(It is spring in New Zealand and the beautiful yellow kowhai flowers have bloomed and fallen.)I recently watched the documentary 'Man On Wire' about the tight-rope walker, Philippe Petite, balancing between the twin towers in New York. The film and the stunt are truly amazing and inspiring. I had the same emotional reaction as I get when watching surfers ride giant waves, or extreme mountain skiers dodging avalanches, seeing a tiny, insignificant but indomitable figure braving to go so far with such spirit, and taking just a little bit of us with him. It is not just sport, it is a powerful theatrical performance and we are the richer for it. I think we need these visions of the seemingly impossible being realised to uplift us, to give us hope, something to aspire to, not necessarily to do what they do, but to take us out of the limitations of our daily lives and to stretch our notion of the possible.
To string the wire between the twin towers they first used a bow and arrow to shoot a very thin fishing line across. To find the line in the dark he stripped naked to be able to feel it on his body. Then they used the line to pull back a heavier string, and then an increasingly heavy rope until they were able to haul across the wire. What a wonderful metaphor: to shoot an arrow, a simple low-tech, prehistoric device, up into the dark night sky trailing a gossamer thin thread, to link two buildings! That thread then pulls behind it increasingly strong lines that will build a walkway for the brave to follow.
We need examples and role models of people who dare to venture to extremes to spur us on to similar achievements in our own fields. The same vision is apparent in iconic architecture such as Gehry's Guggenheim and Shigeru Ban's new Centre Pompidou in Metz. Their idea was a pioneering arrow stretching the limits of what was possible. To conceive this requires more than a little craziness!
