Anthony Bourdain and How We Eulogize Mental Illness
Thoughts on "Roadrunner" and how we remember cultural icons who commit suicide.
TW: Discussions of death, suicide and minor spoilers of “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.”
Photo Credit: Melanie Dunea
I did not know Anthony Bourdain personally. Only a select few did, really. He was a man who was seemingly pulled by his torn Ramones t-shirt collar into the spotlight, encouraged to speak, write, travel and share thoughts he never intended to be part of any limelight. After all, he was a 43-year-old recovered heroin addict, perpetually behind on rent, who’d resigned to life as an unknown NYC chef. He wasn’t aspiring toward fame. Instead, fame found him through the release of his wildly successful memoir Kitchen Confidential, based upon writings he initially only shared amongst friends. Television hosting, interviews and more books soon followed. The public loved him.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain does not explore Bourdain’s rise as a vessel for transcendence or celebrate his late-stage celebrity. It’s naked interest is in the visceral, ugly reality that Bourdain—at the height of his cultural popularity—hung himself in a French hotel room while filming Parts Unknown, his genre-shattering travel show. Bourdain, a gifted and insatiably colorful writer, did not write a suicide note. The people interviewed in the film—co-workers, colleagues, friends and his surviving family—are still trying to put the pieces together.
Retrospective pieces on artists that killed themselves walk a delicate line between immortalizing the deceased figure and damning them. The grey is hard to find. Suicide leaves corrosive ripples in its wake, oftentimes cursing the living with unanswerable questions. Could they have prevented anything? Were there signs they ignored? Why didn’t they seek help or speak up?
Having walked dangerously close to the irreversible line of taking my own life three times before, Roadrunner was at times a grueling watch for me. I, like many others, had turned Bourdain into a monolith while he was living; an embodiment of late-stage career revivals, creative renaissances and doing shit your own way. I created my own flawless veneer of his persona, even while knowing the countless dark materials he carried. I liked Bourdain because he was flawed, and shared it openly, almost brazenly. He wrote and spoke openly of his fuck-ups. He did not celebrate them nor did he admonish himself for the damage done by his past addiction. I found this path redeeming, and a beacon for my own return to normalcy after years of mental health struggles. It was possible to heal. And not just heal, but soar afterwards.
When I heard of his death, I was furious. I wept, both for the loss of an idol, and for my own projections, revealed now as illusions. I had turned Bourdain, a human, into a deity. I had failed to consider his inner-world, the place unseen by most except our closest loved ones (and even then, they are often left out). I had failed to see the burdens of recovery when you do not seek community, when you are so engulfed in your own darkness it cannot be communicated; not even to an outstretched and loving hand. I had failed to see that celebrity does not banish the wolves baying at the backdoor.
Watching Roadrunner I was faced with my own past, my own pockets of shame, still calcified in crevices of my consciousness. When Bourdain spoke about going cold turkey from heroin, I saw my own marathon bouts of suicidal depression, always done alone until the 11th hour, when I did, in the end, seek help. Always with my head tilted downward.
To be human is to suffer. How we suffer—alone or in community—is often the focus of much of my creative work. How can we transcend the sometimes harrowing burdens of reality and make space for joy, connection and love? I believe they co-exist together, live in the same house, sleep in the same bed. To refuse one is to damn the other. Perhaps Bourdain, ever the maverick of going it alone, could not reconcile these seemingly opposing worlds.
I cannot praise Bourdain post-mortem, because I cannot condone his final actions. He left behind a child, who will no doubt suffer from his death. As a teenager, I lost my uncle to suicide. The damage was irreparable. You cannot return from the grief of suicide. It subverts the paradigms of mortality to choose death knowingly. Like a wildfire, it simply burns and burns, leaving behind only ash.
But I also cannot condemn Bourdain for choosing suicide. I cannot ever truly understand the inner workings of his personal pain, but from my own experiences, I think I can come very close to understanding. Suicide is a misplaced desire for change that cannot find a name. Suffering is always transitory, flowing like water, but for some the heaviness feels permanent. For some, darkness is a foregone conclusion. An inevitable trick played by life between momentary periods of connection and love. Within suicidal ideations, it can feel nearly impossible to envision a life of love, of acceptance. Love, momentarily, feels like an experience gifted to others, while you have been locked away, banished to a life of inevitable loneliness. Suicide is the follow through to your own perceived exile. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
I wish I could have been in that room in France and told Anthony he was not alone, not ever, no matter how certain he felt this to be true. I wished I could go back in time and shake him, slap him across the face, because as much as I could have pleaded to him to hold on, I knew his life was a reminder to me to do the same. Selfishly, I needed him to live to remember why I was doing the same.
I do not believe in God, but I do believe that there is an energy, a vitality to the universe that connects us all together. Our aloneness in this life is a cruel illusion, and for some, it is a powerful one. Depression, at its deepest core, is the mind believing this separateness is a permanent state; that love can never be truly felt or understood or even received. All love is doomed to leave. I haven’t contemplated my own death for many years, and I don’t fault anyone who—in a moment of extreme suffering—wishes to exit their body and ascend to a place free of pain. But I know this state of mind, where you believe with every moving cell that you are doomed to your separateness. And there is no escape.
We are meant to face this life in connection, and I remind myself, every day, that I am not meant to do this alone. Bourdain was, in many ways, an avatar I held onto as a means to divert myself from my own inner questioning, my deepest, darkest doubts. To speak our pain, however shameful it may feel, is to offer our richest, most colorful and authentic selves to those we love. It is an invitation to grow, to learn to receive love and accept it without condition. Suicidal ideations are not markers of shame—they are deep and inverted desires to live, seeking the arms of a community to help carry you into love.
Whether in pain or sorrow, transcendence and love, speak the life you wish with others. Do not keep it inside. We all deserve this grace. Anthony, I hope your spirit, at the very least, has found it somewhere else.
A song that makes me think of Anthony, by another soul we lost to addiction and mental illness this past year, Justin Townes Earle.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, please do not go it alone. There are countless resources, even if you feel there is no one close around to speak to in the moment. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is a wonderful resource.