January 10, 2009

6:42 p.m.

Writing Poetry on the Wire

I watched "Man on W1re" last night, the documentary about Phi1ippe_Petit's amazing wire-walk between the two towers of the WTC in 1974. I remember knowing his name in the 80s when I was a juggler, and he was already quite famous then. Revered, even, in those circles. I saw him in Washington Square Park one day, setting up a rope from a tree limb to the ground. A crowd was already gathering.

The story is remarkable, and his interview in the "Special Features" section is critical, too. He didn't always agree with the filmmaker's angle, the "human drama" he played up by focusing on tension among the players. The film is still really engaging, though, suspenseful. There is much old footage of Ph. on his early wires in the open field, before he ever came to America to realize his dream of the two towers -- interspersed with the recent interviews. He was young and beautiful; now he is old and beautiful.

He is the only wirewalker outside of the circus. He reinvented the art, he claims, taking it out of the arena and making it something more lyrical, something unexpected. It was his greatest and most consuming passion. The towers walk took six years of planning and many covert trips to study the buildings and the organization.

He speaks of living a life of passion, that if you look at his life it's a mess, but every morning he wakes with a great excitement for the day because he is passionate to make art. "I am not really a wirewalker," he says. "I am more like a poet, but I am writing my poetry up there, on the wire."

After seeing all the hoops they had to go through to make it happen, the failed attempts, the investment of time, money and agony... the walk itself, when it finally happens that Manhattan morning, is such a thing of beauty, one can hardly describe it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that art, after all its complicated and convoluted pains of birth, boils down to something very simple. In this case: One man, one wire.