Post by davidhr on Nov 2, 2021 6:54:48 GMT -5
Tomorrow is the Quebec release of Lara’s new (and first) book “Je passe a table”, and there was some promotion for it this past week. Most prominently, she put a short promo video on her Facebook and Instagram sites, at
www.facebook.com/larafabianofficial/videos/468464847829896
and
with the caption, “I present to you my first book "Je passe à table", published this November 3 in Quebec.
Through the pages, I open the door for you, and invite you to come home... to discover everyone that I want to share with you... I'm telling myself how a friend would do it around a table and a good meal...
Between unreleased anecdotes, cooking recipes that I love, and photos from personal archives, this book is a space I found myself in to reveal a part of me that has never been revealed to you... ✨🙏✨”
One of the pictures included in the book, and in the promo, was taken out and used as a promo by itself, shown at
www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=461024382048527&set=a.259330805551220
and
[Lara liked this picture so much that she made this her new profile picture, www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=461035805380718&set=a.259330822217885]
and its caption read, “I can't wait to share with you my book "Je passe à table" which will be available in Quebec starting November 3rd...
I will tell you, in an unpublished way, a little bit of my history, from my childhood to nowadays... punctuated with anecdotes and some strong moments of my life... which were always lived around a good table and good meals...
Thus, I will share with you, through the pages, photos from my personal archives but also some of my recipes, which, like Proust's madeleines, remind me of all those moments of existence that made me the artist but especially the woman I have become...
I hope that it will give you the desire to sit down and eat with those you love ...”
And then there were various promotions for the general public. One was in (https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2021/11/01/je-passe-a-table--une-biographie-gourmande-pour-lara-fabian):
-------------------------------
Lara Fabian claims to cook every day of her life. She can eat a single tomato sandwich, but she will have sliced the fruit herself by brushing it with oil, salt and basil, in a gesture of love and delicacy.
We had a glimpse of the culinary talents of the director of "Star Académie" when she had simmered a succulent pesto and other sweets to some finalists of the competition, during a special meal at home, at the end of last season. Many were still unaware of how much Lara Fabian liked to handle the pan, a secret that her close guard knew very well.
For the singer with 30 years of career, each good little dish brings back a story. To her mum who was preparing baby pasta in a blue and white enamel pan, to her first endive gratin prepared herself at 16, to the thousand jobs her dad did, to the winters in Sicily, to her ascension, to the eating disorders she overcame ...
The idea of marrying her passions for food and people therefore came naturally to Lara, which is told today in a pretty gourmet autobiography entitled "Je passe à table" .
“Between stories and recipes, I tell the tribulations of a girl who had at least three lives,” Lara launches with a burst of laughter.
“The table is something that has always been present in my life. First by the transmission that my mother bequeathed to me, which came from her mother to her. I am the fifth generation of women to inherit this love of the table. I have nurtured and been through so many beautiful things, and others that are difficult - beauty can be complex sometimes! - so it seemed normal to me. Cooking is my way of life. What interests me most are the stories we create around a table, around the fact that we are together, and not just what we eat. Sometimes it can be absolutely simple, and may be enough to nurture the bond more than the rest."
Souvenirs and photos
The book is full of precious memories and personal photos, which are added to recipes inherited from Lara's family or from her travels across the globe. Savory or sweet creations, pasticcio of lasagna or meatballs in tomato sauce, omelet with ricotta and mint or chocolate mousse and Nutella intersperse the touching or touching anecdotes.
“The relevance of 'Je passe à table' is that the recipe is really interesting because it comes from a moment, which is told in the book. It's so stuck to the stories that I can't separate them”, summarizes the artist.
Lara Fabian liked the playful and light aspect of such a book, halfway between confidence and a gourmet collection. Perhaps an authentic biography will follow one day. "If life allows me, when I will be really much older ...", ventures the woman of 51 years.
Above all, the formula of these gastronomic chronicles allowed Lara to relate slices of life that she might not have been able to approach otherwise, with humor and detachment. A traditional exercise would indeed perhaps not have allowed touching her gluten intolerance ("For an Italian, it was quite a transformation"), or even, the skills of her daughter Lou, gifted for French pastry. and Japanese food (“She's making crazy ramen!”).
“I have no expectations with this book,” concludes Lara. “I did it in this space where I want to share something ... "
“Je passe à table”, the gourmet biography of Lara Fabian, published by Éditions Libre Expression, will be on sale on November 3.
