In the early morning of a summer day in 1974, Phillipe Petit and his crazy band of co-conspirators attempted what would be not only a daring act of inspired madness, but a beautiful and compelling testament to courageous dreams. His was an act that rippled throughout the common day of common people all over the world. It was an act of defiance that set up a sympathetic vibration in the hearts of millions upon millions who yearned to find and consummate their own inspirations, which, for most, had been obliterated by the relentless grind of survival and denial.
Over a thousand feet above the streets and sidewalks of lower Manhattan, Petit and his team had strung a cable between the still unfinished structures of the twin towers, and, on that seventh day of August in 1974, just after 7:15 in the morning, Phillipe Petit stepped out onto his wire and danced in the ether to the muffled cries from the city streets, rising from the underworld below.
“This is the first crossing. Wire and I together, we voluptuosly penetrate the cloudy layer that melts as we approach, as we pass between the twin towers of New York City’s WOrld Trade Center. I walk on air that softens under each step. I glide each foot. I cut through the whitish lump of breeze with my balancing pole.” [1]
For 45 minutes Petit crossed eight times between the two buildings. At one moment Petit even lay down on the wire, on his back. Everyone was awestruck, speechless, mesmerized and Petit carried all the world in his pocket to marvel as witness. One of the nearest to him was an officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Sgt Charles Daniels, who, unsuccessfully of course tried to talk Petit off the wire. Afterwards Daniels said in a statement,
“I observed the tightrope ‘dancer’—because you couldn’t call him a ‘walker’—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire….And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle….He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again….Unbelievable really….Everybody was spellbound in the watching of it.[3]
What Petit accomplished that morning so many years ago, by example, was the encouragement of mastering our fear; of striving for fulfillment and the manifestation of our dreams and goals in the face of irrevocable consequence; of living fully. It was not for self aggrandizement or fawning admiration of his talent that he walked so close to the edge and risked his life. No, that marvelous feat was just the beginning of Phillippe Petit’s gift to history. Just as he was drawn as by a magnet to the compelling poetry of the wire, so are we drawn to our own wire. Our challenge, what it is that we too must allow ourselves, is to be drawn into and then embrace the void, despite our fears, despite our flaws, and despite our misgivings.
“Whenever I tackled the impossible and the miraculous of the World Trade Center adventure, I remember the magician René Lavand -did I ever tell you?- he had only one arm. Poet and extraordinary card manipulator, he baffled fellow illusionists by concluding his brilliant demonstrations with, “What I just showed you can also be done with two hands!”
1. To Reach The Clouds, phillippe petit, p.168
2. IBID p.218
3. “People & Events: Philippe Petit (1948-)” Episode 8: The Center of the World of New York City: A Documentary Film broadcast on American Experience, Public Broadcasting Service in 2003
