How Anthony Bourdain (*deceased) taught me to live again
Warning: This story contains mentions of suicide and depression.
It was 9PM in Athens when I learned that Anthony Bourdain committed suicide.
New message: Mom
Did you hear about Bourdain?
I suddenly sat up on the futon serving as my bed.
I didn't reply. Instead, my mind began to fill with possibilities: New book deal? Engaged to that Italian director chick? Guest appearance on the new Jack White record? I turned to more dire thoughts; Is Tony leaving CNN? Did he get #MeToo'd? Cancer, a plane crash... or something worse?
Google ultimately provided the answer. The news had gone 5 days stale. By then the public had already paid their respects, hoisting up murals and impromptu vigils all over the U.S. The world's most prolific traveler was gone.
I abandoned the screen and glanced towards the carry-on serving as my laundry hamper/closet. Suspended in its front zipper was a torn and tattered edition of Kitchen Confidential. I sat there, pretzel-style for a while.
Eventually someone knocked. Yes? I asked. It was my godfather; he was readying for our midnight tsipouro outing, a type of pomace brandy. He pushed the door open, scanned my gym shorts and T-shirt and frowned. I heard the annoyance in his voice; "Etoimos?" All set? he asked. I nodded.
Just a second.
After our third round I tried explaining what'd happened. I started by telling him that a famous chef that I 'knew' had died. His forehead scrunched. "Pos?" How?
"Aftoktónise," I replied. Killed himself. My godfather wrinkled his mustache and waved his hand with gusto, the way he does when something strikes him as ridiculous. "As ton sto diálo." Harsh words, but befitting for a man who was preached Orthodox ideals from a young age; To hell with him.
I tried to explain my attachment to Bourdain: how he guided my opinions, how he affected my taste in music, movies, and literature, and most of all, how his voice informed my writing. Frustratingly, my Greek glossary was too rudimentary to define the chef-turned-author-turned-travel-TV-host. After a few tongue-twisted efforts, I gave up.
My godfather shrugged and lit a cigarette. "Allo ena," he recommended. One more round. I nodded. We raised glasses, allowing the mind-numbing substance to transport us to brighter subjects. But Bourdain stayed with me. I felt like I was raising a toast to him—a silent vigil of some sort.
Anthony (or Tony, as I began to think of him) haunted me for the rest of that trip, and long after it was over. Once I was back in the States, I became suddenly compelled to regurgitate his entire decades-spanning portfolio. I rewatched each episode, painstakingly read through each of his books again. I felt an odd, bipolar mix of overjoy and extreme guilt while doing this. I must've thought that after indulging myself with Bourdain's work I could finally lay him to rest.
Instead, it had the opposite result. Bourdain's influence only grew with time. Though I was unaware at the time, I began projecting his life onto my own. The restaurants I was working at became places of comfort and misery; economic playgrounds, as well as Sarlacc pits of career stagnation. The notion of working in an office was somehow nauseating. My shiny new college degree was worthless in my eyes, a waiting invitation to slave behind a desk for eternity.
As I drifted from city to city, restaurant to restaurant, I realized what was happening. I was being haunted, living with the fantastical expectation that by some miracle I could channel his voice. Be like him—just like Uncle Tony, who killed himself.
Driving towards—What?
I am not the only one to admire an artist/celebrity who commits suicide. Recent examples include Robin Williams, Chris Cornell, Kate Spade, and Bourdain. But the phenomenon spans decades. Take Hunter S. Thompson: Would thousands of writers still impersonate his writing had he not committed suicide? Then there's Hemingway. Would he still be used as a model for masculine behavior had he not died on his own terms, as he lived? In certain cases, our veneration of self-destruction is more obvious; simply walk onto a college campus and behold the literal plethora of Kurt Cobain memorabilia still in syndication, almost 30 years after his suicide.
Just one example of our celebrity-biased glamorization of suicide—for the low price of $263.06, this could be yours!
However attached we become to an artist, ultimately we are nothing more than just that; fans, marketed-to consumers that become attached to someone's work. Mourning their loss is a largely selfish act, centered around the fact that there will be no new work to digest—no new episodes to watch. For one to justify their mourning as anything more than selfish behavior, well, you had to have known the person.
Suicide largely shades one's opinion of someone. It is impossible to justify suicide. No one can understand what drove him to his decision. As the word's etymology implies, it's something that someone does to themselves. Some people pity the circumstances and/or chemical imbalances that drive a person to such a dark place. Others (my godfather included) are simply disgusted by the act. I oftentimes find myself stuck between both sentiments; despite my historic self-involvement with his work, I'm still not sure how I feel about Bourdain.
Nor are we at fault for honoring these individuals. Most fans of forlorn icons maintain specific memories that they attribute to them. So was the case for me with Bourdain; watching No Reservations was a Monday night ritual for my parents, their only shared time off from running our family-style restaurant. Initially, I tuned out Bourdain's constant narration, opting instead to play video games or exchange texts with my crush du jour. That changed as soon I began bussing tables at the restaurant; from then on, I was intrigued.
