And that look was reassuring…
Yes, at least, when I was near her. And so I always look for a reassuring look, I always look for something that is bigger than me. Who can tell me what my literature teacher told me when I was 13-14 years old: “you can build your life around words”. It was because he told me that that I started doing it. Otherwise, I never would have done it. I think we all need to be motivated by a look and by a form of love.
Afterwards, doubt is specific to the artist. An artist who has no doubts, he goes around in circles…
I can’t help but doubt. And in life, it’s the same. Every time we have tried things, experienced an attempt, whether it worked well or it stopped, I always fall back into doubt.
When you were younger, you were shy, and you expressed that through words. But it’s more complicated when you’re a boy to show your extreme sensitivity, a feminine sensitivity…
Yes, I am very feminine. It’s getting better because the world is becoming more and more feminine, and we’re fighting for it. Women are the most discriminated people in the world. In every country in the world, people harm it, they try to prevent it. And sometimes even with violent weapons. I was raised by four women, my mother, my two grandmothers and my aunt. Thanks to them, I was immersed in a feminine environment, I lived with them, I cooked, I did the dishes, I saw them cleaning, I helped them sew. So, I feel better with girls. And my audience has always been very female and very gay. And I didn’t want to lose that, I tried to keep that with good intentions, without cheating. The boys took a while to come to me. It took the film “The Hearts of Men” for that.
They then found a friend in you…
They believed that the role I played was close to me. In fact, it’s my father that I play, and I realized that while making the film. And it did me good to express that through this character, to give him this sincere side.
Was it like that in life too? Were there more women you got along with than men?
So, it’s weird but no. At work, I was very lucky to work with women who understood who I was. But friendship with a man is very important to me. I only work with friends like on the album here. The work involves so much sensitivity. Without this entourage, I couldn’t really work. I couldn’t have as much fun while working. You have to be in a cabin that you build every day.
And there is this reassuring side too…
We are reassured, but we are also questioned. It’s true that the meaning of friendship is to be honest, to really say things. In friendship, nothing is serious. Friend is really very important to me.
And, in love, is everything serious?
So in love, it’s different. Nothing is serious, I have no resentment. We don’t build anything on resentment. But when you stop laughing with the person you love, it’s over. And it’s terrible to realize that we no longer laugh together, that the hassles are becoming more and more daily. That the sum of the actions is no longer quite up to par or that the motivations are not the right ones. Women often stop laughing and are annoyed by what they liked about me.
We often hate what we love…
That’s it, often. So hey, I always have hope, obviously. (laughs) I’m full of hope right now!
In your ideal, was true love supposed to last a lifetime?
I’ve freed up the next 40 years I have to live until I’m 100…and I think they’ll be pretty good! The previous 40 were good… Let’s say that the first twenty I missed, but not from the day I got married. I have always been married so I am not very qualified in sexuality! (laughs)
And you are faithful, so that’s what you mean…
There you go, I’m quite loyal too, it’s true. My life can be summed up in five women. There are four who have passed, and there is one who will come, finally, who has come (Adriana Karembeu, Editor’s note). I don’t know anything about it but I think the season is good, it’s going to be good!
So you have the answer to your latest song “Could I still say I love you?”…
Yes, which has just been contradicted. But I didn’t expect it…
But it’s beautiful that a man dares to ask the question. In any case, it’s the first time you’ve done it in song…
I hadn’t asked myself that before, but now I was wondering if I could say it again. I have said “I love you” four times in my life. It’s not much. Finally, I said “I love you” several times but only to these four people. So, at my age, I asked myself if life would give me the opportunity to say it again, if I wouldn’t hesitate to say it. Besides, I hesitated during the years that passed since my last separation. And I didn’t say it. And then, life hit me.
Have you ever regretted not having said it?
Oh no, never. You must not lie. Finally, saying “I love you” is a commitment that is beyond you because you don’t really know if the “I love you” you say is the same as the one she hears. How to know? It’s always a bit of an attempt, of course. But you are facing a revolution within yourself. Suddenly, you can’t help but say it. So, when I don’t say it, it’s because I have a conscience that stops me. I’m not here to hurt people.
And then, there is also the expectation of having the right answer in return…
Honestly, I think we have the answer right away. I think sometimes it even arrives before you ask the question.
