You’ll no doubt be back on stage, touring again.
I can’t answer that… Because for four years I’ve been saying to myself that I’m not going back, that I’m ready, that I’m not ready… As things stand, I can’t stand here and say to you: “Yes, in four months.” I don’t know… My body will tell me. On the other hand, I don’t just want to wait. It’s morally hard to live from day to day. It’s hard, I’m working very hard and tomorrow will be even harder. Tomorrow is another day. But there’s one thing that will never stop, and that’s the will. It’s the passion. It’s the dream. It’s the determination.
When did you first become aware of your voice, and when did you first realise that you would be a singer?
I started performing when I was 5. Did I want to be a singer? I never had time to ask myself that question. Did people come to see me to hear me tell jokes or to hear me sing? I am a singer. I sing in English, in French, I’ve sung in Mandarin, I’ve sung in Japanese, in Spanish and in Italian and people have come, they’ve always come. That, for me, was the proof that I was, and that I am, truly a singer. One thing’s for sure, I’ll love that feeling until the day I die.
You started out when you were 5 years old, and left school at 15. Do you regret not having had a “normal” childhood?
No, because I don’t know what normality is. What is normal? You go to school, you leave school, you’re on stage, it’s something else, it’s sharing with the world, it’s emotion, it’s thrilling, it’s a way of expressing yourself. It was a different kind of school. Did I have any friends? Did I miss out on anything? I never had the time to have all that. So I can’t compare. Do I have any regrets? I don’t know, I don’t know and I don’t care because the stage, my family, my children and my songs have taught me everything I know. There’s life, school, the arts, emotion, passion, secrets, desires, gifts. People question life all the time. Stop questioning life, we should be living it. It’s not always beautiful, but it’s here.
How do you see the teenager you were back then?
I’m delighted that it happened. Aren’t we all? And I didn’t live through it very much because I was very busy. I was already on the ground. I had songs to learn, I couldn’t talk about myself. I was deafened: what questions are they going to ask me? And if I don’t understand, what am I going to say? So I was nervous, I was scared, scared of the unknown. I didn’t have much time to experience life as a teenager. There was no school, I had no friends. I had the stage and my family, I had the best. I didn’t want anything else.