there was this wondrousending when people and fire
it was dreaming time
now my story has a lot to do with dreaming although i 'm known to make my dreams come true
for an hour and a half
i shared with the audience a lifetime of creativity how i pursueperfection how i cheat the impossible and then ted challenged me philippe can you shrink this lifetime to eighteen minutes
for me to start is to pay my respects to the gods of creativity so please join me for a minute of silence
okay i cheated it was a mere twenty seconds but hey we 're on ted time
when i was six years old i fell in love with magic
for christmas i got a magic box and a very old book on card manipulation
somehow i was more interested in pure manipulation than in all the silly little tricks in the box so i looked in the book for the most difficult
now i 'm not supposed to share that with you but i have to show you the card is hidden in the back of the hand now that manipulation
one two
two months later six years old i 'm able to do one two three four five six seven and i go to see a famous magician and proudly ask him well what do you think
six years old the magician looked at me and said this is a disaster
two years later
magic juggling is mentioned repeatedly as a great way to acquiredexterity and coordination
now i had long admired how fast and fluidly jugglers make objects fly so that 's it i 'm fourteen i 'm becoming a juggler
i befriend a young juggler in a juggling troupe and he agrees to sell me three clubs
but in america you have to explain what are clubs nothing to do with golf they are those
when i was buying the clubs somehow the young juggler was hiding from the others well i didn 't think much of it at the time
anyway here i was progressing with my new clubs but i could not understand
i was pretty fast
but i was not fluid at all the clubs were escaping me at each throw and i was tryingconstantly to bring them back to me until one day i practiced in front of francis brunn the world 's greatest juggler and he was frowning
and he finally asked can i see those
so i proudly showed him my clubs he said philippe you have been had these are rejects they are completely out of alignment they are impossible to juggle
tenacity
is how i kept at it against all odds
now i have been playing with ropes and climbing all my childhood so that 's it i 'm sixteen i 'm becoming a wire walker
i found two trees
but not any kind of trees trees with character
and the next day one rope off and a few days later i was practicing on a single tightrope
now you can imagine at that time i had to switch the ridiculous boots for some slippers so that is how in case there are people here in the audience who would like to try this is how not to learn wire walking
is a tool essential in my life
in the meantime i am being thrown out of five different schools because instead of listening to the teachers i am my own teacher
progressing in my new art
on the high wire within months i 'm able to master all the tricks they do in the circus except i am not satisfied
i was starting to invent my own moves and bring them to perfection
but nobody wanted to hire me
so i started putting a wire up in secret and performing without permission
the sydney harbor bridge
terrifying
all of a sudden the density of the air is no longer the same
manhattan no longer spreads its infinity
the murmur of the city dissolves into a squall whose chilling power i no longer feel
i lift the balancing pole i approach the edge i step over the beam i put my left foot on the cable
the weight of my body raised on my right leg anchored to the flank of the building
shall i ever so slightly shift my weight to the left my right leg will be unburdened my right foot will freely meet the wire
on one side a mass of a mountain a life i know
on the other the universe of the clouds so full of unknown we think it 's empty
which vibrates which rolls on itself which is ice
which is three tons tight ready to explode
but it is too late
decisively my other foot sets itself onto the cable
in my dictionary
so after the walk people ask me how can you top that well i didn 't have that problem i was not interested in collecting the gigantic in breaking records in fact
such as my street juggling for example
so each time
i draw my circle of chalk on the pavement and enter
as the improvising comic silent character i created forty five years ago i am as happy as when i am in the clouds
thank you thank you
each time i street juggle
now improvisation is empowering because
it welcomes the unknown
and
since what 's impossible is always unknown
it allows me
to believe i can cheat the impossible
now i have done the impossible not once but many times so what should i share oh i know israel some years ago
i was invited to open the israelfestival by a high wire walk and i chose to put my wire between the arab quarters and the jewish quarter of jerusalem over the ben hinnom valley and i thought
it would be incredible if in the middle of the wire i stopped and like a magician i produce a dove and send her in the sky as a living symbol of peace well now i must say it was a little bit hard to find a dove in israel but i got one
now but hold on i 'm not finished so now i 'm like fifty yards from my arrival and i 'm exhausted so my steps are slow and something happened
for a moment the entire crowd had forgotten their differences they had become one
pushing me to triumph
please take this music with you home and start
gluing feathers to your arms and take off and fly and look at the world
from a different perspective
and when you see mountains remember mountains can be moved
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