the art of endurance

In 2006, David Blaine attempted to beat a world record for holding his breath after living in a huge fish bowl for 7 days and nights in the Lincoln Center plaza. He called his act Drowned Alive… My sister and I were up for the spectacle and joined the huge crowd counting down the world record effort. Except, after a matter of seconds, Blaine blacked out and was saved by his team. The stunt was over but he was alive. The crowd was shocked, confused and slowly disbanded.

Twenty years later, my sister now lives in Denver, CO. We went to Outside Festival both because of the great line-up and because I’m their festival counsel. When we were on-site, we realized David Blaine was speaking about The Art of Endurance. Obviously, we had to attend.

As Blaine described, the training for extreme physical feats is so methodical, so thorough. And extremely mental. The piece about the 2006 “failure” that sticks with me is that maybe going for it and falling short was actually the most important training Blaine could do to accomplish the next thing, and the thing after that. Maybe the key to endurance isn’t perfection but the opposite.

[Photo of me from the Drowned Alive crowd]