The artist Marc Séguin offers his take on current events and the world.
Posted at 7:00 p.m.
Nanette Workman is a family friend. I meet her here and there, a few times a year. Last week, she came to the workshop in Montreal. We chatted about everything and nothing, an almost normal conversation, about the state of the world. Then questions arose and we saw each other again at her house two days later.
« Come for brunch.
— OK. »
For the bio, there is the online showcase and books that tell a lot about his official life. An American who moved to Quebec for love, she has lived in a village not far from mine since 1977. She sang with the Rolling Stones, Johnny Hallyday, John Lennon, George Harrison, Elton John… in addition to having a career as an exceptional singer-songwriter. At almost 79 years old, she radiates great beauty that she wears simply. Coquettish (she secretly reapplied lipstick several times), she embodies above all a deep lucidity about her life as an artist, and as a woman. That’s mainly what I wanted to talk about. And this wisdom, after years of dizziness.
She takes care of her farm full time. She plays poker on Wednesdays. Two days a week, she cards alpaca wool.
In my early twenties, to earn money, I painted church steeples and roofs (and barns). Especially in the area of the Châteauguay River valley. One day we passed a country house and the entrepreneur I worked for said, “That’s where the singer Nanette Workman lives.” » One morning, 30 years later, here I am. She makes me a coffee and some eggs that she just got from the henhouse.
« Is it too early for wine? (Is it too early to drink wine?)
— Nanette, can I ask you an indiscreet question?
— Yes, honey, anything you want. »
She lived, we can guess.
His life story is a drama of love and action. Today, happiness. And we can guess why in the end it was blues that she made, with this surplus of soul…
I asked her why she didn’t sing anymore. Few singers, all categories combined, will have had as much breath and sensitive charm.
Since the pandemic, she has disembarked from this world that she had made more beautiful with her talent and this voice recognizable among thousands. Nanette is no bullshit. She does not mince words to harshly criticize an industry that has exploited female singers for several decades, without anything changing, on the contrary. A world that financially exploits talent and sexualizes this art. We are careful not to report all the comments here. She speaks and we understand a love-hate relationship of which she accepts the consequences and with which she has since made peace. But she distanced herself. And she says no to all requests to appear on TV shows and other events. It’s over.
“Do you miss it?”
— Hell no… »
She pauses, then adds:
“But the camaraderie between musicians does. »
These are questions that haunt me. Can we stop being an artist? Where is art when, like her, we become a symbol? Is it possible when you had such a “fix” of love from the public?
” Yes. I wanted to be loved and I sang to be loved, she tells me. And now, I’ve been in love with a man for five years. There’s nothing about business that I miss. Nothing. »
The page is turned. She lives many good years with her lover after being single for 15 years. A man who appeared out of nowhere, with whom time is simpler and happier.
I’ve seen photos of her from back in the day, you know, the nice ones. She was more beautiful than a full moon. But it is elsewhere that its beauty transcends and exceeds that of before and appearances; today that of a free woman, freed from flowers, from ideologies too, and who says what she thinks. She received a lot from this thing we call love and it was a driving force for creation for several decades. In a world as crooked as ours, she wanted to improve it. She didn’t leave him, on the contrary, she chose to be in love. She has received so much that it is her turn to give. Hey girlthank you for the reminder, you are even more beautiful than when you were for others.
We finally opened the wine with the eggs.
“Do you still sing, write, compose?
— Yes, but just for me. There’s just no one on the other side and it’s more than OK. »
Here I am reassured. He’s lucky, his piano.
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