Anthony Bourdain Dead at 61

[venatorscribe]

There is nothing wrong with a bit of Hamlet. Of all Shakespeare's work it seems like it is quotes and references from Hamlet that pops up the most in movie and tv scripts.

 

[user 246304]

Was just reading a little Shakespeare (haha, I don't normally do that, but Hamlet came up in my life). This soliloquy regarding suicide seemed relevant. Hamlet here is concerned with what happens after he "takes arms against" his troubles and "makes his quietus" with that bare bodkin (knife). He's concerned with "what dreams may come" afterwards; IOW, hell. (in Hamlet, he's just depressed due to his dad's death)

Anyway, suicide seems to be in the news and I thought it was relevant. Regardless of your appreciation for 500-yr old prose, it's interesting that the basic strife and introversion of humans seems the same. Use or discard as necessary.

From Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

I played Hamlet. It's so easy when playing him to hear the voices of a million actors before you - and this is important - it's also critical to hear and speak the lines as if we've never heard them before. It's important, I think, this is a monologue (not a soliloquy, not even an aside to the audience - except everything aside - we're all sharing, actor and audience, 100% of the minutes onstage). As he later says, ""I am but mad north by north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw."

He knows what's up. At the same time he's cracked by grief. Assuming his father's spirit isn't evil, and something as benign as a broken heart can bring the broken mind that drives at least two to their death - Hamlet, and Ophelia, I wonder then what darkness took such a life-affirming force as Anthony to his end. That's how I saw him, anyway. He lived. He put his childhood behind him and found he way to share with the planet all his planet travels yielded. And as hard-edged as he purported himself to be, as punk and jaded and life-at-the-edge-of-a-cigarette-forged as he made himself out to be, what Anthony was for me, was all in, life-affirming. Which is why I and a million others are so perplexed by this loss. I didn't know he suffered in pain and darkness, but I wish we had. I don't know that any of his family, to include Ms. Argento, could have saved Anthony from his desire for extinction; but it gave a running shot, and who knows who would have yielded?

I've laid in to several whites tonight - Sauvignon, chardonnay (x 2), and Viognier. So I hope I'm not dishonoring this memory by posting now. I still cannot take in, he's gone. If you hear this, we love you, brother Anthony. Thanks for bringing the spiritual juice to what it is to work in the true kitchen.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

I've laid in to several whites tonight - Sauvignon, chardonnay (x 2), and Viognier. So I hope I'm not dishonoring this memory by posting now. I still cannot take in, he's gone. If you hear this, we love you, brother Anthony. Thanks for bringing the spiritual juice to what it is to work in the true kitchen.

No dishonor here, friend...

It's one of the things that since it happened, I feel like I have something to say. Something akin to my "Anthony Bourdain view of humanity" I mention above. That in a world of increasing nationalism, polarism, and anger, he brought people together and showed that at the end of the day, we all share basic humanity. We all gather around a table with our loved ones and reflect on the day we've had and those upcoming. He showed through his show just how universal our humanity is, and it transcends race, gender, country, creed, and everything else.

But I can't. I can't write it. The words just won't come. I sat down, clear-headed and ready, and nothing flowed from my fingertips.

Perhaps it's one of those things that requires the great old muse, Ninkasi, to bring forth.

 

[passedpawn]

There is nothing wrong with a bit of Hamlet. Of all Shakespeare's work it seems like it is quotes and references from Hamlet that pops up the most in movie and tv scripts.

Of course they do, because all the worlds a stage, and the men and women merely players Or something like that.

Coincidentally, I'm halfway through My Life in France right now, the story of Julia Child's time in France, where she learned how to cook. If you think Bourdain was the biggest fan of French cooking, well you don't know Julia.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Of course they do, because all the worlds a stage, and the men and women merely players Or something like that.

Coincidentally, I'm halfway through My Life in France right now, the story of Julia Child's time in France, where she learned how to cook. If you think Bourdain was the biggest fan of French cooking, well you don't know Julia.

WAY off-topic, but you should check out a book called A Year In Provence if you haven't already.

 

[passedpawn]

WAY off-topic, but you should check out a book called A Year In Provence if you haven't already.

See you in the Reading thread!

 

[user 246304]

WAY off-topic, but you should check out a book called A Year In Provence if you haven't already.

Just. don't. watch. the. Series. Just my opinion, or unless you love whining as art form.

Books (I've read them in French, so don't know what the translations are like) and films by Marcel Pagnol, autobiographical material from his youth - Father's Glory/Gloire de mon Père; Mother's Castle/Le Château de Ma Mère. And of course the bookend films Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources.

For a beautiful description of what the belle epoque Paris Les Halles marketplace (Anthony's brasserie took its name from this place) once was (and will never be again), The Belly of Paris/Ventre de Paris, by Emile Zola. George Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris is also amusing.

If you don't know Zola, I heartily recommend him. If for no other reason than the fact he stood up for the horribly maligned Officer Dreyfus, when few others would. The wolf of anti-semitism is too close to France's historical door, too often, and I find Zola a shaft of pure light calling on all French citizens to embrace the very ideals that launched them into modernity and nation-statehood. The Dreyfus Affair is a terrible blot on France's name, and Zola is to be honored eternally, in my opinion, for his fight.

Edit: Now that I think of it, it's almost certain I came to Zola's Belly of Paris and Orwell's Down and Out, through Anthony. Stone in a pond, and all the ripples.


One Slash, lightning cleaves the dim
Blue fleck'ed pulse the wavelets
Cranes lull among the reeds

 

[venatorscribe]

WAY off-topic, but you should check out a book called A Year In Provence if you haven't already.

Agree. It is a very pleasant read. Having lived briefly in a smallish french village once, it makes me want to go back again just to chill out

 

[venatorscribe]

WAY off-topic, but you should check out a book called A Year In Provence if you haven't already.

I have just re-watched Bourdain's program on Paris. If you enjoy France you'll enjoy his insights re the french way of life. It is Episode 2 in the Layover series. I found it in Netflix - it is probably also up on uTube .