Confessions of an Outlaw, with Philippe Petit | Big Think.

Anyone that embarks into the arts, and even if you’re not an artist or a performer in the art of living as an extension, will have the most difficult life because it’s the opposite of lethargy and laziness and dragging your feet and dying as you live.

So if you want your life to be exciting, if you find the model necessary for a great life, which is passion, you will have a difficult life. And at the same time, your life will be very easy in a sense that you will not have to struggle to find ways. It is in you. It devours you. You have to do it using your intuition and your passion.

So, for example, well, people sometimes ask me, you know, how can I be creative or I want to be – I am a young artist and I want to develop my art. And right there I build a big wall between two concepts that to me are very opposite. The concept of a career and the concept of life.

So if somebody says, you know, I’m starting a career as an actor. Do you have any advice? I say yes, drop the word career from your vocabulary. Live as an actor, you know. Don’t try to do things in a strategy way. Do things as your heart tells you. If you feel you’re a comic character, do not accept any drama. Go into the comic and start developing it and don’t let anybody tell you anything else.

That’s a little bit simplistic, but it’s just to force people to abandon, and the work of art is a perpetual trampoline. It is ephemeral. It is fragile. It is mysterious. There is no rule to describe what an artistic way of life is.

So if you want to go in an artistic way of life and you carry the luggage of money and time and strategy and politics, well, you will never be an artist, you know. But it’s fine. Many false artists are doing that. But the true artist, in my opinion, should not think of a career. You should think of your life.