Who or What Killed Anthony Bourdain?
Reflections after watching the new Roadrunner documentary
I was coming back home from Peru on a flight from Miami to LAX, my girlfriend came across the new Roadrunner documentary about Anthony Bourdain, the chef-writer who got to travel the world and talked about it in cool ways. At first I had little interest. I knew he had killed himself, but like how many people actually kill themselves like that in Hollywood? At best, he’s just a dude who couldn’t handle the pressure of the tabloids and elite society. Of course, though. There exists a deep, complex and beautiful world within us all, and so I imagine there was something beautiful in his mind that brought him to his death, something tragic.
I heard the movie was out but I wasn’t in any particular rush to watch it. I never really followed him on television, or read his books, though I would say I did always have a faint sense of knowing him, or at least knowing that he was different, a rather good person. There are a lot of people in my life I don’t pay attention to them but I recognize their soul. In that way we shared a camaraderie. Regardless I didn’t really wanna watch the movie and I had a pretty good book I planned to read for the four-hour flight. We sat next to this adorable old Asian couple who were drinking Coca-Cola and eating Doritos.
She turned the movie on and I peeked over at the screen to catch the first scene. I forget what it was he said but at some point I figured he was actually a writer before anything. Any movie about a writer is a good movie. Oh, man. And it’s a movie about a writer that killed himself, wow. That’s deeply personal and compelling. Immediately I pause the movie on her screen and I pull up the movie on mine to sync them up. Ended up being one of the best documentaries I’d ever seen. I couldn’t barely think after it ended, contemplating my own relationship to writing and seeing the world. The only way to really react to watching that movie was to write about something.
The way I see it is this, Anthony Bourdain killed himself. Or maybe he didn’t. It’s a romantic thought, anyways. A simple thought. Sexy for Hollywood, at least. Useful for mental health advocates, at most. At any rate, it’s all pretty confusing and bids me seek more explanation. I guess I want to know why? Why did he have to die? Forgive me if I feel I owe it to him, any sense of certainty. Perhaps he’d tell me to fuck off, too.
Maybe it’s none of my business, but it’s hard to feel settled about any suicide story in Hollywood at face value. Not that it must be murder or human sacrifice. Him knowing too many secrets or not enough. I don’t mean to tout any conspiracy. Any reasons people had for killing him. Whether that could be true or if he really in fact killed himself, my head makes up stories anyways. Perhaps there is a part of me that wishes we could have saved him.
Tony was depressed before he even started traveling and making TV. I imagine anger sucked the life out of him. He got out of a heavy addiction and then got famous for writing a book about his life in the kitchen industry. Then he got to write more books for people, and wrote for the television shows. He saw the world. At some point he got into a deep depression and I think he must have stopped writing. Maybe that’s what killed him. He was angry at the world he now too closely knew, he got to the sun and burnt his wings. He wasn’t able to write anymore, to save himself. The world its gravity pulled him down, the earth wrapped itself around his neck. Asphyxiation. He choked on his own hatred of things. He stopped writing.
Anthony Bourdain hangs in my memory like a warning to anyone who wants to see the world. And to anyone who reveals what they see of the world. The troublers, the writers. The writers as troublemakers. More trouble for themselves than anyone else. Beware all who wish to know and tell the truth. Blessed are they who can bear it. It is a birthright and a curse to be a herald of the times. Is it safe to tell the truth these days? To ask about it with dignity and entitlement? To truly seek and consider the world? When Anthony Bourdain kills himself it bids me to write, nonetheless. To toil over my own craft. To see myself in my own words, my love for the world in all its twisted bitterness. The paper itself becomes a mirror. And my seeing heals me, and at once it makes me suffer more. A curiosity emerges with every next word. Will writing kill me or help me keep living? An antidote or a poison.
Did he stop writing? Forgive me if that question is too personal. Nevertheless, I hope he stopped writing. For me, I sure pray he did stop writing. The curse of his responsibility should have killed him for breaching the contract we all know exists between a writer and himself. That which hangs around the neck of any good writer. And if there be no good writers, let it hang around any who fantasizes to be read. It is an albatross killed every time you put the pen down. Then the fog of an endless sea clouds your vision. The world passes you by in a ship full of ghosts. Misfortune. He killed himself, anyhow. Luck or not. Demons and all. And if he wrote about it we’d all be saved. Fuck Asia Argento and her whole family. Cursed are we all if we try to write anything valuable, and seven generations in every direction.
There’s no way Anthony could have kept writing. There’s no way he could have healed his sight after laying his eyes on so much of the world. At best he knew he ought have stopped. At worst, too much stress and preoccupation. Running roads. Catching flights. Watching CNN. Behind the scenes too much going on. His seeing and writing were loops he was better off cutting. Not as a cry for help, but as yet another statement of observation in itself and no better way to say it to the world. He had become alienated from us all and there was no other way to shake that feeling. Perhaps it was the best he could imagine to a good story growing old. Lest he risk feeling like he was explaining a bad joke, or walking off stage to boo’s and tomatoes. He hated the world, he loved the world, he was hurt and lonely.
Who’s still watching? Begging to see more, staying seated to read the closing credits. Only those that know and those that think they know why. It’s not guessing anymore that the world kills every writer. The pressure of it all ripping open his heart, that we otherwise wish could successfully and eloquently filter enough of its bitterness and darkness to take in slow slips. The stories too hot to gulp.
We push our writers to the edge, making them see and know it and forcing them to bring back only the tasty bits of the whole mess. A translation. A betrayal accepted. What’s acceptable, anyways. My mind likes to imagine that writing killed Anthony Bourdain. That he found himself unable to reconcile the psychological burden that comes with it all. Maybe the world prefers lies sometimes. True honesty can put you to the test. To see yourself within it all and to accept it as it is and to tell it like it is. When you’re going through the shit it’s hard to write your way out. And yet for the writer that’s all there is. Perhaps this is too dramatic of a perspective. I would hope so. If so, how else can we look at it?
