June 8, 2018. Anthony Bourdain, the food guy, committed suicide. It was last night or this morning. His body was found this morning by a friend. What a thing to do to a friend. When I heard the news on the radio I wept. I called my wife to tell her what he had done and I had a hard time telling her. It messed me up. I’ve known good people to do this. To take their life into their own hands. And it is always a mistake. Always.
I started watching Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” show on Netflix a while back. There was something intensely likeable about this guy. He was the guy next door. He was the troubled friend who did a lot of stupid stuff but you wanted to be his friend anyway. He was the persistent pessimist who was as curious as three people put together. And we find out now that he was doomed by his world view. I was hoping he would start to figure things out. Things that would have helped him to deal with his pain. But he didn’t.
His daughter now has to pay the price for that.
I couldn’t tell if he was humble or arrogant. I’m sure he was both, but maybe you know what I mean. At any given moment. He himself was "parts unknown." I couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad. It all seemed to be at war within him, and the simple joys of food and culture were becoming less and less of a reason to stay alive. Which is tough because if his daughter wasn’t going to be reason enough, the food and the culture was all he had left to him. Or so it seems. And in the end that’s not much to hold on to. I can’t say I know, really, what it was he was holding on to, but it wasn’t anything eternal as far as I can tell.
I have to admit that I can’t always tell the difference between humility and insecurity, or outright fear. I was mixed up with what I was seeing in Bourdain on his show, and I get mixed up myself. What I mean is that I can’t always tell within myself, in my own heart and mind. I’m not talking about trying to judge others. I’m talking about making sense of myself. But I could be talking about judging myself in an unreasonable way as well. I don’t know. At least sometimes I don’t know.
It can be debilitating.
I want to walk in humility every moment of every day. There is no situation or condition that humility doesn’t fit. True humility is always appropriate in every situation. And I believe it leads us to a place of hope.
But I’m laced with all kinds of insecurities and fears as well. Things I can’t talk about much because I can’t really “remember” the sources. They’re rooted in neglect and mistakes and sorrows and abuses, many of which I can’t even remember anymore intellectually, but my emotions remember just fine. My emotions remember things that my mind has long ago let go of. And the emotional sores still pull away from touch like any sore that is tender. Cuts that just won’t heal. And you wonder when the tenderness will go away. When will you be able to handle touch again? And what will you lose in the process?
What if my artistry is rooted in my pain?
It’s hard to think of anything that fills people with empathy more than pain does. And empathy connects us with other human beings. I think I connected with Anthony’s pain. Not that he expressed it much in words. It was in his eyes. It was always fighting with his curiosity. And his humility. That’s what I think, anyway. Pain can make us very arrogant in quiet, rebellious ways that can be incredibly destructive.
In the Bible, in Hebrews 4:15, Jesus is described as having empathy with us, with our humanity, and we’re meant to take hope from the fact. And I do. But there’s a part of me that wonders how it’s possible. What is human/divine empathy? What does it really mean from his perspective? What does it bring about in the world? What does it lead to? I have only scratched the surface.
There is a misty realm of metaphor in my head that drives a lot of what I do and don’t do. It’s like a mud puddle. To be more artsy fartsy about it: it’s a kind of Tolkienesque realm of true myth, where the real things of the past, things now shrouded in darkness, loom and shape the present, and it becomes something you have to fight against sometimes because it is controlling and oppressive, leaving you wondering why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s all real, and yet if feels like a long, mythic history of what it means to be human, to be making choices and feel like you’re in control, but finding out the hard way that control is a very illusory thing. Realizing that we are not as strong as we think we are. And we are certainly not, in the ultimate sense, in control of much of anything. So we cling to what we think we can hold on to and shape what we think we can shape. And we try to get that ring into the fires of Mount Doom without destroying ourselves.
Perhaps we should trust someone else to take care of that ring for us? Is that cowardly? Perhaps it's just realistic.
When it comes to living here. On earth. How much of Leonardo is in David? Know what I mean? How much of McCartney is actually in his songs? And I mean all of them. Sum total. How much Paul is there? How much of himself will he be leaving behind and will anyone be able to tell what’s what? How much of Anthony was in his food and in his show? And who really cares?
What if, in the end, it's not about you? And it never was?
Why couldn’t Anthony figure out why another day was worth the effort? If not for himself, then for others? For his daughter? At this point blame is pointless and worthless. It won’t change a thing. But what was going on in that mind of his? I guess the big question is: how could he have drifted so far away from what’s really important? Isn’t that a question worth thinking about?
I don’t look down on him for it. I’m not angry with him. But I am sad. And I'm really going to miss him.
To some degree, dust is a ruler in this place. Dust and rust. And decay. And they don’t care what we think. Do you really believe you can fight them on your own?
Peace to you.
© LW Publishing 2018