-------------------------------------
In addition, Lara also provided an interview for Ici radio, at
(https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/penelope/segments/entrevue/377175/je-passe-a-table-autobiographie?fbclid=IwAR2f8Gg385sgvPnB1KgiZ2SBxga9Q4dmhEEI41HhA2oPwT-ht76qgeS931w). This was a complex interview, with the interviewer trying to get at the question of why Lara has actually done this, so we’ll spend some time on it. Here are the main points of the interview called ‘Lara Fabian’s Path” (Lara’s comments are edited a bit for conciseness):
**The interviewer noted there were a lot of pictures of Lara’s mom Louisa (who is no longer here), but also some pictures with her daughter Lou (who is in the midst of adolescence). She noted that it must still be quite a journey, especially pleasant but sometimes also upsetting to dive back into all these photos and all these memories.
**Lara responded, “It ends up replanting little flags on the course. If you want when you make a journey like that in your head after having lived it, all of a sudden, it's like you can find it again…It is a book that tells the things of my life, putting them on the table. I wanted to tell the fruit of this pain, the resilience through which we are here, but we have to go through it, we are invited to go through it if we want to go through it… I'm telling myself, yes, I'm going to go back, but as if I’m looking at a copy of it, fortunately - that I had so much pain at that moment, or that it was also a good thing that I was able to go through it. it was so magnificent at that moment because I wouldn't have been able to measure the importance of each step along the way. It kind of let me collect the beauty and the ugliness and see what I finally got out of it.”
**The interviewer wondered why now, and why do it this way, rather than a traditional autobiography?
**Lara replied that “I’m 51 years old, so I was thinking that at 51 years old, you can really tell your story completely, with all the distance you need”. Lara wasn’t sure she really wanted to talk about all of it, but at the table it’s a bit safer. Being around a table has always allowed her to have confidence, her Mother gathered them around the table to speak of things. Whereas a standard autobiography, in effect saying things through a straight narrative, can be too impactful, doesn’t provide the hindsight that is needed.
And also, cooking has always been important to her, in the sense of transmission, it has been passed on to her, and she passes it on in turn - but she “didn’t want to wake up one morning and say to myself I am a chef. I am a girl who cooks and an artist who has often lived around the table…” So it was really a way to tell about herself but with a little hindsight, with a lot of humor and then doing things that cultivate joy, happiness.
**The interviewer, still focusing on the question of why Lara wanted to do this, asked if at the end of this (book) journey did she want to free herself of all the things that she still kept inside herself, things that she didn’t want to be inside her?
**Lara said "well there are things that one can transmit completely so you don’t have the same pain". But there are pains that she doesn’t have an answer for.
**Continuing the line of question of why do this, the interviewer said “There are indeed confidences in this book and emotions that I believe are very reasonable for the people who will read them I think of your mother. When we make memories when we put them on paper we immortalize them.” The interviewer was suggesting that by going over the past painful episodes with her mother, Lara was making the pain live longer. She then compared that with Lara’s mother losing all her memories, due to her disease dementia with Lewy body, she lost all of her memories [and pains] during her life.
**Lara’s response was that, in essence, even if one loses one’s pains along with the memory, Lara herself didn’t want to lose her memory, for that allows her to transmit to others. Lara’s mother even forgot Lara’s name. In fact, Lara felt that “sometimes we have too much tendency in this society to censor ourselves on what hurts us because we do not want to impose our pain onto the others. We tell ourselves that it's useless because it’s not like it’s really shared. I understood by watching my mother that it's vital to say what's on our mind, it's vital to say that something hurts me, we forget to share it also with the ones we love or those we have available. We do that because we do not want to darken their heart. But sometimes we forget that it is very relevant to open our heart. You have to work through it if you want to end up knowing yourself. I think my mom was deeply alone in what hurt her and I would have liked to be more helpful to manage it together but in those silences she made the choice not to talk about it because she made the choice to not weigh on my heart. That's one thing in this book I'm trying to say: tell yourself, even if it takes the humor of the modesty and delicacy to do it, but show yourself to those who love you, exit the mask of this dress of this disguise that you carry and be yourself. It is what I say in fact and it is very beautiful.”
**The interviewer agreed that it was very beautiful, and that it took Lara 51 years and perhaps the experience of interacting with the youngsters of the Star Academie to value this transmission. She raised the question of what would Lara have liked to know to do when she was younger.
**Now Lara took up the opposite stance – after talking about how important it was to expose one’s true feelings and pains to those whom one loves, she warned of the dangers of too much exposure to journalists. “It is necessary to put a filter on a microphone or whatever vehicle one’s using. It is extremely dangerous and cruel, indeed the price of a confidence that mistakes the journalist for a friend can cost you your growth… caution is required when you are young, a young girl like me who was extroverted and hands over one’s needs to others, so that one confides in them. I would have really benefited from someone who helped me understand the value of the silence in some places.”
**The interviewer then switched topics to the question of freedom of expression, and the question of singing songs that go against the prevailing ethic of a society, whether it be of race or anything else.
