For Anthony . . .

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”
― Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

June the eight started magnificently. I got to cycle to work on a day when all the conditions for making it the perfect morning for it were there. I had a smile pasted to my face that reflected all that was making me happy and grateful to be alive: the marvellous weather now thought of in contrast to how bitter it was here just two months ago, an end (or at least a blissful lengthened reprieve) from elements of tyranny, my once ailing pet is now recovering soundly, and all the things my sweetheart does, has, or just is, that make me so joyful that I fail to find words for in describing it all deeply and accurately. It was at work where I volunteered to fix up a cable box and reprogram a replacement remote control; where then it felt like this sphere of bliss I was in that morning became shattered by a wrecking ball as the first thing I viewed on this now functioning television was a breaking news report of the death of Anthony Bourdain. He was found in a French hotel; the cause of death being suicide by hanging. I’m trying to write words befitting of his genius and his passionate soul as my effort to remember him.

Even now as I write this three days later, I struggle to sort out the thoughts, and the words to bind them to adequately reflect all my disbelief, my shock, my sorrow about this great and devastating loss of this magnificent curator to all those who want to and dare to experience, appreciate, and dream of, both bliss-laden gastronomy and adventurous wanderlust. He was a unique celebrity: not an actor; a very real person open to exploring any countries or classes: dining along with, and genially discussing things with all sorts, ranging from patrons of Michelin starred restaurants to the humblest of street vendors. He made me want to be that kind of person with that kind of social fluidity, despite my introvert tendencies. He made me appreciate the will to craft the talent of writing better, and to note the importance and impact of honest and simple prose, and beauty of the written word, even when they are used at times to commentate with profanity on subjects leaning towards the vulgar. He reminded me that I once had the cajones to strike off to foreign places not commonly chosen as travel destinations, daring to eat local cuisine, intermingling with the locals; that I’d do it all over again once funding and freedom permits, and that it is a special privilege to be able to do so, and that past experience of doing it ultimately did me good.

One of the best books that one of my friends ever gifted me that was meaningful to my own life was a copy of Kitchen Confidential, with him as the author. His account of his humble beginnings and course of career through the culinary arts, showing all the wild, the humorous, the sultry, the seedy, and the scary behind-the-scenes happenings of the world of the kitchens ranging from eateries to upscale restaurants. It gave me the greater appreciation of improving and daring to amp up my own cooking skills, but yet it also served to scare the living hell out of me from ever wanting to pursue a career as a full-time chef or restauranteur. It also hooked me into wanting to know what his perceptions were of the rest of the world with this sort of background before he even became a traveller and gaining popularity as a TV host.

He, more than anyone, gave me the sense to see where there could be goodness, and even something majestic and exotic, in something ordinarily thought of as crude like offal, and how awful it is having the insidious metastasizing interference of monoculture of fast food chains. His tastes reflected so many of my own. He was an epicurean in the purest sense, knowing that life is lived through the senses; that is why it is so hard for me to stomach the fact that he took the extreme of ending his own life when he so boldly showed us what was beautiful and wonderful to experience in all corners of this globe. It thus must have been an extreme leave of his own senses. Having been through harsh phases of addictions, depression, and anxiety, he no doubt was exhausted of all his remaining energy to mask such things. It was apparent that he mastered doing it well, unfortunately. I can’t begin to guess what personal existential torment he must have had, or what finally made him act on this drastic and final self-destructive impulse. His death comes a month after I was left to process and be supportive to someone grieving the loss of their own child to suicide. Maybe on the subject itself, this occurrence showed me that I’m not yet done with reconciling whatever suffering it brings to those who are enduring the loss of the loved one this way.

In my own fantasy world, there is a list of people with whom I would love to have convened all together for a good dinner party: a group of contemporary celebrity figures (both living and not) for me that I regard as endowed with enough wisdom and style for living well in an enlightened or almost Christ-like manner. They would be like my personal apostles at my very own last supper. Anthony Bourdain was definitely on that list . . . and still is. He would probably would have recoiled at the thought of himself being compared to a Jesus figure, but nonetheless, he certainly was an influence on me in helping me to opt for constructive and hopeful things to do at times when I myself was in a pit of despair; helping me find simple ways to approach rejoicing life with living sensually in the little, but powerful and even medicinal, things and ways that honestly good food can possess. I wish that point of enlightenment was realized by himself and had rescued him before whatever demons he felt he was facing had led him down this dark path.

