Quoting Vienna, because shes brilliant. Like what Liz Gilbert said in that great TED talk. What I keep coming back to is this: being loved for the stuff youve made is no antidote to depression, or any mental illness. This is the nature of the beast. Praise and adoration for the work youve so painstakingly curated, that youve devoted your life to crafting and offering up to the world, is a form of validation to be sure—but only of the quality of your contribution. Not of your own small, exhausted, naked self, of which strangers know nothing. Its no defense against the agony of being alive, if thats how you experience it. I think thats hard to understand because sometimes your art has the miraculous effect of making *other* peoples pain more bearable. Somehow in your desperate scrabbling around and crying look! take this! maybe itll make you feel something! you did get through. To a lot of people. And some of them said oh, and climbed off the ledge, or got out of bed, because they felt a jolt of recognition in what youd distilled for them. They were no longer alone. They had a first arrow pointing to where they might walk that day, or for the rest of their lives. Your public self did this. The career you built on getting at the truth through artifice, fabrication, sleight-of-hand, did this. Its a beautiful legacy. And it still leaves you, at the end of the night, fundamentally alone. Rest in peace, Robin Williams. I suspect that paying tribute to you is like throwing roses to a performer who wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep. But were giving you our thunderous applause because its all we have. Bravo. Thank you for everything. Youll be so very, very missed.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 03:01:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015