Said Anthony Bourdain, last February, in a long interview conducted by Maria Bustillos, which I was mostly interested in reading because she set it up with a question she wanted to ask:
I decided to ask him about the matter of luxury. Because through his television work—“Parts Unknown” especially—Bourdain showed Americans a different way of thinking not only about food, but about travel and tourism. About looking at ourselves as one part of a larger human story, in stark contrast to the conventional notion of travel: Americans casting themselves as “exceptionalist” democratic superstars in a drama, with the rest of planet Earth as their Tour Guide co-stars, and plenty of violins in the soundtrack.I'm interested — as you may know — in the critique of travel. I couldn't find much in that interview on that subject, though, and I settled into his contemplation of the opposite of travel: home.
Travel is the negative space that defines home, even as death defines life.
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Apparently he was miserable anyway.
A commitment. A burden. Less than perfect more so.
"Travel is the negative space that defines home, even as death defines life."
Very nicely put.
Elon Musk should confine himself to comments such as this one. He'd look far less desperate for attention.
"Travel is the negative space that defines home, even as death defines life."
This could have been the most propound statement Chauncey Gardner ever made.
He was, much like Robin Williams, being besieged by an angry woman.
I don't suppose it is worth trying to talk Althouse out of her Travelphobia. Meade needs to suggest a roadtrip in their new car to breakit in. But then, she posts lots less while on roadtrips. OK, you are right Professor. Beware of travel.
Reading the Professor is sounding more and more like reading Satchel Paige quotes. Very profound stuff. And she has all of his pitches.
I don't think he's wrong about houses. We used to have a left over exhibit graphic in our office with a quote from William Levitt, of Levittown NY and PA fame. It went "No man who owns his on home can be a communist, he doesn't have the time". Take that Russkies.
You left out Bourdain's scathing remarks about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Or is that another interview?
"The only place I have not visited, aside from Africa which we might do next year, is China and Japan. "
I think since China and Japan have merged into one, its formally now called Jina.
Chapanorea
Travel seriously defines home when, after years of doing it, you realize there’s nowhere else you’d live than where you do.
For the perfectionist, travel is avoidance.
The goal of travel is to be always arriving. Everything confronts you at once. You don't have time to itemize it. It is outside of your purification schemes. In the moment of arriving, the experience cannot be commanded and thus cannot disappoint. But don't stay too long. Keep moving.
Home assaults the perfectionist's motorized soul. Purity is always confronted with decay. The creaking floorboard, the leaky faucet; and then, the crying child, the urine-spattered toilet, the vomit and the blood. Even to leave the domicile is to face the hateful chaos of domesticated plants -- either overgrown or dead. Better to leave at speed and not look back.
Travel is fine, but you need a home to go back to. Some place where people know you for who you really are.
I won't say this applied to AB. I don't claim to be a mind reader. But I do believe that there are people to stay in one place because it's their home, their family and friends are there, and they can be very happy there.
Then there are those who have to move, because of a bad home situation, or because they knew they'd be dissatisfied with living in a small town where everyone knows you.
So they move, and separated from their past, look down on it and the people who stayed (and are happy there).
Unfortunately, many of those people are near cultural megaphones, so they broadcast their unhappiness as if that's the reality for everyone. But it's not.
Maybe that's why we're so unhappy these days. The culture and the economics of the past thirty years has pulled communities apart and devalued the pleasures of close family, close friends, and regular sex with the person you're married to. As more of us become strangers living among strangers, the more alone we feel.
(And, yes, I feel that way personally. I grew up in Warren, Ohio, my family moved to Charlotte, N.C. in 1970, after a brother and a sister moved out -- one to the Navy, the other to Arizona. Second brother stayed in Charlotte, and I moved to Baltimore, South Carolina, and now Hershey. I feel the loss of home and family. So maybe I'm projecting. But am I also wrong?)
Its just a matter of time before The Jina becomes receptive to merger by The Korea peninsula.
I like to travel. Seeing new sites, interacting with different people. Learning a few new things about different cultures. Being in a forest waking up to a crisp morning and brewing coffee in an old fashioned percolator, waiting to see what kind of day it is going to be as the sun slowly rises. And the best part of all of it: Coming home to my usual coffee maker and patio, watching the sun rise over the Sandia Mountains, looking forward to when I am retired and getting slightly bored about it all, anticipating the next book to read.
I've always resisted buying a vacation home in Florida or Arizona because it was "a ball and chain" that limits traveling elsewhere. Just as Bourdain says, "if you own a [vacation] home it means you have to vacation in the same place every year." And you have to worry about maintenance, taxes, vandalism, etc., for the remainder of the time that you are absent from the premises.
