Dreams suck.

[Chris]

Dreams aren’t meant to be achieved. I think they’re just supposed to exist. The intangibility of a dream means you can always wake up the next morning with a purpose–something to keep your heart pumping and your brain pulsing. Dreams are fantastic. They can last a lifetime if you want them to. But the moment you achieve a dream, it vanishes. What then remains is nothing. Nothing to keep you going tomorrow. Just dregs of an ambition long-passed.

Someone once said that if you make your passion your job, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. But if passion becomes your work, what are you outside of your work? What is an artist outside of the work he or she produces? The artist shares themselves with the world, but what do they become after they’ve shared everything they have?

I liked Petit’s story. Throughout the documentary, I could feel his mad obsession with performance. Even decades after his performance, he tells the story of his walk as though he just completed it. However, I can’t say that I admire the path that he chose. His work consumed him. So much so that there was nothing left of him after the performance.

He spends over a year in preparation for this singular moment. Five individuals, driven by a singular purpose, practice, and conspire to deliver an unmatchable performance that would shake the world. In their videos, we see them having a blast as they simulate and plan their “heist”. But at the end of the performance, they each go their own separate ways. Albert returns to his desk job. His lover breaks up with him. Petit resigns himself to fame and lust, lying to his friends and ex-lover. He tells them he was busy with interviews in order to hook up with a random fan.

My problem with intense artistry is that it consumes your soul. Your passion becomes your work. However, at the same time, your life becomes nothing but work. Once your work is done, there is nothing connecting you with the people around you, since your work was the only thing that ever brought you together in the first place. Great works of art can connect people across the world, but simultaneously distances the artist from the people who care about him the most. I think it’s tragic that Petit’s fate fell into the likes of other great artists like Picasso, Beethoven, and Shakespeare. By giving so much of their life to their work, they left so little of their life for anything else.

[Author]

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