Parallel Stories of Walking the Tightrope

Creative people embrace fabulous dreams. If you have abandoned yourself to the charms of a creative idea that now seems impossible to complete, consider the work of Philippe Petit whose incredible feats were captured visually in the documentary Man on Wire -- and poetically in the book Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Petit is the French highwire performer who walked back and forth between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. McCann is Irish by birth, but his book captures the soul of New York City as lived by its socialites, artists, hookers, and priests. 

Petit, a Frenchman from Nemours, spent six years planning his walk between the Towers, a project that was dangerous beyond words and patently illegal. His dream of the tightrope feat came to him before the World Trade Center had even been built. He read a newspaper article about the WTC construction project while he was waiting in a dentist's office and immediately began formulating a plan for his unbelievable walk more than 100 stories in the air. 

McCann's book captures the excitement of Petit's performance by leading us through the lives of characters who occupy each rung of New York City's social ladder. Some of their stories are heartbreaking. But the book is written with such affection for the tumult of life, you cannot help but feel delighted by their efforts to seize the available beauty in life. The sight of the tightrope walker adds a dimension of greatness to a day that would otherwise feel tragic to some, mundane to others. 

A third level of artistic complexity is added by James Marsh's film Man on Wire. If you have never seen it,  it is worth every dollar of a DVD rental and each minute of your attention. The work of Petit, the novel by McCann, and the movie by Marsh wrap the tragedy of 9/11 in a tableau of meaning that is far deeper and more complex than any one story could express. 

There will always be days when your life or work may feel impossible. And there are certainly times when the events of our lives seem to weigh more than we can bear. But by comparison, no task could be more difficult than the goals these artists set for themselves. Steal a moment to enjoy their work. Then take a big breath and get back up on the wire.