Eat it Raw 6/13/17

Usually if I put something up here on a Tuesday it relates to food. This actually does relate to food but only in so much as Anthony Bourdain relates to food. He relates to food because Chef Anthony Bourdain professionally prepared food for a living, television host Anthony Bourdain now eats some extraordinary public and private meals on his TV shows, and judge Anthony Bourdain occasionally weighs in on food competitions. (And author Anthony Bourdain also writes about the subject too...) But I'm not highlighting any of those particularly food-centric roles. I want to point out his participation in an internet series called, "Raw Craft."

If you've perhaps seen any of his other hosted work "Raw Craft" resembles segments in other shows he's done. In "Raw Craft" he takes one producer of something unique and extraordinary and details the process of making said product. It's usually a process foreign to any viewer, it's often a process foreign to Bourdain himself, and sometimes it's even a process foreign to the industry.

"Raw Craft" selects very unique products - not mass-produced. They're often very expensive too, because of their rarity. Producing something so exclusive, so unusual, requires an extreme input of time. Time for every living person is a limited resource. An unpredictably limited resource to a point. Certainly it's not infinite for anyone. And monetary value is one way to represent such an investment. So each craftsman inputs their particular special focus and effort encompassed by an investment of time into the object of their creation. That investment imbues the object itself with an incredible amount of worth.

The worth is also attributed partially to the fact that the creators make the product itself by hand. It's not automated. It's not the equivalent of a phrase going through multiple translations before reaching you. Copies and reproductions always produce some flaw that may or may not be detrimental to the final use. This product can ensure that the craftsman actually looked at it and felt it. This product is pure. This is not a translation or a replication. This is not a facsimile or a photocopy. This is the craftsman speaking directly to the consumer through the product. It's unadulterated and unobfuscated. This is just a skilled and practiced individual exercising that skill. Producing their raw craft.