Personal Glimpses of a Comet: Comic Genius Robin Williams
Sometimes there are people who touch our lives in brief glimpses – and those encounters are so magical that we hold onto them and look forward to the next one over and over. They’re friends of friends or colleagues we bump into at events or meetings or random connections where it seems serendipity is at work.
Robin Williams was one of those people for me. I was the talent producer of the BAMMIES (Awards) in San Francisco for nearly 20 years, and was fortunate to have the chance to work with Robin as a presenter a couple of times during my tenure. Each time without fail, as tensions ran high in production (which they do at live events, no matter how well prepared you are), Robin would be there, working his magic backstage, making everyone laugh and lightening things up for us – as well as for the other presenters and performers.
And our paths would cross that way for many years through different circumstances. When he was shooting, “What Dreams May Come,” I’d hear regular stories of his antics from my good friends Michael Van Himbergen and Jeff Diamond, who were part of the visual effects team. (The film won numerous awards for visual effects by the way, including an Oscar.)
And the connections continued. As recently as last year, I was approached by Robin’s team to lend my “super-connector” expertise to help source potential buyers for his home in Napa from within my network. Unfortunately we weren’t successful, but the home is a real stunner.
There have been other modest and even indirect glimpses of Robin too – someone recently showed me where Thomas Kincaid, the artist, had painted Robin into a corner of one of his San Francisco paintings; something few would notice or realize was him if no one pointed it out. He was everywhere it seems. But again, these are only flashes… the off-stage Robin was probably known only to a handful of very close friends, to his children… for the rest of us, it’s like how a comet flies past us through space. Like Robin’s work, a fast-moving comet leaves trails everywhere in its wake, timeless. Nothing really ever fades away completely, does it?
The point I’m making here,ultimately, is to pay attention. To be sure that we stop and notice the people who whiz past us with comet-like brilliance. To recognize how much they mean to us, even in brief glimpses. And to BE that comet whenever we have that opportunity. In the immortal words of Robin, “You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
Here’s to Robin … and the rest of his magical journey.
Kelli
PS: Please read my LinkedIn article on Robin Williams here: https://bit.ly/OnlyTheGoodDieYoung
