Are Discipline and Play Compatible? With High-Wire Artist Philippe Petit Video Lecture | Confessions of an Outlaw: A Creativity Workshop - Self Help Learning

I think of myself as a man of contradictions.
I mean first I am very brutal in my way of
thinking.
I love or I hate, it’s black or it’s white
which is not very true because then a part
of me loves the gray festivals.
But anyway I realize that I am a man of contradiction
and extreme and very often I state something
and within the same sentence I contradict
myself.
Or I give a rule and of course I add the exceptions
to that rule.
The discipline that I demand in many of my
arts – the discipline of spending hours
in front of a mirror perfecting a magic trick
by manipulation also comes with it’s antidote
or it’s extreme which is the opposite of
discipline.
Forget about what you’re doing.
Don’t work, play.
And very often in my arts taking the magic
again as an example if I stop working on a
move but if I just fool around as you would
say with a deck of cards, you know, watching
a film or talking to a friend – suddenly
out of the playfulness will come a great invention.
It could be a very small detail but a way
to turn a card or something that I can use
in a magic trick and it didn’t come from
the discipline of work, it came from its opposite.
It came with playing, you know.
So I advocate that and I think I am a man
who works very hard and also plays very hard,
enjoys life.