Thinking About Bourdain

This is the first piece I posted about a year ago. It was written the day after Anthony's Bourdain's suicide in 2018. There are some cuts and changes.

Was thinking about Anthony Bourdain. About him and Hemingway. Both suicides at sixty-one. Both icons of male adventure. Two gifted bad boys, searing the culture with their red-hot poker of maleness. Both macho, though perhaps in different ways, but each with a well cultivated image: The explorer, the traveler, the bad ass. But what the myths show us is that it is not only about adventuring outward into the material world, but inward across the threshold of the psyche. An opening of the self to the self. I’m thinking how these epic travelers who are always moving forward are usually running from something as much as to something and maybe more.

Bourdain, even with his great openness, profound humanity, generous spirit and respect for all, even with his big egalitarian heart in the right place, was unwilling (or unable) to do the heavy inner-unpacking that is needed to be sane.  He was scared of no dark Asian alley or goat embryo stew at the end of it, but he was scared to wander down into the basement of himself.  But hey, that's who he was. The tattooed bad boy organ-meat eating booze swilling punk rock Marco Polo, slurping dirty noodles in the streets of Bangkok and botulism be damned! And damn if we all didn't get a lot out of it. He wasn’t killing his steers in the bull ring like Hemingway, or blasting big game with shotguns, but he was eating pig head with the same manly glee. They were both under the same illusion. The illusion that they could just be so heroically themselves that they could get around the teachings, but the teachings will not be ignored, and there will be no going around, only through.

There is a violence to running the streets and saying "bring me the fattiest cuts and the highest proof rum." There is a violence to excess, and that violence will eventually be turned toward the self in either the material world, the spiritual or both; and even the most generous humanist leanings will not protect you from that. Not even authentically being yourself can protect you from yourself, and when the cameras are always rolling who knows what authentic can morph into. Not even talent will protect you from yourself and it is usually the opposite.  And ambition won't do it either. So, heartbreaking to see someone that beautifully himself lose himself so completely. It never ceases to amaze, the vast gulf between the image we project to the world and what is really going on inside us.

But there is another side to all this (another of many), which is that Bourdain was on a public hero’s journey, and I’m not sure either party (him or us) really understood the terms. Time and time again he went across the threshold with nothing but his wits, perceptions and appetite(s) and we watched happily, asking him to hold all our wanderlust projections (which he did, and clearly not so gladly). That was part of the gig and part of his genius. He was a willing, though maybe unwitting projection holder. I can’t tell you how many people have said to me “I think Anthony Bourdain has the best life ever.” So, imagine how many people said that to him. Imagine holding that big a projection (the best life ever) for that many people. What a nightmare. If you have the greatest life ever, then you should be happy every second. Combine that with a natural addictive personality and penchant for the dark side and you got a nice recipe for misery, and since you are so fucking lucky to live the life you do then you better keep that misery a secret. I mean what the fuck is Anthony Bourdain complaining about. He flies all over, eats great food, women love him, and he has (seems to have) friends from Uruguay to Hokkaido. He’s got loot, the coolest food show ever and a sexy Italian actress girlfriend, this cat done figured the shit out! Then, one night he doesn’t show up for dinner and hangs himself with the belt from a bathrobe. It’s hard to comprehend. He must have felt he had no right to complain, so he just kept shoving foie gras down his throat, being force fed his own good fortune like the geese whose livers he was eating.  

And by protecting his public image, he missed his chance to do an even deeper and more heroic service. To give voice to the disconnect between his inner and outer life (and ours as well). As harsh as this may sound Bourdain ultimately crapped out on the hero's journey.  He did the easy half, running up a big beautiful tab at the smorgasbord of glory, but he wasn’t able to do the tough half -- The brutal and (seemingly) unbearable half, where you are forced to confront your own weakness and fragility, and in turn are given the opportunity for grace.

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One year in and I just want to thank everybody for coming by. The need to write is real and so is the desire to be read, and so far, this “stack” had made a happy marriage of the two. As Alfred Hitchcock said to his waiter at Chasen’s after eating a meal of soup, salad, appetizer, main course and dessert: “Let’s do it again.”