On the high wire, chaos in Mumbai, and acorns for breakfast

With Philippe Petit and Roma Agrawal

For someone with no fame to speak of, I think I Google myself a little too much. There’s something addictive about going into incognito mode and finding out what the internet would present a stranger who might, for some inexplicable reason, feel the urge to search me up. The only thrill came when the results, one day, officially identified me as ‘a writer’, setting out some of my bylines — and even a headshot, pulled from a portfolio I haven’t updated in months. The whole thing granted me that more gravity than I’m actually due.

I sometimes wonder what’s behind my desire to Google myself, especially as someone who is otherwise quite self-conscious. Celebrities with an actual significant presence often say that they refuse to do so, and the author Luke Turner revealed, on the first episode of our new podcast Tell Me How You Write that he won’t read reviews of his books that are posted online — so why am I bothering? Maybe it’s just vanity.

But reading Philippe Petit’s piece in today’s issue — and listening to him on the latest episode of the Boundless podcast — gave me some food for thought: he writes on struggling with how his brand, as it were, is largely based on his high wire walk across the Twin Towers, a stunt that is often the first and only thing people recognise him for. ‘The spotlight thrown by my WTC adventure has followed me for 50 years. Its light has tinted and sometimes completely obscured everything else I have done with the rest of my life and who I am. It haunts, sometimes muffles, my present thirsts and future quests.’

We all have an idea of how we’d like to be remembered by the world, but ultimately we have very little control over what sticks. In the absence of someone writing your eulogy while you’re still alive, which would be a bit morbid for everyone involved, for those of us who won’t be recognised in the street your digital footprint is perhaps the only way to see how it’s shaping up. I’ve just had another Google and so far, so good: as long as the deeply personal and painfully sincere essays I wrote as a student stay buried somewhere at the bottom of page four, I’ll remain relatively content.

Sadia Nowshin
Junior Editor

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Life beyond the high wire

Philippe Petit laments the terms of his fame, and reveals his struggles to rewrite it

Unannounced — and perhaps later unwelcome — fame crept into my life as soon as I landed back on the south tower of Notre-Dame-de-Paris on Month 8, 1971, ending a surprise high wire walk of several hours. Parisians were briefly amused by the twenty-two-year-old self-proclaimed aerial poet, but France did not react. Yet the world did — on front pages of newspapers in dozens of languages.

What is it with south towers?

Two years later I took off from the south top of the (northern) pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for yet another illegal promenade and then, on August 7, 1974 — yes, 50 years ago — I unglued myself from the roof of the south tower of the World Trade Center, performed six crossings a quarter of a mile above Manhattan’s asphalt and returned to that same south tower to let myself be arrested. Last month, my departure platform was set on the south side of the nave when I performed (with Sting singing below me) a lavish fifty-year anniversary celebration of my WTC escapade at the largest gothic cathedral in the world: St John the Divine in New York City.

Life off the high wire

Philippe's To Reach the Clouds: The Walk film tie in was published by Orion in 2022.

You can listen to Philippe talk to Erica Wagner on the latest episode of the Boundless podcast about his high wire fame and identity as an artist — Erica also chats to author Nathan Hill, who recently wrote for Boundless on the uncanniness of Fort Myers Beach, about living in the face of extreme weather (Apple Podcasts / Spotify)