26: How to not fail in your new role as tight-rope walker
Congratulations on being accepted to the International Consortium of Aerialists, Near-death-experiencers and Tightrope-walkers! Here at ICANT, acceptance is everything. We were impressed by your submission, and we’re so excited to see what you’ll do next. We’re sure that it’ll be at least as good as what you did before, or better!
To help you get started on the road to self-actualisation, we’ve provided some tips in this, your Members’ Pack. Of course, you can risk falling from a lethal height in whatever way suits you, but when a group of experts have relentlessly studied failure to bring you a distillation of what not to do, why wouldn’t you study it, print it out, and still be memorising it on the platform at showtime?
Let’s (not!!) dive in!
The essence of tightrope-walking is the tightrope: there is, in front of you, one narrow path to success, and everything else is death. Never forget that; therefore, always be looking at the rope in front of you, and always be asking yourself, in your loudest internal voice: “Am I balancing on this rope right now? I think I am, but am I really?” If you’re worried you might not be, stop walking, stop breathing even, and just stand there and check and recheck yourself. Don't take a step until you're sure everything is going to be fine forever.
In fact, don't even set off from the platform until you're sure you're going to get right to the other end without falling. Take a little time to stare at the ground. Think about what it would be like to fall, and imagine what sharp objects there might be down there. It’s good to be prepared.
And take a long look at the audience. They’ve paid to be there, they’ve spent irreplaceable moments of their life to see you when they could be doing anything else. Consider all the wonderful horse-shows and clown shows and fireworks displays out there, the feats of strength and magic acts and perfect voices — yes, it’s likely that these people have come to see you out of weird curiosity, or even pity. So why not stay up late and try to work it out what they like? Remember: every single person wants something different from you, but there’s probably a way to satisfy them all. And if you can satisfy everyone else, then you’ll be satisfied! Probably!
Stay aware of the competition. Are they better than you, do they know something you don't? The only way to know is to watch lots of videos of the best tightrope walkers online, and find out whether they came from tightrope-walking parents, or have connections in the tent industry. These are probably the reason why you're not a success yet.
(Since you’re online anyway, why not have a quick browse for balancing poles? Try to find the same one the pros use. You can never spend enough time on this.)
What's YOUR angle? What are you really SAYING with your tightrope walking? People have been walking tightropes for hundreds of years. Why does the world need you to do it? Actually, why does the world need ANYONE to do it? Make sure you're always thinking beyond the next tight-rope walk: what's your career plan? What are you going to do when people get bored of you? How's this going to pay for retirement? Isn't the whole circus thing getting pushed out by Netflix? Yes, worrying’s no fun. But, and we cannot stress this enough, worrying will help you feel safe.
Finally, a warning: at some point out on the rope, you might find yourself enjoying yourself. The music might fade away, the tent above might open up to the wide and twinkling night sky, the weight of the balancing pole might join perfectly with your own. You might even forget there's a rope, and feel as though walking has always been like this and could always be like this. It might feel so natural you could dance, you could fly, you could die and it wouldn’t matter.
Tightrope-walker, you forget yourself. Look down.