I wasn’t going to write any more on Bourdain’s suicide because I haven’t actually read any of his books (just excerpts) or watched his shows (just clips).
But this is a pretty interesting essay from one of Bourdain’s fellow ex-heroin users.
Lets look at who Bourdain was – at least to me. To me, he was “one of us.” By that I mean those of us who were misfits who succeeded in spite of ourselves. Bourdain was very open about his prior drug use – not shy at all about it, in fact. He regularly dropped references to his prior heroin habit. I loved that about him. “Yeah, I used to shoot smack, and look at me now.” He was not a “say no to drugs” guy. He was a keep-on-raging guy, even if he did gain a high degree of responsibility in his older age. He let that flag fly, and in doing so, he sent signals to some of us who understood him on that level.
Bourdain was not the kind of guy to get an honorary degree and then give a speech extolling the virtues of studying hard and working hard. Bourdain was a pirate. I can think of no higher praise than to call him that.
After he died, a wise man (Julian Sanchez) wrote: “Very successful people often become successful because they are unhappy.” And that makes sense when you look at Bourdain. Nobody shoots heroin because they are happy. A demon chases you into that place. That demon talks to you. He lies to you. He tells you to go ahead and jam that needle into your arm, because you are different. It won’t hurt you because you’re different – and that difference makes you alone, and that heroin makes you forget about being alone. Not the “alone” like being in the house all by yourself. The “alone” someone feels while they are the center of attention in a huge crowd. That alone. That cold-alone that is more alone and cold than you’d be if you were strapped to Voyager One like a dark frosty vacuum-dried interplanetary hood ornament of freezer-burned meat. That alone that isn’t even black – because at least you can lose yourself in blackness. Blackness and darkness at least has quiet and tranquility. The real evil aloneness is grainy. T.V.-static-alone. That alone of “did I just hear something?” And you didn’t hear anything. You wanted to. You wanted to hear something so badly that your ears start creating sounds that make sense out of the static.
The noise.
Just. One. Fucking. Sound. That. Makes. Sense. Please. God. Fucking. Dammit.
I’m not suicidal or a heroin user (ex or otherwise), but I too keenly feel the loneliness of crowds.
Someone in the comments mentioned Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt,” which is as good an excuse as any to post the video:
And here’s original songwriter Trent Reznor talking about the Cash cover and the video for it.
And as long as we’re on the subject, neither the original nor the Cash cover are my favorite version of that song. This is:
Tags: Anthony Bourdain, heroin, suicide, video
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