HIGH WIRE
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HIGH WIRE L L OY D J O N E S and E UA N M AC L E O D
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HIGH WIRE L L OY D J O N E S and E UA N M AC L E O D
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I’d written to Euan Macleod proposing a project about bridges. He replied enthusiastically — and, over the coming months, sketches and drawings of bridges tumbled freely out of him. I began to think of a single life consisting of many bridges crossed, then re-crossed, one after another — of departures and arrivals, ascents and as many descents until at last we’re alone hoisted high above the ordinary and mundane, and we’ve left behind all that which anchors us in time and place. But soon the heady ideas I had about bridges began to collapse. Where I had been, others had. The commonality of experience breathed its deflating air. As exhilarating as it had been to walk across Golden Gate Bridge or to soar above Sydney Harbour or to flit across the modest rainbow from childhood, my footsteps fitted neatly into others’; my beating heart fell in with theirs.
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I’d written to Euan Macleod proposing a project about bridges. He replied enthusiastically — and, over the coming months, sketches and drawings of bridges tumbled freely out of him. I began to think of a single life consisting of many bridges crossed, then re-crossed, one after another — of departures and arrivals, ascents and as many descents until at last we’re alone hoisted high above the ordinary and mundane, and we’ve left behind all that which anchors us in time and place. But soon the heady ideas I had about bridges began to collapse. Where I had been, others had. The commonality of experience breathed its deflating air. As exhilarating as it had been to walk across Golden Gate Bridge or to soar above Sydney Harbour or to flit across the modest rainbow from childhood, my footsteps fitted neatly into others’; my beating heart fell in with theirs.
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I was not where I thought I was. I was not alone. The art I looked for was not there.
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I was not where I thought I was. I was not alone. The art I looked for was not there.
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Then I discovered Philippe Petit — the most daring tightroper the world has ever known. A real artist able to place his feet in a space where no one else had. Seeing a path where no one else had. And then dismantling, and tidying up after, to ensure the endeavour would not grow old inside a frame but live on through the re-telling of those who were there and saw it happen. He is an elfin twenty-year-old dressed in black samurai pants and a tight black v-neck vest that morning, in 1974, when he steps on to a wire linking the twin towers of the New York Trade Centre.
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Then I discovered Philippe Petit — the most daring tightroper the world has ever known. A real artist able to place his feet in a space where no one else had. Seeing a path where no one else had. And then dismantling, and tidying up after, to ensure the endeavour would not grow old inside a frame but live on through the re-telling of those who were there and saw it happen. He is an elfin twenty-year-old dressed in black samurai pants and a tight black v-neck vest that morning, in 1974, when he steps on to a wire linking the twin towers of the New York Trade Centre.
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