The journey across the high wire - Philippe Petit

This sound, this smell, this sight all remind me of the campfires of my childhood, when anyone could become a storyteller in front of the dancing flames. There was this wondrous ending when people and fire would fall asleep almost in unison. It was dreaming time.

Now, my story has a lot to do with dreaming, although unknown to make my dreams come true. Last year, I created a one-man show for an hour and a half. I shared with the audience a lifetime of creativity, how I pursue perfection, how I cheat the impossible. And then Ted challenged me, "Philippe, can you swing this lifetime to 18 minutes?" Eighteen minutes—clearly impossible. But here I am.

One solution was to rehearse a machine gun delivery, in which every syllable of a second would have its importance, and hope the audience would be able to follow me. What I—no, no, no—now the best way for me to start is to pay my respects to the gods of creativity, so please join me for a minute of silence. Okay, I cheated, it was a mere 20 seconds. But hey, we’re on Ted time.

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 a box. So, I looked in the book for the most difficult move, and it was this. Now, I’m not supposed to share that with you, but I have to show you. The card is hidden in the back of the hand.

Now, that manipulation was broken down into seven moves, described over seven pages: one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. And let me show you something else—the cards were bigger than my hands. Two months later, at six years old, I was able to do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and I went to see famous magicians and proudly said, “What do you think?”

The magician looked at me and said, “This is a disaster. I mean, you cannot do that in two seconds and have a minuscule part of the card showing. For the move to be professional, it has to be less than one second and it has to be perfect.”

Two years later, one loop, and I’m not cheating—it’s in the back, it’s perfect. Passion is the motto of all my actions. As I’m studying magic, juggling is mentioned repeatedly as a great way to acquire dexterity and coordination. Now, I had long admired how fast and fluidly jugglers made objects fly. So that’s it—I’m 14, I’m becoming a juggler.

I befriended a young Joe Blow in a juggling troupe, and he agreed to sell me three clubs. But in America, you have to explain, “What are clubs?” Nothing to do with golf—they are those beautiful, oblong objects, but quite difficult to make. They have to be precisely lathed.

When I was buying the clubs, somehow, the young juggler was hiding from the others, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Anyway, here I was progressing with my new clubs, but I could not understand. I mean, I was pretty fast, but I was not fluid at all. The clubs were escaping me at each throw, and I was trying constantly to bring them back to me.

Until one day, I practiced in front of Francis, burned grave, the world’s greatest juggler, and he was frowning. He finally asked, “Can I see those?” So, I proudly showed him my clubs. “Is that Philippe? You’ve been had. These are widgets. They are completely out of alignment. They are impossible to juggle.”

Tenacity is how I kept at it against all odds. So, I went to the circus to see more magicians, more jugglers, and I saw—oh no, no, no, I didn’t see—it was more interesting. I heard. I heard about those amazing men and women who walk on thin air—the high wire walkers.

Now, I had been playing with ropes and climbing all my childhood, so that’s it: I’m 16 and becoming a wire walker. I found two trees, but not any kind of trees—trees with character—and then a very long rope. I put the rope around and around and around and around until I had no more rope.

Now, I have all those ropes, mahalo! Like this! I get a pair of pliers and some coat hanger, and I gather them together in some kind of ropey bath. So, I just created the widest tightrope in the world. What did I need? What I needed were the wider shoes in the world. So, I found some enormous, ridiculous giant ski boots, and then wobbly, wobbly, I got on the ropes.

Well, within a few days, I was able to do one crossing. So, I cut one rope off, and the next day, one whoop up, and a few days later, I was practicing on a single tightrope. Now, you can imagine, at that time, I had to switch the ridiculous boots for some slippers. Right?

So, that is how— in case there are people here in the audience who would love to try—this is how not to learn wire walking. Intuition is a tool essential in my life. In the meantime, I am being thrown out of five different schools because instead of listening to the teachers, I am my own teacher, progressing in my new art and becoming a street juggler on the high wire.

Within months, I am able to master all the tricks they do in the circus, except I am not satisfied. I was starting to invent my own moves and bring them to perfection, but nobody wanted to hire me. So, I started putting wire in secret and performing without permission. Not Adama, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the World Trade Center.

I developed a certitude, a faith that convinced me that I would get safely to the other side. If not, I would never do that first step. Well, nonetheless, on the top of the World Trade Center, my first step was terrifying.

All of a sudden, the density of the air is no longer the same. Manhattan no longer spreads its infinity. The murmur of the city dissolves into a squall whose chill and power I no longer feel. I lift a balancing pole. I approach the edge. I step over the beam. I put my left foot on the cable. The weight of my body rests on my right leg, anchored to the flank of the building. Shall I ever so slightly shift my weight to the left?

