Are Discipline and Play Compatible? With High-Wire Artist Philippe Petit
- 6 years ago
A marriage of discipline and play seems contradictory, but Philippe Petit says he thrives on being an extreme and contradictory artist. The high-wire artist explains why being a successful artist requires a marriage of extremes. You have to work hard and play hard. There is no sacrificing either. This is the fifth video in a nine-part series with Philippe Petit available in playlist form here: http://goo.gl/rmoa7P
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - I think of myself as a man of contradictions. I mean first I am very brutal in my way of thinking. I love or I hate, it’s black or it’s white which is not very true because then a part of me loves the gray festivals. But anyway I realize that I am a man of contradiction and extreme and very often I state something and within the same sentence I contradict myself. Or I give a rule and of course I add the exceptions to that rule.
The discipline that I demand in many of my arts – the discipline of spending hours in front of a mirror perfecting a magic trick by manipulation also comes with it’s antidote or it’s extreme which is the opposite of discipline. Forget about what you’re doing. Don’t work, play. And very often in my arts taking the magic again as an example if I stop working on a move but if I just fool around as you would say with a deck of cards, you know, watching a film or talking to a friend – suddenly out of the playfulness will come a great invention. It could be a very small detail but a way to turn a card or something that I can use in a magic trick and it didn’t come from the discipline of work, it came from its opposite. It came with playing, you know. So I advocate that and I think I am a man who works very hard and also plays very hard, enjoys life.
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - I think of myself as a man of contradictions. I mean first I am very brutal in my way of thinking. I love or I hate, it’s black or it’s white which is not very true because then a part of me loves the gray festivals. But anyway I realize that I am a man of contradiction and extreme and very often I state something and within the same sentence I contradict myself. Or I give a rule and of course I add the exceptions to that rule.
The discipline that I demand in many of my arts – the discipline of spending hours in front of a mirror perfecting a magic trick by manipulation also comes with it’s antidote or it’s extreme which is the opposite of discipline. Forget about what you’re doing. Don’t work, play. And very often in my arts taking the magic again as an example if I stop working on a move but if I just fool around as you would say with a deck of cards, you know, watching a film or talking to a friend – suddenly out of the playfulness will come a great invention. It could be a very small detail but a way to turn a card or something that I can use in a magic trick and it didn’t come from the discipline of work, it came from its opposite. It came with playing, you know. So I advocate that and I think I am a man who works very hard and also plays very hard, enjoys life.
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd