Anthony Bourdain Was Our Woke Ambassador
A brief remembrance of an American luminary
In my phone are two lists of people — creatives, inventors, leaders, writers, athletes, spiritual gurus — who I would love to, someday, sit down and have a meal with. These are inspirational people, admirable people, who have taken life and made something extra special with it. Most of them are famous, the type of people you write on a card and stick to your friends forehead when you play “Who am I?”. My odds of ever actually sitting down to eat with any of these people are slim, but I know I’ll never sit down with anyone from list #2. That’s because the people on list #2 are dead. Yesterday, sadly, I moved Anthony Bourdain’s name to list #2.
Anthony Bourdain didn’t go with the flow. The flow went with him.
Bourdain epitomized cool. He was the real life Dos Equis guy. He had the kind of nonchalance that can only come from doing lots of heroin and living to tell the story. Maybe that’s where his empathy came from too. It was Bourdain’s empathy that let him move through places, cultures, dining rooms, seamlessly. He could find the glorious, soul-drenching meaning of life in a piece of bacon as easily has he could in the longing eyes of a displaced refugee and he could, on camera, talk you through both with A1 sangfroid.
He presented the world with an ease that suggested none of it really mattered. Of course, he quickly showed us that it all matters, a lot. The five year-old Nicaraguan kids digging through mountains of trash to find recyclable plastic to sell, the one-legged Laotian farmer who stepped on a cluster bomb left over from the Vietnam war, the career bartender pouring beers in a smoky, off-the-strip, Vegas dive, the tuk-tuks, the mopeds, the cabs, the trains, the boats, the street meat, the seafood markets, the fresh bread, the pasta, the wine, the foie gras, the curries, the noodle soups, the pork, oh yes, the pork — it all matters.
Bourdain made cooking, writing and traveling each a little cooler.
For young writers, travelers, and omnivores like me, Bourdain was somebody to point at and say “Look, that’s how to do it.” He proved that a person could be self-assured and relentlessly open-minded at the same time and he was a much-needed bastion of masculinity in the writing community. But even for the casual CNN viewer, Bourdain was a guide, showing people that being curious, receptive, empathetic, and honest is a better way to move through life.
There have been fucks given on this earth, none by Bourdain.
An argument can be made, fairly, that Bourdain glorified drug use, if unintentionally. But for every aspiring cook who saw Bourdain’s life as an excuse to snort coke at work, thinking that a book deal and a TV show were waiting down the line, there are many more he inspired to get clean.
Maybe he spurred the growth of the travel industrial complex. He probably prompted a few obnoxious Americans to go abroad, perpetuating our middling reputation as travelers. But for every loud American talking shit at a hostel bar in Thailand, there are more he inspired to travel consciously, sharing the best bits of American culture and bringing the best bits of other cultures home with them.
Of course, there’s also the tragic fact that he left behind an 11-year-old daughter who has to grow up without her dad. But nobody is as bad as their worst actions or as good as their best, and none of us know the demons that Bourdain was dealing with. I can only imagine the depth of depression someone could reach who could see the divine in a pork rind.
However you want to score Anthony Bourdain’s life, his impact on the world was objectively good. He was, and will always be, a friendly reminder to try new things, in new places, with good company.
Anthony Bourdain was our woke ambassador.
Yesterday I moved Anthony Bourdain’s name to list #2 in my phone, and now I know I’ll never get to share a meal with him. But in many ways, I already have. We all have. Every time we opened up one of his books or turned on one of his shows we got to clink beer bottles with Anthony Bourdain.
Cheers to a life well lived.
