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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Bit Depth

The Pagliacci syndrome

by

20140818

Robin Williams is dead. There. It's said.

I did not know the man, and even though he gave of him­self in an abun­dance of rich­es in every medi­um he touched, I nev­er con­fused those plea­sures with any sense that I un­der­stood who he was.

At least part of that is be­cause of An­tho­ny Sey­ja­gat, a tal­ent­ed phys­i­cal ac­tor, mime (of all things), and an awe­some­ly ef­fer­ves­cent per­son­al­i­ty.

An­tho­ny did tra­di­tion­al mime per­for­mances, but then he took it to an­oth­er lev­el in a se­ri­ous­ly dis­turb­ing suite of pieces per­formed at Ray­mond Choo Kong's The Space at Bret­ton Hall.

Even af­ter I'd be­gun wan­der­ing away from my ten-year flir­ta­tion with the lo­cal the­atri­cal com­mu­ni­ty, he kept in touch, con­stant­ly try­ing to get me in­volved with one project or an­oth­er.

Dur­ing that time, he al­so tried hard to mend a rift I'd man­aged to en­gi­neer with Choo Kong some years be­fore.

Af­ter An­tho­ny abrupt­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide, it be­came clear that he had spent weeks call­ing and vis­it­ing peo­ple hav­ing, what we all re­alised in ret­ro­spect at his wake, were not pleas­ant, out-of-the-blue chats but fi­nal con­ver­sa­tions.

I was an­gry af­ter I'd heard the news of his pass­ing and when I was asked to speak at his fu­ner­al, I said so. Ul­ti­mate­ly, we didn't know An­tho­ny Sey­ja­gat at all.

When I heard that Robin Williams was dead, most like­ly by his own hand, I didn't think of Mrs Doubt­fire or the Ge­nie.

I thought of An­tho­ny perched on a thin ledge, braced against a sec­ond-storey wall, for a pro­mo­tion­al pho­to for the Bag­gasse Com­pa­ny's Chil­dren's Sto­ry­world.

I al­so thought of the un­kempt bush around the rec­tan­gu­lar mound in an Ari­ma ceme­tery the last time I vis­it­ed his grave two decades ago.

Cre­at­ing is hard. It's so much eas­i­er to do work that pass­es muster than it is to do some­thing that chal­lenges or even de­fies ex­pec­ta­tions.

Be­ing fun­ny is hard. You can't re­al­ly be fun­ny with­out be­ing a bit wicked and the best hu­mour is down­right nasty. Every joke has a butt and it's of­ten round­ly kicked.

It's im­pos­si­ble to cre­ate any­thing of any val­ue with­out leav­ing some skin be­hind, and good com­e­dy de­mands a reg­u­lar pound of flesh from its au­thor.

In a coun­try with a dis­tinct­ly im­ma­ture fun­ny bone, satire gets treat­ed like gospel truth and bawdy fun rules. Hap­pi­ness isn't a de­fault for most of hu­man­i­ty. It's some­thing pre­cious that must be con­tin­u­ous­ly earned. I ex­pe­ri­ence it as a fris­son of plea­sure on oc­ca­sion, like a cool breeze aber­rant­ly waft­ing through a sti­fling and damp mi­ne­shaft.

There is a price for see­ing the world as it is, and the fee ris­es as you choose to share that un­der­stand­ing with in­creas­ing hon­esty.

Peo­ple who do so tend to self-med­icate, ei­ther to blunt their per­cep­tions or worse, the con­se­quences of ex­press­ing them.

There's an old joke told about the pro­tag­o­nist of the opera I, Pagli­ac­ci that's re­told with brusque irony in Alan Moore's Watch­men (http://ow.ly/Ap­KQV), a bit of harsh wit that hear­kens to the fi­nal line of the opera, "La com­me­dia � fini­ta!"

Of all those who dare to re­turn with dis­patch­es from the front lines of re­al­i­ty, fun­ny peo­ple are the ones most at risk, be­cause the re­al­i­ty they mine ruth­less­ly is of­ten their own.

If art is truth rein­ter­pret­ed, then the best com­e­dy is the most dan­ger­ous of fun­house mir­rors, the re­flec­tion that is both hon­est and sur­re­al, the guf­faw that catch­es in the throat sourly.


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