“Good people of Atlanta, we must never forget that Anthony Bourdain killed himself. Anthony Bourdain had the best job that showbusiness ever produced. This n_____ flew around the world and ate delicious meals with outstanding people. That man, with that job, hung himself in a luxury suite in France…Nobody’s life is perfect. No matter what the fuck it looks like from the outside, you never know what’s going on inside.”— Dave Chapelle, 2019, Sticks And Stones, Netflix.
I started doing yoga when Anthony Bourdain killed himself.
We don’t offer each other many opportunities to be vulnerable around each other, and it takes courage to open up when you’re feeling down. Personally, I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs, but…they’re not things you’re encouraged to bring up in a job interview. Or on a date. Or with your friends, really. Especially not if you’re a man.
If you’re going to write, it helps if you’ve got some unresolved trauma—Batman wouldn’t have sold so many comics if Bruce Wayne had gotten therapy. And trauma-wise, I feel like Mr. Bourdain had endured plenty.
I was lucky enough to interview him in 2006 and was struck that he seemed to be grappling with the unresolved trauma in his life, and that it contributed to his charisma. He was separating from his wife. He had been addicted to drugs. But his destructive streak was also distilled charisma, pure energy. I go back to read what I wrote about meeting him and still can’t believe he spoke to me. My wife and I go to his friend Eric Ripert’s restaurant, Le Bernardin, in New York. And I’ve seen Mr. Ripert walk into the dining room and have wanted to break the celebrity barrier and say, “I’m sorry you had to find him in the shower when he died.”
But you don’t do that. You start doing yoga.
If you’re going to be a journalist, it helps if you were wronged, at least once, quite badly. To the point where you’re prepared to spend the rest of your life seeking to right injustice, at the negation of yourself. It’s a self-destructive profession at its core, and one to which I was deeply attached. David Carr was a great journalist with addiction issues. Marie Colvin. I even worked briefly in the same newsroom in New Orleans as Chris Rose. He used to crackle when he walked in. It was extraordinary. It scared me as much as it drew me in.
When I left journalism in 2011 it was, largely, because I realized I didn’t want to destroy myself like some of my heroes. It took a few years to be able to articulate those exact sentiments, but I’d spent time in New Orleans writing about people dying in jails, and had a realization, one day, as I was reviewing an autopsy: That I was drawn to this stuff. Not horrified by it. Not even re-traumatized without knowing it. Drawn.
Yoga helps me process difficult emotions, and I return to my deep breaths. It’s therapeutic in the same way that restorative circles are. That therapy is. That going to AA can be.
There’s a saying commonly mentioned in yoga that we have two wolves inside us, a good wolf, a benevolent, forgiving wolf that is kind to yourself, and a wolf that is the opposite, and the wolf that wins is the one you feed. Mr. Bourdain started doing jiu-jitsu in the years before he died and it clearly helped him to work through some of his aggression. But I wonder which wolf it was more inclined towards feeding. I’m not saying he should have done yoga, and that it would have prevented his suicide. That’s ridiculous. It’s not like there’s a straight line to be drawn from someone’s exercise regimen to their mental health. But I do find, personally, that doing yoga, and especially, teaching it, helps me to work through shit that would be dangerous if it went unchecked. I’ve gotten pretty addicted to other forms of exercise—squash, for example, and weight training—where the wolf you’re feeding, often, isn’t quite as clear.
I often find myself in yoga classes asking myself, “why aren’t there more guys here?” And sometimes, I think, the answer is because many guys give the women in our lives the trauma to process, so that women have to do more emotional labor. They’re the ones who go to yoga. Meanwhile, we men become dependent on that dynamic, and just die earlier. But it takes courage to say to yourself, “I’m valuable, and I want to live fully.”
To feed the good wolf.
That’s where yoga starts, for me, and I’ll meet you there, on the mat.
Meanwhile, rest in peace, Mr. Bourdain. Thank you for living fully, I hope you are at peace, now, and thanks for the inspiration. However messy. Perhaps particularly because it was messy. For the art. Also, sorry my drawing of you is a bit shitty. I did the best I could, and it was fun. But you were far more handsome in real life.
