anthony bourdain [1956 - 2018]

anna woke me at 5:30 AM and asked me if i heard the news.  what?  anthony bourdain is dead.  a suicide.  there are a few celebrity suicides that shocked the shit out of me.  writer david foster wallace was one.  anthony bourdain is another.  why?  the reason is because of their work.  a good writer, and bourdain was a very good writer, gets into the marrow of your bones.  some writers might even go deeper and seep into your DNA.  writing is a deeper life experience and those writers whom one falls in love with become a part of our lives, our bodies and our minds.  and when a loved writer kills himself/herself the shock of their action knocks you on your ass.

i was introduced to bourdain by my friend b. who loaned me his copy of bourdain's memoir kitchen confidential.  then b. said, you have to watch his TV shows.  those shows, a cook's tour, no reservations and the current iteration broadcast on CNN, parts unknown featured, written and narrated by bourdain were more than travel and cooking shows.  they were tone poems.  if i might even go further and call them extensions of bourdain's writings for these shows were essays.  bourdain showed us a world that is crazy, colorful, flavorful, and very human.

and that was bourdain's gift.  he was a flawed individual -- who isn't -- but he was a man who ate life and showed his audiences that wherever he went on this, our,beautiful planet the people he visited in his travels were people who also loved and feared just like us.  bourdain was a man who did what every great essayist does, tells us a human story whether it be about war, famine, refugees, or the abundant rich, that makes us both feel deeply and think widely.

so it is double punch in the gut to discover such a man who so loved life as he also suffered in silence and his suffering was so great that he killed himself.  mental illness is a silent killer.  we cannot know the inner life, the inner nightmare, of our fellow humans unless they tell us of their suffering, or unless we are trained to see the signs of suicidal behaviors.

so let me be an advocate for kindness and compassion.  the dude who cut you off on the highway might seem like a dick but who knows the cause of his suffering.  we all suffer.  life is suffering.  life is fucking tough.  life is unfair.  what we can do is practice kindness and forgiveness.  including the asshole who cut you off on the highway.

i dug the work and persona of anthony bourdain.  his death is a shock to me because he was probably suffering in silence for a long time.  i hadn't seen that suffering in bourdain's work, either on TV or in his books.  for god's sake, mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of.  it is a real physical illness.  there is light at the end of the tunnel.  if i might, be open about your suffering.  you'll be surprised to find others who suffer too.  we are human.  humanity is flawed.  humanity suffers.  that is our condition.  practice humility and forgiveness.  you don't have to suffer alone.