So Bourdain

A few years ago, I thought about what my dream job would be. Since I play music like a clubbed seal, rock and roll was out. And I gave up on interpretive dance at least two years before that. Naturally, the next thing that came to mind was Anthony Bourdain’s job.

He was a talented writer, untamed by the written word. In the spirit of Hemingway, he lived. Really lived. Sometimes, the life of a vagabond. Other times, a bastard, a drug addict, a chef, a father, an explorer. But most often, a reflection of ourselves.

But always LIVED.

My parents would need to live to be 2,454 years old to have a fraction of the experiences Bourdain averaged per month. I’m well into the mid-hundreds. So are you. (I felt the same about Freddie Mercury, who died at 41.)

Maybe that’s why after the jarring shock of Bourdain’s death, I moved so quickly to reflection.

There’s no way to rationalize why someone takes their life. It’s not subject to accounting or reason. It just is. But in this emptiness we feel, there’s something more: Bourdain left the same way he lived — on his own terms.

When someone tells you how long your book or article or movie should be. The right answer ALWAYS is: until it’s fucking finished. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot or middle management. Draw that Venn. 🔘

Bourdain said what he had to say. He finished his story. Then told the editor to go fuck himself. We don’t have to like it, but we should respect it. It was so him.

RIP
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I’ll leave you with two excerpts from Sibella by the great Richard Thompson:

“Did the tea-time of your soul
Make you long for wilder days?
Did you never let Jack Kerouac
Wash over you in waves?

Some say you can learn a lot from books
Thrill right to second-hand living
Life is just as deadly as it looks
But fiction is more forgiving”