It's impossible, that's for sure. So let's start working.
~ Philippe Petit
To fight adversity, to improvise, to solve problems, and to save the coup, I had gathered all my senses into unusual configurations, which made me grow wild and enhanced my perceptions.
Wirewalker, trust your feet! Let them lead you; they know the way.
It cannot be done all at once. To overpower vertigo - the keeper of the abyss- one must tame it, cautiously.
When I was six years old, I fell in love with magic. For Christmas, I got a magic box and a very old book on card manipulation. Somehow, I was more interested in pure manipulation than in all the silly little tricks in the box.
Everybody wanted me to be rich and famous on my art. And I said no to all the commercials and all the seedy offers.
I am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life.
For me, since I have a life wish, not a death wish, for me, I was not gambling my life. I was doing something much more beautiful. I was carrying my life across.
I needed more knowledge in rigging and knotting. I started collecting books on knots and really learning more and more. That's how it started. And also in magic, of course. With a piece of rope, you can do magic.
Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.
If I have to make a self-portrait, I would put poetry and rebellion on the list. To be able to walk on a wire, to be able to juggle six hoops, you need focus, another word for tenacity, which is passion.
I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.
If you see how carefully I prepare for any kind of walk, legal or illegal, small or big, you will see that, actually, I narrow the unknown to virtually nothing. And that's when I am ready to walk on the wire.
