Silly Little Country

The Fascination with Death

An interesting Spectator article on Philippe Petit (h/t Norm)

‘I didn’t choose New York, I chose the Twin Towers,’ he says, ‘or rather they chose me.’ I wondered if, stepping out on to a steel wire a quarter of a mile above the ground, he had death on his mind. ‘I was not thinking about death,’ he said, ‘I was thinking about life.’ And yet in the film he tells of how ‘death was very close’ as he began his wire walk, ‘but I was not gambling with my life, I was living it fully. You will never feel yourself living as intensely as on the limit of life.’

And of course what is important here is that Philippe Petit's death that was very close was his own only (yeah, yeah, he might have landed on someone). No need, as the article explores, to involve thousands of other people. The Che Guevaras, the Mohammed Attas, their stories would be so much more attractive if they did not demand that others die for them.

Maybe this is a bit overblown, but it does make a key point:

Both the terrorists and the tightrope walker were dreamers, but where the terrorists dreamed of death the tightrope walker dreamed of life. The wreckage of the Towers revealed the depths to which the human heart can descend, the walk between the Towers demonstrated the heights the spirit of the human imagination can reach.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:21 PM