"man on wire"

the film does a wonderful job of explaining why what phillipe petit did was so important: when art is made up of the right ingredients and intentions, death should be but a millimeter to each side. but between those millimeters, absolute peacefulness rules. of course, phillipe was walking on a wire hundreds of feet above manhattan and sydney and paris, and i am sitting on my bed with a keyboard. but the footage was an amazing representation of how i feel when i am writing: energized and exhilarated, understanding a little bit of everything, but forgetting just enough to be at peace and relaxed. so my death isn't the same as phillipe's, my risk isn't the same as phillipe's. but it should feel like it is. everything hinges on the next sentence or the next line. if it's well-placed, and balanced, or if it's correcting my balance with a shove to the left or right, then i am relaxed. and i walk across the wire. and if it's not, if my brain decides to betray my body, or my body decides to succumb to the the populist gravity, then i tumble, end over end, and all i can do is close my eyes.

was phillipe worried? no, because he'd never taken that wrong step before. he's an artist. and since it is truly his art, then he never has to worry about taking a wrong step, as long as he takes his own steps.

i believe that any artist is at his or her best when only their own steps are being taken. art can never be wrong when created this way. it's when others' steps are taken that an artist tumbles off the edge of the wire.

it's a beautiful and inspiring film, a home-movie look into the rarely-thought-of world of wire-walking as an art. and it's a pretty neat love story, too.