Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Remembering Robin Williams

A marketing blog probably seems like a strange place to write about the passing of a celebrity, but Robin Williams was so much more than that. While you could punctuate his name with a variety of tags -- actor, comedian, artist -- Robin Williams transcended all of those descriptions. Robin Williams shaped our culture. He gave us direction. He was like the patron saint of creativity.

From his very first acting appearances, Robin Williams took freeform creative association to a new level. He always seemed to harness this insane chaos of ideas, to let it flow through him, then pull it together and give it direction and meaning in ways that entertained and enlightened us.

And through it all, he was Robin Williams; so iconic that we could identify him, even when he was just a voice performance, so ingrained that he could be a parody of himself in a candy commercial, and yet funny, even when the rhythm of the performance remained familiar.

He always surprised us. Over the course of his life, he showed us comedy, he showed us drama, he showed us heartfelt sentiment. He showed us serious and intellectual. He showed us responsible and professional even with a halo of silly. Perhaps the saddest part of his death and our collective loss is that, if there is one thing that Robin Williams always taught us over the course of his life, it's that he always had something more to show us.

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