Uncrossable Barrier

Not so long ago, they made a movie about Phillippe Petit, the man who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers, yes those towers.

Robert Zemeckis, the man who brought you “Back to the Future” and “The Polar Express” takes his camera out on to the wire with Petit as he steps from the safety of the building and onto the hastily-rigged wire.

You see the rigid wire, Petit's delicate wire walking shoes and, more than twelve hundred feet in the background, the inevitable and unforgiving consequences of even the smallest error.

It's early in the morning when they newly-arrived daylight has the kind of mauvey quality of a faded tattoo.

There is a steady rush of air through the artificial canyon of the towers and it is making the wire sing, it sounds kind of like a comb wrapped in wax paper being pulled apart by a pair of fishing lines.

Every step takes you further into the wind, away from safety and toward an uncertain future.

Sure, you've been doing this a long time. You are comfortable on the wire, you know what to do.

But still....

I mean you'd have to be crazy not to think about what could go wrong.

Every time the wire makes a random grown or twang, your thoughts go immediately to the possibility of metal fatigue. Could the wire somehow have gotten kinked as it was hauled over to the other tower?

No.

Impossible.

And yet, it groans again and you are reviewing your situation.

I didn't see the movie. The trailer was enough for me.

I have an issue with heights.

I was thinking about Petit today as the news from Dallas unfolded.

He trained for that walk, he knew all the risks and yet he did it anyway. Every step forward decreased his odds of survival and yet on he went.

Speaking in a completely different context, comedian Patton Oswalt had a great line about how “your worst nightmare was somebody else's regular fucking job.”

It is still early going and so speculation about the gunman in the parking structure is premature, but I think it's reasonable to suggest that each of the officers involved in the incident was having their own conflict about being “out on the wire” last night.

But they went anyway.

It is equally unfair to speculate, or generalize, about their thoughts and motivations. Though many in number they were each on their own wire, battling their own wind, listening to the wire sing and watching the far-off inevitability.

It should also be noted that there were other people taking risks last night. Fully aware that their actions were challenging their safety and perhaps even their freedom, the protestors who assembled in downtown Dallas to register their complaints about the deaths of two men of color earlier in the week stepped off their building and son to their wire.

But it was supposed to be a peaceful protest, an expression of concern and a registration of complaint, why would the protestors be fearful?

Again, it is irresponsible to attribute motive to any group or individual, but it is reasonable to infer that in a time steeped in fear and mistrust of the “other”--policeman or civilian, majority or minority, immigrant or native—that calling out your opposite for wrongdoing is make yourself a target.

To call into question the procedures and actions of a single police officer is to question all of them. To suggest that racial bias may have been at the root of the use of deadly force in apparently innocuous situations is to challenge every officer and call every decision into question.  

And that, in and of itself, is not safe.

Like worrying about the wire beneath your feet, you can paralyze yourself and make forward movement impossible.

It is equally true that if you are not constantly adapting your technique to changing conditions, the you are just as likely to fall.

If the police, or any other group, assume that assumptions about circumstances and those who live in them are not subject to change without notice, then they can also have the wire swept out from under them.

Rightly or wrongly, police are trained to prepare for every situation to go sideways at any time. This is necessary for them to control their surroundings and protect themselves. This is why police are likely to handcuff someone, or place them in the back of their patrol cars, until they can properly assess the situation.

If, as a passerby, you came across a situation where a member of the public is being wrestled into a patrol car, what would you think?

A hardened criminal?

An escaped mental patient?

If that person being put in the patrol car is a person of color, would that change your perception of the situation?

Because this conversation has been going on for so long in this country; because we have as part of our folklore that terrible things can happen to those who are “other” under cover of authority, we find ourselves once again at a fork in the road.

Depending on who you choose to listen to we should either retire to our collective group of identification—community, ethnic group, race, religion, gender identity...--or we should seek to better understand one another in an effort to avoid further misunderstanding.

To stay in the safety of self-identification is to never leave the tower, to never challenge, to never overcome. To be forever separated by a seemingly immense and uncrossable barrier.

The real question is this:  if, knowing everything that you know about the wind and the wire and the law of gravity, you are still able to summon your courage and step on to the wire and you discover someone else on the wire is coming toward you, what would you do?

Seems to me there are only two choices:  you try to knock the other person off the wire, or one of you turns around and leads the way back to their tower. 

In this situation, turning back is not failure.  You have still done something incredible by just stepping on to that wire. 

You have mastered your fear.

And, you have cleared the path for a visitor to learn about you world, your tower.

To step on the wire is to risk, to overcome, to transcend.

Among his many talents, Petit is also a magician and it is in that context that I heard him give an interview. He talked about bullfighting.

He trained with the bullfighters in Spain and he said he learned an important lesson.

When the bull charges into the ring, he quickly identifies an area where he feels safe. It might be for any reason: smell, view, exhaustion.

For whatever reason that is his base.

The job of the matador is to first lure the bull from his “base,” and then to block his return. In this way the crowd gets a bull charging at the matador.

The bull is brought down simply for trying to get home.

Isn't there something familiar about that kind of story?

It is perhaps far too late in the game to hope that we could avoid more weeks like this one. And, perhaps, like most things, it ultimately comes down to money and power—who has it and who gets to keep it—but I can't help thinking that far fewer people (and bulls) would die if we stopped trying to control every aspect of our surroundings and just focused on the fundamentals: keep your head down, focus on the wire and keep putting one foot in front of the other..., oh and try to stay out of the way.