My right leg will be unburdened, my right foot will freely meet the wire. On one side, the mass of a mountain, a life I know; on the other, the universe of the cloud, so full of unknown we think it's empty. At my feet, the path to the North Tower—60 yards of wire rope. It's a straight line which sways, which vibrates, which rolls on itself, which is ice, which is sweetened tight, ready to explode, ready to swallow me in an inner howl.

As it sells me, the wild longing to flee, but it is too late. The wire is ready. Decisively, my other foot sets itself onto the cable. Faith is what replaces doubt in my dictionary.

So, after the walk, people ask me, "Well, how can you top that?" Well, I didn't have that problem. I mean, I was not interested in collecting the gigantic or breaking records. In fact, I put my World Trade Center crossing at the same artistic level as some of my smaller walks, or some completely different type of performance, let’s see, such as my street juggling, for example.

So, each time I draw my circle of chalk on the pavement and enter the improvising comic silent character I created 45 years ago, I am as happy as when I am in the clouds.

But this here, this is not the street, so I cannot street juggle here. You understand, so you don’t want me to street juggle here, right? You—you—you know that, right? You don't want me to juggle, right? Thank you, thank you.

It’s time I street juggle. I use improvisation. Improvisation is empowering because it welcomes the unknown. And since what's impossible is always unknown, it allows me to believe I can cheat the impossible. Now, I have done the impossible, not once, but many times.

So, what should I share? Though I know, in Israel, some years ago, I was invited to open the Israel festival by a high wire walk. I chose to put my wire between the Arab quarter and the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, over the band Hinnom Valley.

I thought it would be incredible if, in the middle of the wire, I stopped and, like a magician, produced—I make appear a dove and send her into the sky as a living symbol of peace. Well, now I must say it was a little bit hard to find a dove in Israel, but I got one.

In my hotel room, each time I practiced making it appear and then throwing her in the air, she would graze the walls and land upon the bed. So, I thought, “No, it’s okay. I mean, the room is too small. I mean, a bird needs space to fly. It will go perfectly on the day of the walk.”

Now comes the day of the walk. Eighty thousand people spread over the entire valley. The mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, comes to wish me the best, but he seemed nervous. I mean, there was tension in my wire, but I also could feel tension on the ground, because actually, all those people were, for the most part, considered each other enemies.

So, I start the walk, everything is fine. I stop in the middle, I make the dove appear, people applaud in delight, and then in the most magnificent gesture, I send the bird of peace into the azure. But the bird, instead of flying, goes flop, flop, flop and lands on my head, and people scream!

So, I grab this dove, and for the second time, I send her in the air. But the dove, who obviously didn’t go to flying school, does flip, flip, flop and ends up at the end of my balancing pole. So now, it’s—“You love! You love!”

But hey, I sit down immediately; it’s a reflex of wire walkers. Now in the meantime, the audience, they go crazy. I mean, they’re messing this guy with his dove—he spent years working! And what ingenious for a professional! So, I take a bow, you know, I sell it with my hand, and at the end, I bang my head against the pole to these slots the world.

Now, the dove, who now, you know, obviously cannot fly, goes for the third time—a little flip, flop, flop—and ends up on the wire behind me, and the entire valley goes crazy.

Now, but hold on, I have not finished! So now, I’m like, what, 50 yards from my rival and I’m exhausted, so my steps are slow. And something happened. Somebody, somewhere—a group of people starts clapping in rhythm with my step, and within seconds, the entire valley is applauding in unison with each of my steps.

But not in the approach of delight that before, in a close of encouragement. For a moment, the entire crowd had forgotten their differences; they had become one, pushing me to triumph.

You know what? I want you just for a second to experience this amazing human symphony. So let’s say I am here and the chair is my arrival, okay? So I—or you clap—everybody in unison.

So after the walk, today I become friends, and he tells me he has on his desk a picture of me in the middle of the wire, over the door, on my head. He didn't know the full story, and whenever he's down to an impossible situation to solve in his, you know, hard to manage city, instead of giving up, he looks at the picture and says, “If Philippe can do that, I can do this,” and he goes back to work.

Inspiration! By inspiring ourselves, we inspire others. I mean, I will never forget this music, and I hope now neither will you.

Please take this music with you home and start gluing feathers to your arms and take off and fly and look at the world from a different perspective. And when you see mountains, remember: mountains can be moved.

Thank you! Thank you. Oh, okay!