Now close your eyes.
The cable is limpid. Your body is silent. Together, they are motionless. Only your leg quivers. You would like to cut it off, to turn your body into a single human wire. But already it no longer belongs to you, is no longer a part of you. Like the chess player who closes his eyes and sees a whole plain of black and white squares passing under his feet, you close your eyes and see only a magnificent gray wire.
The silent wind of your eyes inhabits it.
A silence invaded by light.
Penetrate this luminosity by seeking out its source. Plunge down to find the place where nothing breathes, into the blackness that is hidden inside it. Keep going until you reach the other side of the light. It is a dazzling clarity, a clamorous splendor: wet, whirling, often colorless. As if through a black mirror, you will see a gleaming, untouched wire. That is the image you are looking for. It will quickly be jumbled together with the fireworks of new impressions. Once this image has come, however, the high-wire walker can live in space. For whole hours, for portions of entire days, as if time had come to a halt. No one else will ever notice.
You must throw yourself into this meaningless search for rest—without hoping for a result.
Here is the wire walker stretched out on his gigantic antenna, listening to the world. He can feel the noise of the city rise up to him; he can distinguish among the thousand sounds that fill the silence of the countryside. He starts at the whistling of shooting stars.
And all that puts him to sleep.
A deep breathing invades him.
Each time he draws in his breath, he hears noises; each time he exhales, he hears nothing. Then, during the space of several heartbeats, he forgets everything. He begins to snore. But between his sighs, what silence!
Below him, nothing. Neither dogs nor people. Nature has gone to sleep as well, so that the wire walker, balanced on his huge tuning fork, can at last begin to dream.
The blindfolded Death Walk
You have no idea what’s in store for you.
A cable inclined at a thirty-degree angle. From the ground to the top of the pole or the church bell tower. Three hundred meters. Guy-lined at intervals by a few lengths of hemp. Swaying in the face of a drowsing sun.
Despite all the care that has been given to its installation, the wire will never demark an evenly ascending line. It will dip into space, become horizontal at low altitudes, gently raise its head, lift up its nose, and with growing malice mime a venomous verticality in its last section.
When a blindfolded Death Walk takes place, it is always announced as an “attempt.”
Step by step you will climb up, your eyes pressed against the black cloth, your face buried in the suffocating sack. Blind, deaf, and dumb, you will doubt you can reach the end of the wire.
The sun, which has been beating down since dawn, has drawn out the grease hidden in the soul of the cable. With your first steps, the whole installation will begin to move. Each cavalletti will pull on its area—which will amplify the wire’s oscillation, as if it were now trying to throw you off. Without ever knowing where they are, your feet will unexpectedly touch an oily spot—and you will advance by millimeters, your hands clutching the balancing pole. The one you have chosen is long and heavy, and with each step forward it will grow even heavier. You will be at the end of your strength when the abrupt angle of the last steps begins, and the wind will be waiting in ambush for you there. You will think you are in the middle of the wire, so you will kneel down for an impeccable aerialist’s salute, which will be ridiculous, for in fact you will be only ten meters from your starting point. You will lengthen your strides with the thought that you are half finished with the crossing, and you will bang your body into the pole or a stone of the building, for the walk is over. Then, with a superb gesture, you will tear off the blindfold and the hood, almost falling with the last step, for your vertigo will be total as you stand in the sudden dazzling light of the sun.
The first ascent will remain the most vivid sensation in your life as a high-wire walker. You will think: My shadow was faithful, it has led me this far, and if by chance courage fails me, I will throw the corpse of my memories helter-skelter on the wire, and in this way reach the heart of a storm that will allow me to scale these ferocious heights.
Fakes
I know a man who sells himself body and soul to the highest bidder.
He uses a blindfold with holes in it, an immense balancing pole that hangs over both sides of his overly guy-lined wire, and presents his exercises above a net. He has learned how to walk on the cable with an “extension cord”—a second wire that runs parallel to the one he walks on. It is just above his head, and he can grab onto it whenever he wants.
Over the circus rings where he works as a so-called high-wire walker, he uses a “mechanic.” This is an almost invisible cable attached to a safety belt that has been sewn into his costume. His assistant, who stays on the ground during his performance, manipulates the string with tiny, discrete movements, as though he were controlling a puppet. As a result, this equilibrist is able to do stunts that no wire walker could ever attempt, much less accomplish. Three times I saw him do a backward somersault on an inclined wire: this is impossible. Three times I saw him fail to gain his footing. Three times I saw his body fall to one side of the wire—although this was imperceptible to the crowd—and three times I saw his balance righted by the safety line. The rest of his performance was punctuated by cries, feigned slips, and pretend falls. From the simplest, most limpid exercises he knew how to extract interminable difficulties, which he mimed in the most grotesque fashion. Before he stepped onto the wire, he would take great care to rub the soles of his shoes with resin powder. Thus, his feet were not placed on the wire, they were glued to it. When I had the chance to walk on his wire, I could not take a step: my feet got stuck. I am used to wearing old and extremely smooth slippers so my walks will be as lithe and graceful as possible.