Thank you, Tony. You deserved a finale better than this; but thank you all the same for this journey you shared with us all. I know my words are nowhere close to being in the same league of mastery as yours in comparing our styles of writing, but please know that they are genuine and heartfelt. Bon voyage et bon appetite . . . and rest in peace.

Old Dead Drunken Authors and on Writing while (somewhat) Impaired

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with fools. -- For Whom the Bell Tolls  

What the hell do adults do alone in Saskatoon after 10:00 PM on a showery May evening: something that's somewhat stimulating outside of the regular home life, yet not too abnormal? If one isn't into the NHL playoffs and generally dissatisfied with all other television programming, plus no appetite to speak of, with the bookshops being closed (not that I'm really in the mood to read anyway); when one doesn't care to waste coin visiting bars, or a cacophonous casino; when the cinemas have nothing special to show, and when it seems too late and unsettling to abuse caffeine and sugar at donut and dessert shops, there really isn't much else to do by oneself at this hour enduring sleeplessness*. So, one tours around cyberspace, while at the same time retreating inside one's own head; it's doing me no favours. It seems to be too busy in there as it is. I only have more insomnia to contend with later it seems: if I don't do something about it. It's times like these when I reflect and speculate on what notable people did in the past: those who didn't have such options for entertainment and yet were creating it for others, and who have suffered relatively more than I have. The topic is also spurred by a strange fact in a posting thread I read earlier, and stunning myself with noticing strange connections.**

I couldn't think of much else to do for now but to remain at home; propping myself in front of my computer keyboard, with a tumbler glass full of whiskey, starting this entry, and perhaps pretending for a while that I can pull off a Hemingway, i.e. having something profound exit my mind and onto a page whilst I'm half lit, that is if I am not made sleepy first by my libation. Whatever gets crafted as a result afterward, for better or worse, I'll credit to the liquid inspiration. As much as I choose to avoid drunken outlandish storytellers in bars, I am however intrigued by some of them when they end up committing their words to paper

Ernest Hemingway could at least verbally draw something fantastically vivid out of a scene that others would ordinarily find trivial. The copious amounts of alcohol he used for fuelling his process was his gimmick modus operandi. The question about whether he was a writer with a drinking issue, or a drunkard with a writing issue, still remains debatable amongst his critics. One can't fault Hemingway much for becoming a drunk though. After all, he did witness the worst of the resulting suffering from the savagery along the frontlines during the first World War as an ambulance driver, until he was wounded himself. Booze was probably the most convenient tool around for dealing with what was called "shell shock" at the time. I suppose he made the best with it as he could.

Edgar Allen Poe is another example who comes to mind, who has my respect as being another writer, who was a hopeless sot, yet who was still able slap together sentences well enough to make them stir one's senses with eloquent, yet macabre, diction relating to things intriguingly mysterious. He was a sickly and melancholy fellow for most of his forty odd years of an odd life. Drinking lots surely didn't help him, except only to be probably more disinhibited to find the right words for him to express with ink and pen. To write literature well, I suppose some sorts need to reach a certain degree of pathos. There's no shortage of that stirred up from excess imbibing of liquor. There's a fine line as to when it turns from a help to a hindrance.

It's interesting, and yet kind of sad, to know just how many of the best critically acclaimed literary works out there are products of someone's neurons being basted in ethanol, or other narcotics and psychedelics. Perhaps, when it comes to writing on a level that's appealing and impactful to all sectors of society, it's just proof that if you are intelligent and keen enough to use grammar effectively, one has to contort the mind such chemically to observe how weird, warped, and surreal the rest of society is as to give it a fair and accurate commentary as well. Probably that's what Hemingway was alluding to in the quote above. He also said that he drank for the sake of making other people look better. That definitely doesn't work for me. It's not the kind of writer I'd want to be. Again, using the examples of Poe and Hemingway: Poe ultimately died alone and penniless, wearing someone else's clothing under mysterious circumstances, and Papa Hemingway sank to such a low that he cancelled himself off with shotgun blast to the head. There's no glamour there I must say.

