"O Captain, My Captain" [a eulogy and an epitaph for Robin Williams]

Robin Williams is no more.

I came across his death in a footnote in a local newspaper, a few days back. Considering the manner he decided to end his life, I was shocked although not entirely surprised. Robin Williams was an ‘intense’ actor to say the least. If you scratch the surface, actors, who perform comedies on screen, betray more of real life dramas and tragedies. I think they utilize humor as a strong defense mechanism, and they throw themselves into work (either one project or several) perhaps to keep “demons at bay”, as suggested by a recent article from the NY Times with the very suggestive title “Busy working, Robin Williams fought demons”. That concept in itself is intriguing because I believe we all have demons that we tackle on a daily basis in our professional and personal lives. I wonder if celebrities or actors have a harder time dealing with those demons than us regular folks…  

Other than the statistics from the U.S. about white men being much more likely to offer themselves on the altar of suicide, what struck me about the article was the mention of Robin Williams’s “defining role” being in a movie that I was completely unfamiliar with. Since I am quite a fan of Mr. Williams’s, I saw a number of his movies starting from the 80s that were noteworthy, irrespective of what the critics said. And I strongly believe that his defining role, if I had to pick just one, was in Dead Poets’ Society – as Mr. John Keating the English teacher.

So today I don’t mourn Robin Williams as much as I do Mr. Keating. Yet I am also strangely uplifted because I saw Dead Poets’ when I was in school, a lifetime ago, very much in need of learning the messages inherent in the movie. Perhaps I was coming of age then and therefore I related well to the movie. Regardless of why it had such an impact on me, I was completely awed by the teacher in Mr. Keating. What a brilliant teacher! He taught me as he taught Neal, the character who commits suicide in the movie, and Josh, the quiet student, played by a very young Ethan Hawke, who opens up after Keating unlocks his ‘writing’. I believe Mr. Keating taught us all to internalize and exercise carpe diem in all its glory when he said, “seize the day…make your lives extraordinary”.

I am saddened that I never had a teacher like Mr. Keating. But that is a tribute to Robin Williams, and thus rightfully so perhaps, I should mourn both Mr. Keating as well as Robin Williams.

If I were asked to write an epitaph for Mr. Keating, then the following would do for Robin Williams too, considering that it was one of Keating’s favorite Thoreau quotes in the movie:

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

To put to rout all that was not life;

And not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived."

Or perhaps the epitaph would be Keating’s take on ‘reading and writing poetry’ that I was completely in synch with, and I quote him below:

“And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for….so that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse…what will your verse be?"

So goodbye Mr. Keating, O Captain, My Captain…

…And thank you Robin Williams.

[For R Williams – RIP]

[from Mixed Bag]

Acknowledgment: This article was first published by the Houston Inner Looper Newspaper (Sept. 2014).