The terrain of the high-wire walker is bounded by death, not by props. And when a wire walker inspires pity, he deserves death ten times over.
Anyone can use a net, an extension cord, a blindfold with holes in it, a trick balancing pole, resin, cavallettis that touch each other, and a mechanic. To make life even sweeter for these people, I would advise them to practice falling as well. In the realm of the Absurd, they would become the masters of every artifice.
True high-wire walkers do not do such things.
But I know another aerialist.
He often appears on the wire of my dreams.
He is immense in his red-and-black cape—which he throws down to the crowd with a giant’s laughter following his first crossing. At times he is majestic. He does the simplest exercises, even the ones that other artists disdain. But he performs them with such finesse, such cunning and ease, that everything about them seems difficult. At other times, he acts like a clown, makes false steps, tangles his feet, and stops in the middle of a move to strike a comic, ridiculous pose. At still other times, he is wild, throwing himself into mad stunts without even trying to succeed. He attacks the wire, slips, catches himself, bangs his head and howls, foams, springs back.
He is alone, like a flame, and the music of his blood silences all our cheers.
But he can hear what the people in the first row are whispering:
“Isn’t he charming?”
“Do you think he’s going to fly?”
Murderers!
At that point, he wipes off his sweat with the back of his arm and spits into the arena.
The customer is always right!
With dash and daring he responds disdainfully by pretending to slip with each step, stunning the many spectators who have no idea what he is doing. Then he reaches his platform with classic grace, the perfection he can achieve whenever he wants to.
> Laughing, I stand up to applaud him.
I allow him everything. Whatever he does I will accept.
And if he would like to start working with a net, well, maybe I wouldn’t disapprove.
Then there was the inventor who came up with a counterweight for high-wire walkers.
It was nothing more than the stabilizer-trapeze of the wire walker’s motorcycle, designed for a human being.
A few little wheels placed on the cable held a bundle of bricks that extended below the walker, which allowed him to rest his balancing pole discreetly on the T bar that moved before him. The apparatus was connected to the other side by a thin steel cable pulled by a winch operated carefully by an assistant. No cavallettis! The installation was therefore several tons lighter than usual. As a result, the wire could be thin, which cut the setup time and the difficulties of installation in half. The wind became less of a threat, the wire did not sway, and, above all, distance did not count. Our hero could thus fill many fine pages in the record books. Those records are make-believe. But believe them if you wish.
And then, I would be failing in my job if I did not give brief mention to the name-stealers.
After my crossing between the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a young wire walker started performing under my name: Philippe Petit. I learned of this after he had been hired to do his act under the roof of a large department store in Paris.
My impulse to murder him has been transformed by time into a smile of pity.
But what would have been the reaction of the Great Blondin, Hero of Niagara, if he had met any of the usurpers of his name: Arsène Blondin, Hero of the Seine; Little Blondin; the Female Blondin; the Australian Blondin; and the countless Blondinis?
Wisdom says he would have been honored.
The performance
As the days went on, I found that I could repeat the same steps, the same movements.
My work was becoming serious.
I would begin with several crossings “to build confidence.” But I was eager to get to what I love to do best: the slowest walks; the simplest, most delicate routines.
It was in a meadow at the end of a day of hard training that I found my first spectator, who had no doubt been attracted by my silence.
Before leaving the wire, I had allowed myself to do a crossing with one foot dragging behind me, thinking of all the things that foot might be able to do.
Suddenly, the tall hedge behind me opened.
A huge cow’s head had just placed itself noiselessly on a row of brambles, its muzzle calm, its eye friendly.
Bashful at being surprised during my exercises, I withdrew very softly to the platform and then set out straight and erect to the middle of the cable, where I performed a mathematically exact half-turn and kneeled to my visitor in the most perfect fashion.
I continued to do the best and most beautiful things I knew. I did the exercises in the order I had prepared them during my practice sessions; I added what a man of the wire thinks he possesses: the expansiveness of movement, the steadiness of eye, the feeling of victory, the humor of gestures. I climbed down from the wire, covered with sweat, unable to remember having once taken a breath, while the enormous animal turned around, chewing slowly, and went back to her pasture.
Since then, I have added much to this improvised group of exercises, and I have eliminated much. With great effort, I have tried to get rid of everything superfluous. With great regret, I have kept only one salute for every ten I have practiced. I have dressed myself in white. I have had multicolored music played that was originally composed for old circuses; I have invited concert pianists to perform. My act lasts twelve minutes, even though my head is filled with centuries of wire walking.
