Dear Mr Bourdain,
I am sorry this letter is getting to you a day late, but Fate is a mistress without care, at times placing the thorn of regret firmly in one's side after put things off until it is too late.
I am not a chef, nor am I I fanboy of yours. While I own most of your books, I didn’t change my life and become a chef after reading your Kitchen Confidential. I stayed the course. But I just wanted to tell you that you helped me do that, stay the course with passion and honesty. I have heard your voice reading your book on many many many miles on the road. You had the mystical, perfect match: a physical voice that matched ones writer’s voice. As someone who has dabbled in the spoken word field, it was both humbling and a bench mark at the same time to hear a voice that seemed to resonate with all I have tried to be.
It always seemed that you looked in awe at rock musicians, as if you wanted to be them, share their magic. Well, you did. I realized a few years ago that you influenced legions of people that would’ve picked up a guitar, bass, or drums and inspired them to go into cooking. It was no accident that your stunning writing voice in “Kitchen Confidential”, one that was that of the most perfect and mesmerizing, is the one that placed you among the chosen. It was deserved. You gave illumination to a path that many never knew and then, after reading you, chose it. As rock Music started to die in 1996, you came in and showed that the kitchen was the new stage. As being a competent sounding recording artist became a digital slight of hand rather than mastery of a once sacred craft, you arrived and showed the one place where one cannot lie: cooking. The parallels are there. Everyone needs some sort of Music. Everyone needs some sort of food.
In the end, you had a true voice, a singular presence of passion and honesty, like Hendrix, like Black Flag, like your friend Iggy Pop, like Camus, like Michael Hedges, like all the greats you knew but didn’t believe you could be part of. For many of us who are still in the trenches, the ones who have to fight to stay afloat in every way, you were the beacon, the person that made it, bought the scratch-off lottery ticket, got the jackpot, and stayed true to the person you were before and after the the cartoon dollar signs that flashed before your eyes and became real. You, sir, were a true hero. I say that knowing full well that you would never consider yourself above anyone else, any person you met on the street who dared to talk to you. Within the M C Escher reality you could not see, you were both hero and Everyman.
You made so many of us believe that we did have a voice, that we could do something of value, that we could take the kindling of questions, doubts, and fears and ignite them into reality via making the decision to do so and working hard, damn hard, as you did. We may never have the swagger of you, but maybe, just maybe, we could be on the boat you were in charge of and be the intelligent and caring pirate rebels we all longed to be and that you were.
In your book “Kitchen Confidential”, you spoke about your 20’s and how they were full of learning via the hard work (and, let’s be honest, youthful debauchery) that was that time. My beloved cousin pointed out that we are all pretty much insane within that decade, a slow burn towards sanity and self if we make it through the fire. In those years, while within a self destructive relationship that I fed like any addict, I worked at a Catholic cemetery. For years I had no idea why one section had so many children in it, blended in with some adults. Only near the end of my time there was I told the section of the cemetery I was puzzled at for a decade was the place for children and suicides. It seemed that the unbaptized and suicides were allowed to be buried on sacred soil but not allowed to enter heaven (a doctrine that changed after Vatican II). As family members and friends of my own have fallen to suicide, I found this beyond deplorable and without logic.
Every parent says that the birth of their child changes their life. Every artist worth their salt says that the revelation of seeing one particular artist changed their life. It would seem to say that both newborn and adult can change the soul of others by the purity of their voice and presence. You, sir, were one of the Chosen. Yet you never would have considered yourself one. Perhaps, with all due respect to "The Life of Brian", that was why you WERE Chosen.
In the end, the grass in that part of the cemetery was as beautiful, if not more so, within the place of the suicides and children. The one’s who believed they could see within the mind of God and who were deemed, for a time, “better”. As someone who has strived for the same Brass Ring as you, all I can say is that your presence above the soil was within the stunning beauty of Truth. For whatever it is worth, I embraced you as a fellow blood warrior Musician. You spoke with passion and honesty. In the end, perhaps, you were one of those you admired. No, scratch that, you were one of them.
Regardless of who bombs who, we have no absolute idea as to what happens when this narrative ends. All I can do is hope and pray that the deepest of shadows that made its way past the tree line of your soul are now gone. If one knows the Light, one knows the Shadows. All you did since 1999 was, for us, spoke the Truth. May that speak for your life here, as well as within the ink of the accountant’s ledger for the afterlife.
I will carry you with me, as I do Hedges, Camus, Rothko,and the rest. Had I been given the chance, I would have loved to have shared a drink with you and said you had made it into the pantheon. Regardless of your decision, I raise a glass to you, along with the most sincere prayer, for the next chapter of this journey. Know that so many of the Blessed Lost considered you one of Their Own. You gave us love and (deep sigh) hope.
May we meet again. May we embrace and kiss on both cheeks. May we both smile and look each other in the eyes and say, “Hey! Friend! Let’s talk.” It is only the sacred that know and respect the value of silence while the other speaks.
With My Deepest Gratitude and Music,
Yours Sincerely,
Michael Kovacs