And I maintain that you can't really appreciate what we have here in the U.S. until you see (up close and personal) what everyone else has (or doesn't have) elsewhere. I think this is a great lesson for the kids who are living in the U.S. with "blinders" on, due to the tremendous influence of American culture pushing out or dominating any other experience or reference point.
Travel someplace nice and make yourself at home.
It is interesting to me that this interview was 6 months ago. Would it have been published if he hadn't died recently?
Travel is the negative space that defines home, even as death defines life.
Apparently, Bourdain's life was a negative space.
Well, I think that if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.
Michael K said...
The only place I have not visited, aside from Africa which we might do next year, is China and Japan.
That's funny, I don't recall you visiting my backyard. Maybe I was at work at the time...
Darrell said...
You left out Bourdain's scathing remarks about Bill and Hillary Clinton
Yes, he scathed them, stating that he'd never again vote for Bill or anyone who enabled him. That's after virtue signaling with the interviewer that they had both voted for Hillary with full knowledge that she had enabled him.
Bourdain said the worst thing he ever ate was warthog rectum in Namibia. Like him, I’ll eat anything I see the locals eat. Even warthog rectum in Namibia next month.
Before my dirt bagging travel stories paint an ill picture of me, the home I return to, occasionally, is a 2.5 million penthouse.
When I'm traveling in my RV, my home is wherever I park it. While my dog loved having a house to come home to, me, not so much.
I kept a very very neat house until the day came (1987) when not everything would fit. Then stuff started piling on top of other stuff.
mockturtle said....When I'm traveling in my RV, my home is wherever I park it.
Yay!
My clavichord hasn't seen the light of day since 1990. It's table shaped when closed.
Brylun suggests: And I maintain that you can't really appreciate what we have here in the U.S. until you see (up close and personal) what everyone else has (or doesn't have) elsewhere. I think this is a great lesson for the kids who are living in the U.S. with "blinders" on, due to the tremendous influence of American culture pushing out or dominating any other experience or reference point.
Exactly. It works in two ways [at least two]. One, finding out that the US is not really the center of the universe to many, if not most, people around the world is humbling. Two, as you point out, the realization of just how good we have it here and how much we take for granted. Little things like parking lots and water pressure, for instance. IMO, all young people should be sent abroad for a year.
A clavichord is really quiet, like the sound of a box of pins dropping. You have to turn off the heat to hear it.
Rhhardin reports: My clavichord hasn't seen the light of day since 1990. It's table shaped when closed.
But is it 'well-tempered'?
That's clavier.
Michael: I'm psychic.
Ashley: Do you take meds?
Michael: That's psychotic.
In a Day (2006)
It's tempered however I tune it. Mean tone tuning would be apt for the period. Bach was humping even tempering against it.
I though clavichords and claviers were pretty much the same, rhhardin. Mea culpa.
Merely walking into the room holding a trombone will obliterate the sound of a clavichord.
A well-tempered clavicle will drown out a conclave of clavicords.
Clavier is the general term for keyboard instrument.
Merely walking into the room holding a trombone will obliterate the sound of a clavichord.
That's PDQ Bach, concerto for lute and bagpipe.
There I was in Perth. 1982. I had to beg for ice in anything. Ice people. I had to beg for ice.
About looking at ourselves as one part of a larger human story, in stark contrast to the conventional notion of travel: Americans casting themselves as “exceptionalist” democratic superstars in a drama, with the rest of planet Earth as their Tour Guide co-stars, and plenty of violins in the soundtrack.
What the hell?
To a guy with a Hammerklavier, everything looks like a sonata.
About looking at ourselves as one part of a larger human story, in stark contrast to the conventional notion of travel: Americans casting themselves as “exceptionalist” democratic superstars in a drama with the rest of planet Earth as their Tour Guide co-stars
This gets to something everyone should remember, always. It has nothing to do with Americans or non-Americans, but about people. Nobody is the co-star in your story. They are the lead character in their own story.
Kate Spade found her big beautiful apartment just as oppressive as Anthony Bourddain found his peripatetic lifestyle. Different people locked in different cages. Travel without pause and reflection is about as depressing and lonely as a big apartment without love in it.