But when I present myself on the ground and grab hold of the rope ladder or cross a public square to begin a Death Walk without a balancing pole, when I see all the equipment on the ground ready to serve me, when I see the orchestra conductor waiting for my signal, I already feel myself to be a wire walker. From that point on, it is a piece of my life that I give or abandon—it depends. The only things I ever remember are walking on the ground, taking hold of the balancing pole for the first crossing, the moment of doubt, and the final salute. I prefer the ground to be flat, uniform, uncluttered, and clean; and I make sure that the spectators have been moved out of the way.
The rest does not belong to me.
It lives in the thousands of hands that will applaud. When I hear the sound of those hands, I am the only one who knows that in the middle of my performance, when I lie down without my balancing pole, my chest in a sky of spotlights, or my heart open to the wind in an outdoor theater, I am next to the gates of Paradise.
Rehearsal
Stop your normal practicing.
Keep doing walks until your leg breathes and your foot becomes a part of the wire.
Break down each element of your performance in any order you choose and examine it harshly. If the quality is good, repeat it simply as many times as necessary: you must imprint an irreproachable movement on the cable.
Make even the slightest gesture important; do not dawdle over something that seems right. Forget no part of the act.
You are now ready to rehearse.
Go down and rest. Change your costume. Prepare the music. Decide whether you want a few people to watch. Then, as if someone has just announced your entrance, walk toward the wire quickly and with a sure step.
Give your performance.
Go down, and that’s it.
Do not do one more thing after that; do not amuse yourself.
Rehearse your act every day, at the end of each practice session.
And go home looking at the ground, thinking of nothing, nothing at all.
Struggle on the wire
You must throw yourself onto the wire.
Robledillo became one of the great rope dancers at the end of a whip. His father attached little bells to the wire and would come running whenever it became silent.
The glory of suffering does not interest me.
Besides, I don’t believe in anything. Uselessness is the only thing I like.
Limits, traps, impossibilities are indispensable to me. Every day I go out to look for them. I believe the whip is necessary only when it is held by the student, not the teacher.
When you train, you should be outside, on a rough coast, all alone.
To learn what you must, it is important to have been treacherously overturned by the ocean’s salty air. To have climbed back up to the wire with a wild leap. To have frozen yourself with rage, to have been hell-bent on keeping your balance in the claws of the wind.
You must have weathered long hours of rain and storm, have cried out with joy after each flash of lightning, have cried cries that could push back the thunder.
You must struggle against the elements to learn that staying on a wire is nothing. What counts is this: to stay straight and stubborn in your madness. Only then will you defeat the secrets of the wire. It is the most precious strength of the high-wire walker.
I have kicked off snow with every step as I walked along a frozen cable.
In other seasons, I have run barefoot over a cable burning with sunlight. I have worked without cavallettis on a big cable. I have continued walking on a cable that was progressively loosening with each step. I have tried to cross a completely loose wire, forcing myself to abandon my great assurance. I have even asked people to shake the installation with ropes, to strike the wire with long bars. . . . With complete horror and shame I have fought not to find myself hanging by one hand from the wire with the balancing pole in the other.
I have put on wooden shoes, boots, unmatched pairs of shoes. I have held my balancing pole at my side like a suitcase; I have weighted it down, lightened it, cut it in half, used it with its point off-center in o
rder to walk leaning to one side. I have waited for darkness, so my balance would be disturbed. I have tried Death Walks that were too steep, I have groped along a greasy cable, I have played with telephone wires and railway cables. I have forced myself to rehearse with music that disgusts me. In secret, I have practiced naked to learn how the muscles work and to feel my own ridiculousness.
And, drunk with alcohol, I have proved that a body that knows what it is doing does not need a mind to lead it. . . . I have picked myself up from each of my experiments even more savagely determined. And if I fell, it was in silence. I did not wait for my shoulder wound to heal to go on with my backward somersaults—again and again and again.
I was not possessed. I was busy winning.
You do not do a true salto on a very high cable. You do not wear a blindfold or raise your eyes to the sky without using a balancing pole. You do not do a headstand on a great cable without a balancing pole.
Impossible?
Who is smart enough to prove it?
I tell everyone that I will attempt a crossing from the American to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls—where the water actually falls—and not over the rapids, where all previous crossings have been made. But once on that mile of unknown cable, shaken by the wind that does not stop, wrapped in a cloud of vapor that must be pierced little by little, over the whirlpools of the cataract, listening to all that infernal noise, will I dare? Will I dare to be harder than the sun, more glacial than the snow? Will I dare to enter these pages on high-wire walking without knowing the way out? It is one thing to talk about my controlled experiments. But this?
Man of the Air, illuminate with your blood the Very Rich Hours of your passage among us. Limits exist only in the souls of those who do not dream.
The wind
If this man standing at the edge of the seawall has not moved for such a long time, it is because he is looking out at the raging sea and watching the birds attempt to fly over the narrow passage—for no other reason than to intoxicate themselves with pleasure.
On the High Wire Page 5