Unlike a high-wire walker, I don't think any musician strikes the wires of a piano or draws a bow across a violin's strings primarily for the kick of an adrenalin fix. There is danger on stage, but dropped notes are not broken bones; a memory lapse is not a tumble to the ground.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Designing is a lot like a high-wire act - if the tightrope walker is only six inches off the ground, where's the excitement?
As a high wire walker, I do not allow myself to 'leave the wire' during a performance.
It would be very, very dangerous for a wire walker to experience fear while he is balancing on the wire. Fear has its place on earth, before and maybe after a high-wire walk, but not during for me.
You'd think a guy who has broken 35 bones in his body would have a high pain threshold, but mine is pretty low. I got hit in the shin with a golf ball once, and it almost brought tears to my eyes. I've had broken bones that didn't hurt as bad.
You'd think a guy who has broken 35 bones in his body would have a high pain threshold, but mine is pretty low. I got hit in the shin with a golf ball once and it almost brought tears to my eyes. I've had broken bones that didn't hurt as bad.
I met my manager when I was 17, when I didn't have enough money to buy a set of guitar strings. There are not very many people who are looking out for you and being in business with you when you're at that stage. And it's not in my nature to think that success as a musician makes you any different from anybody else.
I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.
Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.
I'd always loved strings. When I was in high school and saw strings playing on stage, an orchestra or a symphony, all those bows moving at the same time... wow.
I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.
I went through eight years of classical piano lessons without being able to read notes. I only have to hear a melody to be able to play it. It used to freak my piano teacher out when he finally noticed that notes don't make any sense to me and that I played by ear.
Let me begin by saying that we have to understand who ISIS is. ISIS is a radical Sunni group. They cannot just be defeated through air strikes. Air strikes are a key component of defeating them, but they must be defeated on the ground by a ground force. And that ground force must be primarily made up of Sunni Arabs themselves, Sunni Arabs that reject them ideologically and confront them militarily.
The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.
I am a wire-walker. I can walk any time, anywhere - I'm indestructible.
I have no fear of death, so I don't think about it. I love the adrenalin kick that danger brings. Others get their kicks bungee jumping from tall buildings. I'm very, very competitive. I want to be the best at everything I do. It's not driving - it's everything - it might be playing my guitar, I try to be the best at it as I possibly can.