@ Bill Peschel - I’m a rolling stone, Bill. A wanderer. By nature and breeding. I don’t look down on the people who stayed though. I have often driven through some small town and wondered what it is like to live one’s life there and felt a twinge of envy for those who do. I am sitting in a cafe in Florence, Italy tonight. On my way to Venice tomorrow. In a few days I will be back in my apartment in Odessa, Ukraine for a week then off to Memphis, Tennessee for work. It’s a strange life, but it’s mine.
Obviously, Bourdain did not believe, "There must be a pony in here somewhere."
Some people believe that travel is a positive space, where diversity or color defines home and even us, individually. And death is merely a space beyond science, and even our perception, but not for lack of imagination.
That said, this story cries for a juxtaposition of house and baby.
I spend most of my time in 3rd world countries, but an American travel thing I really liked in my travels there was out of Winslow Arizona. Stay at La Posada, very comfortable.
Read this first: The Book of Hopi by Frank Waters, five time Nobel nominee and student of the Hopi. A quote, from my notes:
“ Here we discover the ‘natural language of the spirit’ speaking in loud, clear tones. Here we find the sustaining power of the religious sense and the clue to understanding. Here we may find our salvation. As so often happens, the clue was in our own back yard all the time “
Day drive to Sipaulovi on the Hopi reservation, the first Mesa (if memory Is correct), the oldest continuously inhabited place on the continent.
The fastest man on the planet was a Hopi Indian who won the 10,000 meters at some early Olympics, having run everyday from Sipaulovi to Winslow, and I think his record stood for 40 years.
Lots of cool stories. Nice Arizonan style hotel.
Merely walking into the room holding a trombone will obliterate the sound of a clavichord.
That's PDQ Bach, concerto for lute and bagpipe.
Doesn't make it any less true. Pity, people probably don't even know what a Hardart is these days.
Pity, people probably don't even know what a Hardart is these days.
It's Less Work for Mother.
Where does Maria Bustillos get the idea that Americans cast themselves as exceptional democratic superstars when they travel. Yup, I'm sure that there are plenty of Harry Jones out there who tell their wive Myrtle Jones, "Honey Vienna is nice, but it doesn't have a patch on our litle town of Keokuk". But then there are Frenchmen (and women) who come out to see the Grand Canyon and complain that you can't get a decent baguette in Williams Arizona.
I mean Ms. Bustillos has an interesting thesis but it assumes facts not necessarily in evidence. She evidently realized it was bogus and didn't follow up on it.
Blogger daskol said... Travel without pause and reflection is about as depressing and lonely as a big apartment without love in it.
Yes, the pause is the big thing. You have to force yourself to do it, every 6 months at least. Then you’re thrilled to be home, and happy to have done/accomplished the last big thing. Everything about life at home is much clearer and easier to see in perspective. Every time you go home you facing the struggle of leaving family and friends again, which is why the goal has to be finite, or you’d quit or lose yourself.
Oso Negro:
I envy your owning a place in Odessa. Beautiful city, even more beautiful women, and the exchange rate is fucking tits. Recently vacationed there and will be returning as often as possible. I'll take the Black Sea over Miami any day.
"The Book of the Hopi" is well-written fiction. Very much like Castenada's work, in similar respects.
@President Mom Jeans - I have a side interest in a marriage agency. Let me know if I can be of service. ;)
Why buy when you can just rent?
There did seem to be a thriving industry in mail order brides there though. It also took me a while to figure out that the goth retail clothing change Hot Topic was not the most popular business there, but instead a proliferation of notaries (Hotapyic).
Only slightly off topic.
https://penthouse.com/pages/asia-argento/Toxic-Femininity.php”
A theory on why Bourdain took his own life. Sorry I couldn’t find a different source.
I feel the loss of home and family. So maybe I'm projecting. But am I also wrong?
For what it's worth, I commiserate. I greatly value the, relative to most of my my fellow Americans, large number of continents, countries, states and cities I've both visited and lived in. However, that means that home is no longer home. I'm not sure I have a home. I both envy and pity those people from the town I spent most of my childhood and graduated high school in. I wish I had what they had ~ lifelong friends and family close by; third and fourth generations graduating from the same school and sharing the same place memories and experiences. But they also have missed the wonderful experiences I have had, seeing life from the perspective of so many different places.
What I object to is the notion by the fans of traveling that travel is unquestionably good and if you don't like (love?) to travel there is something wrong with you. Using words like "travelphobia" is a tell. Oh, and I don't like it when you bring your dog to public places either.
-sw
La Posada in Winslow AZ is one of the best places on earth. I go out of my way to stay there.
Before my dirt bagging travel stories paint an ill picture of me, the home I return to, occasionally, is a 2.5 million penthouse.
