healing through laughter and his talent at transporting us to where we can indulge a return to our most childlike happiness.

But, Wow...

...just remembering Robin Williams burning down the clubs in 1979—and imagining what could have been... Well, I guess you had to be there.