Anthony Bourdain is My Spirit Animal

Hello again to all my friends, HERE ON PBS KIDZ.

Being terrible at the act of blogging feels more unatural than being the frequent, angry and hormonal teenager that blogged daily. When did I stop writing about every day like it was nessecary. When did I stop being so mad about everything when it didn't fall exactly in agreement with my young adult opinions. Or have I not become less mad but just more quiet? More censored. If I remember correctly, 2006 was a time in which we all loosely threw around the n-word because it seemed cool, and very heavily relied on dubbing everyone dumb and misguided. And of course when I look back, and read that loud and manic writing I cringe, even gag perhaps. But I also feel terribly less creative. I don't want to eventually come to the moronic realization that the most productive and imaginative time of my life was before I turned 20. Not that it was that productive at all, but every week was littered with a new dream that marched each day into some childlike frenzy in which the next moment had the potential to be the moment that changed our lives.

It seems that everything I am angry about has become something everyone is angry about? And maybe thats the initial ritual of adulthood, to be joint in our hatred of this 'terrible' society rather than get upset over how it hasn't offered us our own version of greatness. Don't get me wrong, I am not at all less interested in achieving a title, getting a whiff of being dubbed 'great', having my ego gloriously stroked. But I'm less inclined to believe that i'm entitled to have this delivered to me. Unfortunatley, this realization does not exactly translate immediatley into the logical conclusion of 'working harder'.

Right now, right this minute, I want to be Anthony Bourdain. Look I know, I am neither an accomplished chef , well known writer or a seasoned traveller, but for the past two weeks I have been having a repeated fantasy of being exactly that (throw into that mix a musical genius and political leader). There is something profound about Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. Hear me out fuckers. Just slow down before you LOL at my face.

No Reservations follows Bourdain around the world as he eats a variety of culturally relevant food, drinks a generous emount of nation-specific alcohol and does a bunch of shit in between eating and drinking that is also unique to each country visited. Obviously this sounds like several combo travel-food shows. No. Noooope. You're entirley wrong. I'm not sure what makes No Reservations particularly unique, but it probably has something to do with Bourdain's personality – an unabashed, curious, funny and inherently bitter amalgamation of a man. This goes togther with the idea of a “crew” of people who are evidently now Bourdain's friends, his “team” who move with him from place to place experiencing what each culture has to offer through food and its relevance through history. There is a genuine effort to dive headfirst into each culture but also a severe honesty that comes through Bourdain's background narration. There is a sincerity to no reservations that isn't desperate to “show a new culture” but rather it is eager to experience it and weigh out its beauty and ugliness and then taste it. Bourdain finds himself in post-colonial Asia, Africa and South America and drinks away his days in old grand hotels, he comments on the movement of time, the progression of ideology and the attatchment to identity over the culinary arts. At times, his remarks are biting – blunt and judgmental of some strange cultural oddity. At other times he is fasinated, sypmathetic and observant. In Europe Bourdain is more familiar, he slips into Italian and French cuisine with ease but still maintains the same balance of abrasive commentary and genuine love of all things new and strange. There is a certain integrity to the No Reservations team and it comes through in their footage, in their accidents and in how Bourdain acts as a center piece to how this entire group of people swim through a large assortment of food, people and places.

So, with that said. Earlier today, immediatley after waking up I watched Bourdain's NR episode in “Rome”. Shot entirly in black and white to project Bourdain's own dream of an old filmy Italy where men walk in suits and the streets are as still as paintings at night time. Theres a moment in the episode where the freshest of fresh cheese is being cut for the first time and Bourdain gets to taste it. And its only in the first 10-15 minutes after cutting the cheese will it ever truly taste as perfect it does in that moment. I'm not sure why this had such an insane effect on me, but my longtime thirst for travel and adventure which quite frankly had been uneasily dormant in my life for the last little bit, once again reignited. I want to travel the world in the very same way and taste food and hear music and re-live history through people in the same Bourdain like stlye. It is awfully familiar and extremley provoking. A little bit of exhaustion, intruigue, excitment and awareness. And it truly has nothing to do with “fun”. I think it is much more rooted in learning, understanding what people really value and going back in time by moving through the world like it is a quite wonderful textbook.

I only wish I hadn't discovered this show so late. 

Herodotus Liked his Meat Dry

In my study of antiquity, humans are categorized. There are slaves and there are masters, haves and have-nots, the military elite and the child rearing woman. The bards, the artisans and the whores. And I wonder, at what point does a small isolated party of like minded people become stamped in time as a record of something. A record of something bigger than them and yet still a brief image of a life they were a part of. Is it more important to note the patterns shared by a group of potters and the development of their craft, is that really the summation of their life? Or is history actually told in the conversations that were had between the time in which each pot dried, and the quiet and exhausted sighs that were released when the time came to close the shop at night. I wonder then where a small but pleasant weekend in our contemporary world would fit. I wonder how the small joys extracted from playing a board game around a wooden table after consuming a warm meal and being simmered down by wine will ever make its way into a history. An enquiry about what it means to be human today in all its fleeting glory. If the feeling of heavy bedsheets and how hot the teapot feels at the start against my palm will wind up being of any importance, because is it not that which makes us who we are? The smallest sensations surrounding the movement of our hands, reaching for another's fingers. The careful and precise way in which you cut onions and look away ever so slightly to attempt to not cry. The smell of coriander against the tip of a knife and how you stop, inhale generously and keep cutting. How graciously we all enjoy each others companies and let the deep and rumbling sound of laughter escape our throats without stopping to wonder if this is what it means to be human today. And for a second in time I am transfixed, because I don't rememer reading about a Mycenaean bard with a penchant for comedy and a particular dislike of grapeseed oil, but for some reason that is all I see. I don't remember when the brown haired soldier in the phalanx turned to his shorter but more refined comrade and quietly whispered a jest, but all at once, in a consuming and terrifying emotion that is not my own I try so hard to remember this. For their sake and for mine. I try at that moment to remember a thousand human histories, and fill in the gaps of my books with these conversations. I wonder if, when all things are quiet and we are an ancient and recorded history ourselves, someone else will remember a small weekend in this place. A very simple record of a simple time.