The Bourdain-able world as we know it hasn’t ended. It’s evolving. Metamorphosing. That the void from a singular human’s ability to entrance the collective is so profoundly felt, indicates a hole in the global whole.
We loved our pied piper … our cultural ambassador and culinary toreador whose mouth and mind seemed intertwined with delectable wonders we could only savour vicariously. Yet no matter how dark his own personal parts, his public Parts Unknown stimulated a spiritual hunger we’re just now discovering in his devastating absence.
Television a la Bourdain conjured our love of storytelling and wanderlust and the universal recognition that what we all probably want is to feel just a bit more connected while also sharing our uniqueness.
As Arianna poignantly reflects, maybe we need not find an individual replacement to “breathe life into such explorations” so much as to springboard off of his essence into a wondrous collective effervescense. UNICEF special advisor Claudia Romo Edelman’s globalgoals podcast is a variation on the Bourdain theme. Yet that’s just the tip of the spicey iceberg.
From the Pyramids to the World Cup, history’s slave labour has built monuments and arenas to or on behalf of an exclusive few. Perhaps the residual of “Bourdain-the-Individual” (that bit of Bourdain in us all) prompts us to expand the view and build anew, through a labour of love which takes television to televisionary by showcasing the face of our Global Selfie from its good side, in real time, for the very first time!
We relish our heros and our wayshowers and our iconic personas and storytellers. But these days, the world is clamping down on us with a heavy-duty spiritual lesson which asks us to relinquish some of the childish clinging to idolatry… to abandon the notion that we’re not “enough” in and of ourselves … and to grow the spiritual musculature which carries us far beyond the loss of our iconic journeymen who detour from the thrilling footpath we love to follow.
In an era of Fake Everything and its incumbent questioning, maybe our beloved tour guide’s suicide becomes reminder to move beyond the inspiration of a single sole by rekindling that of the global soul, whereby Everyone becomes the star of the show … Everyone celebrates their story simultaneously, in an historic worldwide “edutainment” spectacular about who on earth we all are. Making history in synchronicity can become an 8th wonder of our world, awakening one and all with a seismic creative call that propels us as much outward as it does inward.
During our years of media descent into MEdiocrity, Bourdain’s breadth became an exceptional breath of connection and reflection about the world around us and within us. Now let’s take that to the continental level, and “Bourdain” the planet with a Party for Humanity where the guest list is Everybody.
Synchronistory: that’s an episodic I eagerly await.
Originally published at medium.com