A Jimmy Buffett Summer
Honesty and Connection Through Farce
There is a question that I hate. I’m asked this question most days, and it always turns me into a liar. It’s never asked with sinister motives—in fact, at its best, it’s an offer to get to know me, and at worst, an attempt to get me talking about something I care about, because I’m often not sure how to talk about anything else.
“Chef, what is your favorite dish?”
It’s hard to find an answer. Often, I read the situation and choose between a few personas:
Sophisticated and Aspirational: A perfect pot-au-feu
Subversive and Shocking: The Doritos Locos Taco
Understated King of Luxury: A cold-water oyster, preferably West Coast
Glutton and King Eater: A double cheeseburger with a slab of seared foie gras playing the role of overkill
Hip and With it: Fresh sardines grilled on sourdough
Down-home Salt of the Earth: My grandmother’s chicken and dumplings
Everything Your Friends Don’t Get: Uni and natto hand roll
I have at least 15 other answers, and I have no doubt that if you asked me, I could give you the one you’re looking for. But the more interesting truth is this: I do not have a favorite dish. I don’t have one for the same reason Eddie Van Halen claims that he doesn’t listen to music.
We all have our version of this. It’s best exemplified by your mother asking you to explain your job in experiential marketing, which you inevitably boil down to, “I host events for Nike.” This phenomenon creeps up everywhere.
I do a little bit of writing—you’re reading some of it right now. I recently sold a horror short story to a magazine. Most importantly, I wear a certain type of glasses and have a certain type of beard and like to think of myself as a writer.
As such, this year has been a boon to my social life. I’ve recently made friends with a great number of writers. I revere and respect every single one of them: the ones I want to be, the ones I want to read, and even the ones I don’t want to read.
One of my new writer friends has half a dozen New York Times bestsellers to his name and is one of the best writers I’ve ever met. In a silly attempt to become closer with him, I gave him a copy of my recently published short story, expecting him to do what many of my friends did: read it, then send me a text that says, “Wow man, that was actually really good.” I even hoped that, being the writer he is, he would leave off the qualifiers.
But he didn’t. He never mentioned the story. And I suspect it’s for the same reason I don’t have much to say when he sends me a picture of a home-cooked meal he slaved over.
I cook every day, and he writes every day. I don’t have anything to say about home cooking. I’m happy for you, I would happily eat it, but it is not a plane on which we can meet because I am so embedded in the world of cooking and eating, and he is so embedded in the world of writing.
I’m aware this makes me sound like the worst kind of pretentious, and that’s okay because I’m not wrong. Dedicating your life to something almost always leads to a single question:
Is what I’m doing honest?
And this question becomes the basis by which you understand the thing you’ve gone too deep on. Technical proficiencies are for your understudies and interns. You are now busy with a new question.
This will happen to you. You’ll read my short story or hear someone’s political opinion or be asked for stock tips, and you will feel more alone than you ever have.
In 1973, three authors and three fishing guides got together with two French filmmakers to make a documentary. The documentary is called Tarpon, and it was the best movie I’ve seen this year. The cinematography is beautiful. The storytelling is profound but refuses to spoon-feed you. And most importantly, the soundtrack is a spine-crushing feat of aesthetic accuracy that makes me want to cry.
The soundtrack was composed by a then-unknown artist named Jimmy Buffett.
I understand that this sentence has already put half of you off ever watching the documentary. That’s fair. Jimmy Buffett is largely famous for making the sort of lowest-common-denominator music that doesn’t fit your self-image as the kind of sophisticate who reads my Substack.
But I mean it when I say this: Jimmy Buffett is an important American musician. Hearing his music in its proper context—Key West—accompanied by beautiful images captured by a renowned practitioner of cinéma vérité allowed me to forget about the Margaritaville hotel in Times Square (which, honestly, is a hell of a deal) and instead reckon with the man who was beloved by Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, and Truman Capote.
He is important because he is both talented and beloved—a rare combination in one’s own time. In many ways, his musical peers are Paul Simon, James Taylor, and I promise I’m not joking, The Beatles. In fact, he was such a gifted musician that his first record deal was marketed by the label as a replacement for fans of the late legend Jim Croce, who were mourning his passing.
But none of this stopped him from writing Margaritaville, a song even your worst kind of uncle feels good listening to.
Jimmy Buffett avoided the existential crisis I feel about my favorite dish by making it everyone’s favorite dish. A young hippie interested in the musical technicalities of native Caribbean island music has no way to connect with anyone. Even your most niche-appreciating friends won’t follow you there.
But the man who wrote Cheeseburger in Paradise had gatherings in multiple states the day he died.
A few years back, I made a dish as a joke. I hated my audience and, worse, was asked to do a “Taylor Swift Pop-Up Bar.” The joke was that I made a Crunchwrap Supreme, the one from Taco Bell. But I filled mine with duck hearts instead of ground beef. I replaced the nacho cheese with an ISI whiz made from Mimolette, and I made my own crème fraîche to stand in for sour cream.
People loved this Crunchwrap and said things like, “I’ve never had duck hearts before, that was so good.” And as a result, I felt a little less alone.
Jimmy Buffett knows this. And I hope we all learn it this summer: If you feel alienated in your field, find a way to bury your technique. Find for it a Trojan horse through which you can express your true care—and invite people to do the same.
There are limits to this technique. Overuse is a dangerous territory that puts you somewhere in the realm of Guy Fieri. But trying it on for the summer might be the best thing for a few of us.
Happy Jimmy Buffett Summer, boys. How we got here, I haven’t a clue.