But for you, as a man, to ask this question, it’s interesting. We always have the impression that this is not man’s quest…
For me, there is only that between life and death. Moreover, the letters from the deportees that I read when I made Tony Gatlif’s film (“Freedom”), they always begin with “My love, I have two words to say to you…”. There is also the idea that we can die for others. I understood this when I had children. I had them very early, the first at 23 and I said to myself: “ah, my mother thought that, my father thought that”. That is to say, they could have given their lives immediately for mine. Besides, my mother was scared because she wanted a girl and she had a boy and she almost lost me straight away to pneumonia. I was in an incubator for quite a while and then she really freaked out. She looked at me differently from the way she looked at others. She said “I love you” when she looked at me, every time. When we were sewing for example, she would say to me “my little rat, give me my thimble”. I felt like I was participating, working with her. Just like when she was vacuuming, she would stop for two seconds and say to me “come on, let’s have a coffee”. I had the impression that I was participating in her life as a woman which was a very difficult life because she worked, she took care of the children, she took care of the house, she worked three days in one and she was sick in more. She had great melancholy. So, I followed my mother a lot. I was under her desk when she typed, I was next to her when she cleaned. Her “I love you,” if I remember her, it’s in her eyes. It is through the eyes that all feelings pass. I still have this search for my mother’s eyes. Well, it’s complicated, it’s more and more difficult to see…
Did you inherit your mother’s melancholy?
I wrote a book about her, which will be released in January, and I tried to find out why I was melancholic. She had lypemania, that is to say it was deeper than melancholy. She went to nursing homes a lot. I thought I had that, so I said it. But maybe because I wanted to talk about her and I didn’t know how. For me, it’s not the same, that is to say I can say it, I can write songs about it, books, I can vent. My mother could only take care of her children and run the house. The ideas she had were inscribed in reality. My father was a guy with ideas that were part of the future, in the future it was “we will change the world”. My mother, the world, she had to change it every day. With the added fact that she was a believer but didn’t talk about it. And besides, I kept the thimble and four Bibles from her with things she had written in them. The thimble, when I put it to my ear, I hear my mother, I see her life passing by.
Your father had this desire to change the world. Do you have the same one? Or did you realize it was going to be difficult?
It seems more and more difficult. But I still believe in it firmly. Everything is collective, intelligence is nothing without the collective. Besides, I think we’re going to change things. I think society could organize itself without having people running it that way. We have very few democracies in the world, many narco-dictatorships, dictatorships, countries where freedom is very in danger. And I think the most fundamental point of all of this is how we treat women. I think that if there were more women in power, there would be fewer wars, there would be fewer money problems. Because women have a considerable lead over men. This is perhaps why men mistreat them. Woman is a mysterious island that man never understands, he has never circumnavigated it. As a result, man has constructed a patriarchal way of dominating, of wanting to put things within boundaries. The more men are in power, the more they want it, the more they want to keep it. So I would like us to try women in power.
We will see on November 5 already…
If we have a female president in the United States, it will truly be a wonderful example. But in France, in any case, I would very much like a woman to take power. That is to say, she doesn’t apologize for having it. Often, when women leave school or university, when they look for a job, they underestimate themselves by 25%. A man will overestimate himself by 25%. We must not be absent from these realities. Women outnumber us and are considered a minority and treated as such. We still have to tell men to stop!
Do you include yourself in the 25% of men who overestimate themselves?
No. Because when you’re an artist, you have to put your title on the line. And so, you’re not the one who values yourself… even if I don’t have a bad opinion of myself. But it’s the people who decide that we continue.
Who is this woman, Leni, who suffered and to whom you dedicate a song, saying “I believe you”?
She suffered and managed to get through it. There is this phrase, “I believe you”, but also “I only have eyes for you” which can be understood as “god”. Because the question of God is very complicated for me. Because my father was an atheist and my mother a believer. I have a doubt in God. The closer I get to death, the more I hope. But the closer I get to life, the more doubt I have.
You still have 40 years to find the answer…
But there, at this moment, I tell myself that there is definitely something because, all the same, to be so surprised and dazzled by someone at my age, either it’s luck – and I have some–, or there is someone watching over me.
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