But still—as painful as it was coping with his death—as painful as it still is—I had to let go. To avoid doing so was selfish. Tony Bourdain needed to be put to rest. I finally got the chance to do so—at the movie theater, of all places.
I wriggled around in my seat as the lights in the craft beer-serving theater gradually dimmed. I felt excited. This would be the turning of a new leaf, free and unadulterated by the damned celebrity chef that'd been haunting me. I'd come prepared, armed to the teeth with pen and pad, and a double shot of espresso roiling in my guts
Though this is not intended as a review of the film, I can say without much uncertainty that Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a good film; whether you'll enjoy it or not I'll leave you to discover. The first half feels joyous and free of any real conflict. Early on, both in the film and in his career, Bourdain explains what inspired his writing to begin with: "I've always used language to get out of trouble," he confesses. You suddenly get the feeling that his fame was inevitable, given the wry sense of humor in his eyes.
The second half is a more complicated experience, to say the least. As the film dove directly into Bourdain's suicide, my initial elation turned to melancholy. I began moving squeamishly in my cushy seat. The whole ordeal felt long and drawn out. Whether it's possible to spend too much time digesting suicide is debatable—but something felt off.
What I was unaware of as I sat there was the mistake I was making. I'd failed to understand what brought me there in the first place.
I felt confused as the credits scrolled to the film's Modern Lovers soundtrack. What was that? I asked myself. I was there to put a wraps on Tony Bourdain, wasn't I? If so, why didn't I feel 'cured'? I briefly envisioned Tony's ghost floating freely on my shoulder. My fellow viewers waddled away to empty their bladders as the theater lights came back on. I rose so the theater attendant could clean our spilt messes.
I left feeling embarrassed, like I'd somehow failed myself—and Tony. I shoved my hands into my pockets and sighed as I passed beneath the renovated arts district's corny string lights.
As I wandered down the fake cobblestone streets, a lightbulb sparked. I paused mid-step and shook my head, dumbfounded. I patted my journal and grinned: Maybe I was supposed to fail.
I was wrong—again. I was a fool, sitting in that theater with my pen and paper. I hadn't brought the materials with me to draft a new story; it was just a feigned attempt to edit the one I'd already lived. I'd wanted to make my life look neat and tidy by simply burying the person who'd served as my biggest inspiration. Whatever made me think that by seeing that film I'd be able to simply say 'Farewell, Anthony' was wrong.
One of my biggest critiques of Roadrunner is its commitment to a neat ending. Roadrunner tries to tie a ribbon around Bourdain's life and explain what made him who he was, and why he did what he did. But most endings, Roadrunner's included, are mediocre, something which Bourdain himself detested. That might explain why Tony's best work had no resolution. Instead, it took an open-ended approach, one in which the answers were never obvious, never absolute. Roadrunner's feel-good conclusion fails to match how Bourdain lived. Anthony saw both life and travel as constant pursuits, something you can learn from but never quite fully grasp. Each episode he made was not made to explain a place; they were made to explore them. His truest philosophy remains that there is no true end.
But I was wrong too. I went into the theater without ever considering what made Bourdain great to begin with: subjectivity. I'd intended to leave wiping my hands and saying, That's a done deal. Instead, I left saying There's so much that I still don't know.
Say what you want about Anthony Bourdain; he's dead, alive, or a ghost. It doesn't really matter. To me, Anthony Bourdain still belongs in this world. I no longer feel the urge to evict him from my life. He helped make me who I am. Anthony Bourdain made me want to explore, to see life's endless possibilities. He continues to inspire me to this day. I no longer have a problem with that, just because he died the way he did.
So, are we excused from our habitual veneration of self-destroyers like him? It depends—on you. I forgave both Anthony and myself upon realizing that Bourdain's prominent role in my life should be valued, not abandoned out of shame or guilt. Recognizing suicide's widespread and devastating range also helped me forgive. Knowing this has made me more comfortable with my own depressive moods.
Religion and pride are continually used to mark suicide as an illegitimate cause of death. To those in line with these dogmas, suicide is a display of weakness. Therefore, individuals who resort to it are to be dismissed, forgotten. Still I ask, would that same person also negate someone who succumbs to an inherently genetic predisposition, like cancer? Not likely. Yet research suggests that so is the case with suicide and depression; certain individuals are inherently more susceptible to it than others.
It seems that the only truth we can truly recognize is that us, the living, get to decide. One's decision whether to forgive or simply forget someone who commits suicide depends entirely on the individual. It's up to us whether we should forgive—or forget.
Though I got caught up trying to erase my attachment to Anthony Bourdain, trying to do so is ultimately how I learned deal with loss. I learned to embrace life for what it is—endless. The lessons come and go, but they never end. Tony taught me how to toss away fear and embrace the unknowable. Now I can finally acknowledge that I'm still here—and there's plenty more left to see in this world. I've come to recognize life's boundless potential. Now, I can finally start living again.
So thanks for haunting me, Tony. Thanks for widening my eyes to the possibilities. Hopefully this story helps you see them, too.
Here's to the endless possibilities.
Link to National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
