The legend of tightrope walker Philippe Petit offers a bird’s-eye view of his New York

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As a child, I was driven by a rebellious spirit that led me to practice climbing, because climbing is about isolating yourself from society and looking at the world from another perspective. I was a climber from the age of three or four – I climbed rocks and trees, my parents couldn’t stop me – and then I discovered tightrope climbing.

I moved to New York specifically – and in a hurry – to see the Twin Towers before they were finished in the 1970s. One way to sneak into a building, take pictures and spy on it, is to dress up as a construction worker. So I rushed over from Paris and spent eight months juggling on the street to put food on the table while spying on the towers. I was there almost every day in a different costume.

I juggled across the street to put food on the table while spying on the towers.

Like a Franco-Swiss before me – Le Corbusier, who discovered New York and said: “What a beautiful mess” – I landed here during a garbage strike. There was no petrol, there were all kinds of restrictions and crime: I loved it. Here is a little piece of the world: all kinds of people, all kinds of lifestyles. Today, of course, New York has changed: it has become even more unbearable. Still, I love it.

What attracted me to the Twin Towers was not the fact that they were the tallest towers in the world, but the idea of ​​using the negative space between them. At the time, they were frowned upon: they were ugly, not human. But to me they were beautiful because they dared to adorn the clouds. I wasn’t trying to break records (and I never will). It was something intimate. Afterwards, my friends would say to me: “Philippe, when are we going to visit your towers?” Now that they’re gone, I say our towers.

Lincoln Center, Grand Central Station, the Museum of the City of New York, and Central Park are all places I have walked through and remember fondly. When I walked through Grand Central Station, I was told, “You can’t go into the lobby, we’re a train terminal.” My producer at the time asked me to look at the timetable, found six minutes between two trains, and did a performance. I have a photo where you can see people elbow to elbow all over the floor.

In 1980, I took an illegal walk through the Cathedral of St. John the Divine because I had fallen in love with its structure. But instead of calling the police, the dean welcomed me with open arms. He made me artist-in-residence, meaning I had a roof to put over my files and an office. In 44 years I have made something like 20 appearances inside and outside the church, and next month is where I will honor the 50th anniversary of my walk through the Twin Towers with a performance surrounded by wonderful actors, dancers and musicians, including Sting.

I am now 75 years old, a very old man, but I will never retire. Most people walk around and look at their little, silly electronic gadgets. I look up and rediscover the beauty of New York. When you look around, it is astonishing: they are still building. So I keep looking up and I have ideas: I always carry a red cord to put in my field of vision and imagine a cable between two buildings. I have always wanted to surprise New York by putting a cable on the Brooklyn Bridge: today that is inconceivable. And I like the Oculus in Lower Manhattan, not only because it is so close to the site of my beloved Twin Towers, but because my best friend, Santiago Calatrava, built it.

Sometimes when the phone rings, I’m not interested. They say, “Could you walk there?” I look at it and think, “That’s not majestic or inspiring, that’s boring.” I don’t understand the designs of these thin-spired buildings because, although they are solid, they seem fragile, almost childlike. Why make them so thin and so tall?

I started my life as a rebellious child and ended it as a rebellious old man, although I don’t believe in age. On the ground I am clumsy: I break a glass, I twist my ankle. I don’t look at the bus that is about to kill me. But on the tightrope I have created a solid world. It is a fragile, frightening and dangerous world, but not for me. I walk my life on the tightrope. And it is a great joy to do so.