Sorry, that's more a confirmation of dirt-bagginess. /sarc
As a Navy Junior, I'm with Pants on the loss of roots.
Perhaps to compensate, the last 17 years I've lived in the house my father and his father were born in, but I only knew a handful of locals before then and not well, and haven't added much to their number. It's weird to be familiar with a place but not of it.
My grandmother used to say when crossing the border into her county, "Can't you feel the difference in the air?"
She was often mistaken for an officer of the NC Chamber of Commerce when out of state.
Um, I'm **purty sure** that home is the negative space that defines travel, even as life defines death.
https://penthouse.com/pages/asia-argento/Toxic-Femininity.php
Safe for work.
Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. Our sex and gendered differences do not elevate us to moral heights or lower us to moral depravities. Behavior is guided but not determined by religious/moral philosophy (i.e. protocols), sex binaries, gendered differences, and personal choices. That said, it's not toxic femininity. Gendered attributes, including the female feminine, are not intrinsically dysfunctional. Women and men have a choice.
sodal ye said...
The fastest man on the planet was a Hopi Indian who won the 10,000 meters at some early Olympics,
He took second.
having run everyday from Sipaulovi to Winslow,
Sure, I believe that some guy ran over 60 miles every day.
and I think his record stood for 40 years.
He didn't have a record.
Lots of cool stories.
Stories are just about the only thing that Winslow Arizona has, and apparently you just told one of 'em.
"His silver medal in 1912 remained the best U.S. achievement in this event until another Native American, Billy Mills, won the gold medal in 1964.
Tewanima also competed at the 1908 Olympics, where he finished in ninth place in the marathon."
Roughcoat said...
"The Book of the Hopi" is well-written fiction.
It's usually considered anthropology.
I enjoyed his "The Man Who Killed the Deer", which was based on a real guy whose name is mysteriously absent - though I found it once - from descriptions of the book, e.g. "based on the true story of a New Mexican Puebloan man [= some Indian] arrested for killing a deer out of season."
We see the same Indian slowing walking the same stretch of highway all the time and call him "The Esquimaux", so at least he has a name.
sodal ye said...
Bourdain said the worst thing he ever ate was warthog rectum in Namibia. Like him, I’ll eat anything I see the locals eat. Even warthog rectum in Namibia next month.
Before my dirt bagging travel stories paint an ill picture of me, the home I return to, occasionally, is a 2.5 million penthouse.
7/16/18, 1:25 PM
Is there some kind of reaction you are seeking here on Althouse? Asking for a friend.
janetrae said...
La Posada in Winslow AZ is one of the best places on earth.
It looks more authentically Mexican than the Hotel Posada de Roger in Puto Valarta, and sounds more authentic, too, what with the "Roger" part.
Oso Negro said... [hush][hide comment]
@President Mom Jeans - I have a side interest in a marriage agency. Let me know if I can be of service. ;)
Might be you sending me all those emails? Along with the Chinese, Brazilian, Japanese and Russians?
Sure do appreciate it !
You can search as long as you want, you will not find an obituary for Betty Crocker.
God loves us the way we are but loves us too much to let us stay that way.
Some people know that, others don't.
"About looking at ourselves as one part of a larger human story, in stark contrast to the conventional notion of travel: Americans casting themselves as “exceptionalist” democratic superstars in a drama, with the rest of planet Earth as their Tour Guide co-stars, and plenty of violins in the soundtrack."
As this quote illustrates, for progs the point of travel is to distance themselves from conventional deplorables, the kinds of people who really don't belong in the "larger human story."
""The perfect house will probably make me sad, and terrified... because… a house is a commitment, you know? You have to take care of it.""
According to the NY Daily News and USA Today, court filings in Manhattan Surrogate Court indicate "Bourdain had a mortgage worth $1.1 million for an unspecified property" and "Left most of his $1.2 million estate to his 11-year-old daughter.."
I'm not sure how he got a $1.1 Mil mortgage without owning some real estate somewhere, but, a $1.2 Mil estate would not buy much of a place in NYC. Where did his money go, or did CNN pay him in warthog rectums?
On the subject of travel, more people should stay home like Althouse so as to leave us travelers more space to enjoy our misguided lives in peace.
@ Full Moon - Nope. We’re bespoke.
Bourdain was an emotionally disturbed personality. There's undoubtedly a few clues here as to the essence of that disturbance. He was likely correct - for him, an actual 'home' was - like his supposed 'friends' and 'loved ones' - a disturbing disappointment and burden. Some sad shit, as is said.
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