Philippe Petit, Artists, Actors, Dreams & How to Live

The 9-11 anniversary, I’m sure, is a sad day for most of us, yet there’s a story that’s come to the fore over the last few years, an old story, but one that’s finding renewal, and one that I think not only helps transform one’s experience of 9-11 into a positive frame but also carries a message for all actors, for all artists.

Below, you can see a clip from a film by Ric Burns (American Experience: New York: The Center of the World), a clip that I’ve been looking hi and low online for -- and I finally found it.

Watch the clip and think about acting, or any art you do. Ask: Why do we do it, really? What draws us? What is “it” -- what’s its value? Answer: It is everything -- it is priceless.

Shakespeare was right -- life is a stage, and a stage is life, our life, our larger life, and we rise to meet its possibilities. The heightened words and text take us there:

Whenever other worlds invite us, whenever we are balancing on the boundaries of our limited human condition, that's where life starts, that's where you feel yourself living.

So when I found myself one foot on the wire and one foot on the building, and ready to decide to shift my weight to become a bird, it was not something new, and after a few steps I knew I was in my element. I didn't even take the full length of the crossing to get to know the rigging and the vibration of the building and the wire, and then very slowly as I walked, I was overwhelmed by a sense of easiness, a sense of simplicity. I can be seen smiling in one of those first pictures [of the event], smiling, smiling probably out of disbelief, it's so easy, after all those years and months of ups and downs, of detours, of victories and disasters, finally . . .

. . . I was carrying my life on a path that the simplest, the most beautiful, and easiest.
(Philippe Petit, from Ric Burns 'American Experience: New York: The Center of the World).

Petit continues (in his book, To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers) about why and how it was so easy:

Inundated with astonishment, with sudden and extreme fear, yes, with great joy and pride, I hold myself in balance on the high wire. With ease.

A not-yet-recongnizable taste seizes my tongue -- the longing to soar.

The gods in me.

Determination! Tenacity! Now is the moment. The moment is given unto your hands -- hold on to this balancing pole. The moment is given unto your feet -- hold on to that steel cable. Are they telling you , "Give up?"

As in a dream, with immense effort, I manage to displace myself through space.

The gods in my feet know how not to hit the cable, how not to make it move when each foot lands. How do they know? They worked that out during their endless days of rehearsals. The know the slightest addition to the vivacious dance of the catenary curve would mean peril for the wirewalker. They ask the feet to land on the steel rope in such a way that the impact of each step absorbs the swaying of the cable, it's vertical oscillations, and it's twisting along the axis of the walk; the feet answer by being gentle and understanding, by conversing with the wire-rope,by enticing the huffing and puffing living entity above them to let go of his rage to control.

Wirewalker, trust your feet!

Let them lead you; they know the way.