O Captain! My Captain!

I'm not one for popular culture. I rarely watch movies these days. They bore me.  Most tv is even worse. I can't tell one Kardashian from the next. And the music scene lost me sometime after I burned out on Green Day's American Idiot. 

I find Hollywood in general to be self righteous, agrandizing, and ludicrously pompous. In the immortal words of Mike's Uncle Jerry, "What do they do for humanity?" [best said in a heavy Ukrianian accent]

But artists... Artists I adore. True artists. Not Beyoncé.  Or Tom Cruise. Real artists. 

Like Robin Williams. 

Like most true artists, he had the crazy. It's what makes them different than the rest of us. It's what sets them apart and makes them... artists, instead of just self important, overpaid schlumps. 

He kindled his spark of madness and allowed it to blaze, gathering us 'round to enjoy its comfort. We were privileged to bask in the glow of the fire he had tended. 

For years, he battled the blaze to keep it in under control. And then, like so many before him, he lost control of his spark and it raged against him.  As a final act of survival, Robin Williams was forced to snuff out his spark, like the last candle at a tenebrae service, leaving us to sit in the dark void created by his absence. 

It's been quoted a lot today, as it was heavily referenced in Williams' Dead Poets Society, but the full length of Whitman's O Captain! My Captain! is a worthy and timely read:

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Our lives are not ours alone. We are interwoven throughout the fabric of the lives of all we touch. When we live fully, we live with and for each other. When we die, we take that with us, leaving just a shadow of memories. 

Life is precious. 

So carpe diem, my friends. Make your lives extraordinary.