Tightrope Expert Extols The Knots That Held Him

Yana Paskova for The New York Times Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist, speaks at a book party at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Tuesday night. Mr. Petit has been an artist-in-residence at the cathedral ever since he walked on a high wire at the cathedral in 1980.

This time, Philippe Petit was only a couple of feet off the ground.

Mr. Petit is the high-wire artist who danced and pranced on a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 â€" the man in the 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary, “Man on Wire.”

He was in a familiar place, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
But he was several hundred feet below where he hung the wire for his first walk there in 1980 â€" a trip across the 601-foot-long nave that led to his arrest. Mr. Petit said that the dean at the time, the Rev. James Parks Morton, “took me out of the police handcuffs and gave me the title of artist in residence.”

It is a title he has held ever since.

But this time, on Tuesday night, he was on a raised platform, not on a wire.

Of course there was a connection to what he was famous for. The occasion was a party celebrating his just-published book, “Why Knot How to Tie More Than 60 Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving and Secure Knots!”

He said the huge Gothic Revival cathedral was the perfect place for a book party. “It’s like having a birthday party inside the Great Pyramid,” he said.

The book describes, among other things, the kinds of knots that held fast when he was high up without a net â€" the “locked constrictor” he used at the trade center, the “farmer’s loop” he fastened to the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia in 1973, the “jug sling” he cast before he walked between Avery Fisher Hall and what was then the New York State Theater in Lincoln Center in 1987.

“I know 200 knots but always I am learning more,” he told the crowd at the party. He talked about the “double surgeon knot.”

“If you go to the hospital, if the surgeon is worth his weight in hemp” â€" here there was a puckish pause â€"“rope, he will do this kind of knot.”

He taught the crowd how to tie a square knot and how to untie it. Many in the crowd were friends of Mr. Petit’s, including the musician Sting; the actress Debra Winger; the choreographer Elizabeth Streb; Diana Picasso, the great-granddaughter of Pablo Picasso; the restaurateurs Eric Goode and David Waltuck; and the actor David Duchovny, who called Mr. Petit “a captivating guy” and “an intense dude.”

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Mr. Petit walking on a tightrope to the cathedral in 1982.

Mr. Petit also demonstrated a number of other knots after calling James Signorelli, a friend who is a longtime producer for “Saturday Night Live,” to the platform. Mr. Signorelli’s arm served as a bollard as Mr. Petit wound the rope around Mr. Signorelli’s sleeve and the audience watched.

All of that was followed by an impromptu question-and-answer session that was short: One question. It was, “When you are on a wire, do you think about knots”

“I never do the first step if the last step is already done in my head,” he said. “I never go on the wire unless I think all the knots have been checked two, sometimes three times.”

As an artist in residence, Mr. Petit has crossed the nave twice (the other time was in 1986 and he had the permission of the authorities, in a performance for a gala celebrating the cathedral’s centennial). He said in 2009 that his duties had included changing light bulbs in the chandeliers, because he was the only person with the nerve to climb a ladder to reach them.

Perhaps his most famous walk at the cathedral was an invited one, for a ceremony in 1982 signaling that construction was beginning again after a 41-year hiatus. He carried a silver trowel 150 feet above Amsterdam Avenue.

“Why Knot” describes how he practiced in Synod Hall on the cathedral grounds. “The only place to rig was at balcony level, from one column to another,” he wrote, and he devised a pulley system to move the chandeliers out of the way.

Mr. Duchovny, talking before the demonstration, noted that Mr. Petit had written several books â€" “Why Knot” is his 10th â€" and that one was titled “L’Art du Pickpocket.”

It is in French, said Victoria Dearing, a photographer whose images of Petit were displayed in a gallery show alongside Petit’s own drawings of knots in 2010.

Mr. Duchovny said his French was not up to the task.

But back to knots. Sting said he would have to concentrate on “Why Knot”

“I can barely fasten my shoelaces,” he said.