Wire Walking

The first time I tried wire walking, my mind was fixed solely on a book titled Mirette on the High Wire. It didn't go perfectly. There was a lot of falling, but I kept going with visions of plucky, little heroines in my head. By the end of the day, I had crossed once without help. By the end of the day, I was so intensely focused on wire, I knew I had to keep going.

After months of working on wire, the first thing I will say is that I'm essentially blind to my own progress. The experience is completely different from static aerial work. It's never easy. It never gets easy. Work and focus are required every second of every training session. There aren't rest positions or moments to stop and do a pretty pose. There are moments of "I am slightly less likely to fall off". While I'm feeling constantly off-kilter, people tell me I'm looking more solid than when I started. I'll have to take their word for it, because I certainly don't feel it.

This is circus in very different terms. This is circus as a gambol, not a sure thing. In silks, if you wrap a certain way, you will never fall off. There are hundreds of acts out there that can fail at any time and whether or not you perform them depends on a rate of success, not perfection. There is no perfection. There is only a higher rate of success. Since I've started wire, I've come to respect these acts much more. These are people who are willing to go out in front of an audience and risk failure. It's one of the reasons I wanted to re-review my earlier posts. There are people out there who are willing to criticize a show because the show isn't perfect. But if it's a real circus show, it will never be perfect.

So, I suppose this quote says it best:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
- Ratatouille (2007)