The thing comes from afar. In ancient Greece there were already individuals who climbed a rope to walk on heights. They were the “rope dancers”. This art immediately reached Rome, where they called them with a word composed of funis (rope) and ambulare (to walk), that is, the one who walks along the rope. We also find this funis in words like funicular, a vehicle that works by pulling a cable.
Until the second half of the 20th century, tightrope walkers were exhibited in public spaces, circuses and entertainment halls, putting awe in the hearts of the public who admired their prowess in keeping their balance on such a surface thin as a thread But then Philippe Petit arrived and tightrope walking took a giant step forward.
In the winter of 1968, at the age of 18, Petit found out, thanks to a dentist’s magazine, that the tallest skyscrapers in the world were being built in Manhattan. He was so fascinated by it, that at that very moment he decided that he would hang a cable from one to the other and walk there. Before that, however, he did some tests, such as crossing the sky between the two bell towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which he could see from home. Since his fellow citizens did not pay much attention to him, he left “indignantly” for Australia, where he walked between the towers of the northern part of the steel bridge in Sydney. It was June 3, 1973 and Petit tells it in the first person, with all the intrigue of a mystery novel in the book Alcanzar las nubes (Alpha Decay) or El desafío (Duomo).
The next step, of course, was the skyscrapers of the World Trade Center. Here the matter was much more complicated and it was necessary to develop a whole criminal plan. Criminal, yes, because what the tightrope walker was trying to do was completely illegal.
But since Petit is a free soul, “a misfit”, as he defines himself in the book, he did not shy away from any difficulty. When he turned 17, his parents “pushed him to emancipate”, a euphemism for saying that they kicked him out of the house without consideration. And he continues: “At the age of 18, I had already been expelled from five schools for practicing the art of stealing teachers’ wallets, as well as the art of manipulating cards under the desk.”
What Petit is saying in explaining his training is that the thin line that divides the art of crime is as thin as the rope he liked to walk on in the heights. Made a piece from head to toe, and driven by that enlightenment he had in the dentist’s office, the artist begins to build his plan, which will end up becoming a reality six years later, on August 7, 1974, when he will cross a few times the distance that separated the Twin Towers, 42 meters, before being arrested. Only 42 meters, but more than 400 meters high.
With a group of friends dazzled by his figure to help him execute the plan, they sneak into the WTC with fake IDs to study all the cracks. On the morning of August 7, they load a 200 kg cable, which is what they will have to hang between the towers and which they will go up in a freight elevator. Once on the roof, they will shoot an arrow with a line, which will be used to replace it with wider ropes, until they reach the cable on which they will walk. They themselves couldn’t believe they hadn’t been stopped earlier, but the commotion of the skyscraper construction provided them with perfect camouflage.
World Trade Center President Guy F. Tozzoli said: “Philippe Petit planned and executed the perfect crime…and the whole world adored him for it.” Once convicted, the judge had no choice but to commute his prison sentence to community service. The “social works” were another prize for the tightrope walker, because they consisted of performing for the scoundrel in Central Park.
The writer Paul Auster thanked him for “the gift of astonishing and indelible beauty” he had given New York City, and Bob Dylan dedicated a song to him, Don’t fall. Beyond the autobiographical book, James Marsh made a documentary about it, Man on Wire, which won the Oscar in 2008, and Robert Zemeckis directed the film The Walk in 2015.
At 29, Nathan Paulin, on the other hand, has never escaped the law. Sometimes it takes characters like Philippe Petit to break the law so that those who come after find their way. This is the case of the tightrope walker who this Sunday took a walk through the sky of Plaça Catalunya in an act qualified as the popular inauguration of the Greek Festival. More legal, impossible.
Paulin explains to La Vanguardia how he got here: “I was very young when I started walking on ropes, between two trees, but I never planned to become a tightrope walker. It was like a kind of meditation, walking over the pines; that’s what I liked. Then I discovered where I could get to, gradually losing my fear of it. In my case it started like this, as a mountain sport”.
Paulin did not know Philippe Petit when he started, he discovered him later, and he insists: “I have never crossed anything illegally, I have always asked for the relevant authorizations”. He didn’t know Barcelona either, but in the days before the performance, he discovered Plaça Catalunya, which he describes as “an ideal place, cute, full of people and buzzing, central, which allows me to share the experience with a lot of people”.
The artist who stars in the show The traceurs, directed by choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, details what he does before starting to walk the heights: “I don’t have any particular technique to concentrate. I spend a lot of time installing everything, which I follow very closely, I put a lot of effort into it. So when I’m on the wire I know that everything has been well prepared. I’m tied up, I don’t need a lot of preparation, I start walking and I’m ready.”
And the most curious thing, as Petit also explains, is that when they are up there they have time to ruminate on many different things: “I think about so many things when I’m up there. When I get into it, the first thing I try to do is to do it well and manage the great stress it can entail. It’s about having just a little bit of it, to control the fear, not to fall into its trap, watch the rhythm so as not to give in to the temptation to do it too fast. Once you start walking, and especially on the way back, everything is focused on the present moment, it’s a show and you have to pay attention to the movements, but when I come back I escape a little, I think about many things, I look at the people there it’s down I do it out of curiosity, I try to discover elements of the landscape, 30 minutes goes a long way.”
Of all the routes that Paulin has completed, he chooses the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The same thing that Philippe Petit did in 1989 from the Trocadero. But at the time, it wasn’t the police waiting for Petit at the end of the wire, but the mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac.