My whiskey is finished . . . enough about that. I'm not so seasoned as either a hardcore boozer or a writer, so I'll choose to stick with just this one glass. After reviewing what I just wrote, I still seem to be rather lucid.

This reminds me that the Top of the Hops season approaches, and I'm debating if I should go this year. For now, I see no reason to this time.

*- My only other feasible entertainment options for the evening were non-adult things: like videogames. We laugh at our house pets and think how kooky it is when we pull out a laser pointer and make them chase a projected dot, but isn't that what we ourselves are essentially doing when we try to chase and maneuver around sets of pixels on a screen with some control interface? In that perspective, playing videogames isn't exactly very creative or intellectual either. Contraband things could then be listed after this I'm sure.

**- An article about E.A. Poe, and about how he sort of predicted a shipwreck with the name of one of his characters in one of his stories (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket) being identical to one of the victims who suffered the same fate under the same circumstances in real life (cannibalized on a lifeboat) occurring several years later. The name of the character was Richard Parker. It struck me then that it was also the same name given to the tiger on the lifeboat in Yann Martel's book Life of Pi. This wasn't coincidental. I found out that Yann Martel purposely chose that name for the tiger in his story based on these uncannily identical, yet temporally separate literary/actual events. It's like Poe time travelled.

Loving The Alien (Remembering David Bowie)

I'm not the sort to ordinarily gush or dwell on the deaths of celebrities, but this time is different.The news of the death of David Bowie shocked me, and I have to admit that I feel a deep sense of loss, more so than I would have for any other artist's passing. I realize now that I'm more of a David Bowie fan than I thought I was. I suppose my own music collection is telling of that. My iTunes Genius app includes at least one or two of his songs for every random playlist of 50 songs generated out of the pool of my 6000 or so songs in my collection.

I don't know exactly why he appealed to me so much as an artist. I think that he was favoured by those who themselves didn't readily belong to, or weren't grounded in any one conventional or specific place, time, vocation, or social group; harmless people, who are kind and loving sorts, yet regarded as oddballs and misfits by the rest of the world. That is, those who are left to feel like they were aliens walking on their own Earth and wandering and exploring it alone. It is a feeling I have struggled with for most of my life, and Bowie for the most part found the right imagery, words, and musical notes to explain it accordingly and exactly.

He did much to pave the way to bring social conventions that were seen as too taboo and abhorrent and softened them to more of a view and place of normalcy and acceptance, even though he used shock and awe to get our attention first, and thus made it a richer world for all of us. He was a hero to people who don't follow or conform to a set accepted script of gender or sexuality. He made it safe people for people to live within their own skin if they had eccentricities, instead of suffering for and from them. He was an inspiration to so many artists of other genres, from punk to hip hop, from metal to even country.

He was a master of sound and vision. He was a true artist right until the bitter end. Even though cancer was winnowing away the rest of his life energy from him, his creative spirit stayed strong until his very last breath.

Thank you David for all of your genius and greatness that you shared with us. I wish we could have had you cloned. I will miss you. Indeed, the stars look very different today.

My Favourite David Bowie Songs (in no ranked order)

• The Man Who Sold the World
• Ziggy Stardust
• The Jean Genie
• Ashes to Ashes*
• Modern Love
• Let's Dance
• China Girl*
• Space Oddity*
• Sound and Vision
• Slow Burn
• Changes
• Heroes
• Absolute Beginners
• Loving the Alien
• Rebel Rebel*
• Golden Years*
• Fame
• Queen Bitch
• Without You
• Station to Station
• This Is Not America
• I'm Afraid of Americans
• Lazarus

*- If the list was ranked, these songs would be in the top five.