Idolising Anthony Bourdain and learning not to

I’ve been thinking about how it feels for me to idolise someone — that feeling of, “I want to be like them.” I think that for me, being like someone isn’t so much about what I want to do — it’s more about how I want to be done. Finished, remembered — healthily exhausted — clapping my hands together twice with that sliding motion (pap pap!) like when I’ve just finished cooking my sorry excuse for a curry and then gently, softly lowering myself into my grave surrounded by loved ones. I’m thinking about it because I just finished Kitchen Confidential, the late Anthony Bourdain’s sizzling and crackling autobiographical account of life as a cook and chef, filled with hilarious accounts of drugs, sex, crime, genuine passion for food, and surprisingly good writing given the man’s decades of dedication to spending twelve-hour days in sweltering, chaotic kitchens. I felt, as I turned the last pages, that I idolise Anthony. I don’t want to be like him in the active sense, so much. I don’t want to be like he was when he was addicted to crack or heroin, or when he was working in shit restaurants, or when he was working in great restaurants, or even when he was a celebrity with his own TV show, or especially when he died by his own hand while away filming for that. None of it, even the really fun parts, appeal to me; I’m a gentle, sober, and in some ways, at least right now, lazy boy wanting to live a completely different kind of life with a totally different rhythm; neither his fame, his history of sex, nor his friends, nor his ambition are things I envy. <a href="https://medium.com/@chriskanski95/idolising-anthony-bourdain-and-learning-not-to-f4a82161c5f2">Read More</a>