Philippe Petit: My Towers, Our Towers

Philippe Petit on 9/11, his high-wire love affair with the World Trade Center, and why the twin towers will always be with him.

Philippe Petit rests between walks across a cable stretched between New York’s World Trade Center towers 1,350 feet above the city, Aug. 7, 1974. Just 24 at the time, Petit made eight unauthorized passes along the wire before peacefully surrendering to police. (AP Photo/Alan Welner)

Editor’s Note: This miraculous piece of writing first appeared in The Wall Street Journal 20 years ago today on the second anniversary of 9/11. I was a WSJ editor then and had reached out to Philippe Petit—as an artist who probably knew the World Trade Center’s twin towers more intimately than anyone on earth—to see if he had anything to say. Did he ever. I still consider the short piece that follows to be among the most moving and magical pieces I’ve ever had the honor of working on—and an inspiration for what would later become The First Person. I am eternally grateful to Philippe for allowing me to publish it—not once, but twice—which seems fitting given the dual nature of the towers themselves. —MJ

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