The Crying on the Inside Kind

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

-Shakespeare, Hamlet

There's a Bill Murray movie called Quick Change, where he robs a bank dressed as a clown.  Someone asks him: "What kind of Clown are you?"  To which he replies, "The crying on the inside kind."
That actually may be the only kind of clown that actually exists.  Read about the pathology of funny here.
John Belushi, Chris Farley, Phil Hartman, now Robin Williams, the list of funny people who have laughed themselves to death is long and tragic.
Williams suicide seems to have struck a chord, perhaps because he had time to evolve as an actor beyond comedy: Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, and even One Hour Photo, showed us that Williams had range beyond playing Mork from Ork and the manic wild man of his stand up comedy.  He let us see other facades that he had constructed as well as the funny man.  I suspect that very few people actually saw the real Robin Williams, and not being seen, especially when you are so famous, is a lonely thing.
Artists of various sorts have proven this true, from Vincent Van Gogh to Kurt Cobain, the ability to express your inner self through art is a gift and a curse.  The process by which you produce art, whether it is writing, painting, music, acting, or just making people laugh is way of reaching within yourself and showing what you have done with your pain.  It can be excruciating, and it can be beautiful, and sometimes the most painful things are also the most beautiful.
The fact that we have made many of our artists into celebrities, with all the benefits and curses thereof, further complicates matters.  In Kurt Cobain's suicide note, he lamented the fact that he couldn't feed off of the crowd like Freddy Mercury, but the truth is Freddy couldn't either, it cost him, it always costs us dearly to share ourselves with others, it makes us vulnerable and it makes us human.  The danger is in denying the cost, and not having enough "off stage" time and support.
So back to Williams, he was obviously a one of a kind sort of talent.  He was distinctive enough as a comedian that other comedians couldn't really even try to emulate his manic energy.  But that manic side has a shadow, as bipolar and manic-depressive people will tell you, and that shadow is dark indeed.  How many times have you heard someone say of a person who has committed suicide: "They seemed so...(insert favorite generic emotional statement of well-being here: happy, normal, content, funny, creative)."
Does it surprise anyone that he had substance abuse problems?  No, probably not, we sort of expect that sort of thing from our artistic types.
Yet it does surprise us that he was depressed.  Well, here's a news flash, the two things are intimately related.  Substance abuse is an attempt to self-medicate and numb the pain of existence; and when is existence painful?  When you're depressed.
Notice that good art speaks to our pain, even as it uplifts us.  Art that does not touch pain somehow is merely entertainment, and it will never change the world.  Art that lets us into the heart of the artist brings us together, whether it's the quizzical smile of the Mona Lisa or the words of Ernest Hemmingway (another suicide).  Art that doesn't cost anything, I'm talking to you pop music and formulaic movies, only numbs us in the most superficial and temporary manner.
Since the news of Williams suicide broke, social media has been filled with various expressions of the ways that Williams has touched people, and most of it was from his forays into drama.  Dead Poet's Society was one of those generation defining movies, right up there with The Breakfast Club for folks my age, it made us think for a moment that maybe Whitman was worthwhile.  Good Will Hunting, for better or worse, has brought us Afleck and Damon to stay.  In The Fisher King, Williams played a schizophrenic man in a way that was both humane and immensely entertaining.  In Good Morning, Vietnam, one of the first R-rated movies I was allowed to see, he played a funny man who has to get serious.  In What Dreams May Come, he plays a man who deals with grief and loss and finding hope.
It's profoundly sad, now that we know the end of the script, that a man who gave us so much of himself still felt so very alone and hopeless.  Looking back on it, his movies contained so much that can help us deal with life.
So long funny man, I hope you have found out now that God has a great sense of humor.
You don't have to play the clown any more.