**This aligned with one of Lara’s pet peeves. “Listen I believe that we have entered a point where humanity is crossing a stage that in my opinion is measured by a change of civilization and through this interface there is an impediment to speak that rages whatever the subject, whether we speak of our cultural identities, of religions, or, well, any of the spectrum of what the society makes us glimpse. I would like to find the words to speak about this freedom, that it is fundamental to find it again while preserving the respect of the subject. It is not easy to speak about something if you want to leave a layer that resonates to different states of the society and yet at the same time one must. I try to approach it with a lot of simplicity, to laugh at the pain, while the song must popularize a subject and make it complex. It must allow all to contract it and then to sing it with eyes closed. But in this new paradigm in which we live, I find that our spirits in this moment now only live in two dimensions. I believe after watching for 30 years that we are more, we are greater than what we now are.”
**The interviewer recently learned (from a previous interview) that Lara had received death threats, and had to pay fines for having sung certain songs in certain countries for certain ideas, such as homosexuality marriage for all.
**Lara said, “Absolutely that it is in the countries of the Middle East as in some other countries, it is not easy to sing the fact that the identity of a being goes well beyond what you can specify by putting it in a group. How many veiled women did not have the right to attend a show, I sang against all that in front of some 80 veiled women on the international day of the woman. Yes, it's true that I often have done that. You don't know because I don't put a camera on me while I'm doing this kind of thing. I've done it. I did it and that's it. So that's a little bit of the price but it's not always the case that I tell everyone.”
**The interviewer said that in the documentary on Lara that “It is on Illico we come to understand that it is the team of Celine Dion which plays very hard so that you do not come to play in the beds of the Americans. We presume that’s an image that will imprison us, that situations like that make it necessary to measure to navigate, where you can go and where you disturb the talent so that the producers and environment don’t want you.”
**Lara replied: “I believe we all have a course, a course that precedes us even before, like the actions that are that of a child, you see who made a dream of child. So today I am really someone who looks at her course with a lot a lot of gratitude especially in the sense of the human being that I became. I am not at all in regret or caught in the crap of the world, in my heart in relation to anything, it was my destiny. That was my path, my path. Here at 51 years, surrounded by nature, I am the mother of Lou, the wife of Gabriel, and have nevertheless 30 years of career and have a believing public in the international sense. I have that in spite of what you saw there that one could be excited about, therefore I see what is that I am. And not the opposite, you see, I say to myself that I am not very defined by the things that have been represented by a y to an X, I am defined because of what I have made. You see I believe that the true resilience it is not just to make something out of a difficulty, or of a pain an opportunity, it is also the pain does not have to accompany us, we can let go of the pain which existed at that moment in my head as a young artist of 29 or 30 years.
**The interviewer noted that Lara’s dream of being a dancer had been crushed [by a mean teacher] and it was thanks to that that she was where she is now.
**Lara agreed, saying it was the non-realization of a childhood dream; and then she said she jokes that she chose to become a singer to prove her dad wrong.
**When the interviewer asked her to expand upon that, Lara said, “I think the teenager in me, I think I need to define myself in showing him that he could trust me, I understand that I could go to a place where he maybe in his life did not. He too would have wanted to make that profession, so I believe that there was a kind of joust between how a young teenager sees herself and the adult. It is rather relevant because he did not believe (I could do it) since he himself had not been able to pass through certain tests. But one always says that one makes children who are better than us. I believe it sincerely, that I believe that the children that one makes, because of all our projects, they are better than us so I see that with my daughter and I say to myself is that a fair go. It is success that was the demonstration that he could have confidence in me but not finally all that was enough for me and that avoided me another big pain now that I have a daughter.”
**The interviewer ended by saying that it was a beautiful book, and did achieve a transmission from mother to daughter, from Lara’s mother, going all the way to Lara’s daughter.
**Lara said her mother probably transmitted to her by default, and, “At some point, we have the duty to choose ourselves. So it would be that in retrospect. One wants to remember that love is not a feeling but a vibration and we have to let it pass through us so that it is constructive and foundational. That would be the two things that my mother taught me, to choose myself, by letting me cross by the love.”
----------------------------------------
With respect to Lara’s noting how hard it is to speak about certain topics nowadays, see also Lara’s comments below in association with the ‘Showbizz.net’ pictures.
As part of the overall promo, as noted last week Lara had appeared on the show “Dans l'univers de...”. A highlight was her singing “Je t’aime” and the complete performance of hers is now available at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAHFskK15rA
(plus a little bit of the song “Aime-moi encore”).
Lara’s performance here showed great vocal power and clarity – if Lara had been told 25 years ago that she would still be able to sing this song that way at age 51, she probably would have been overjoyed. Roxane Bruneau, whom Lara was singing for, is a Quebecoise singer and humorist – and her responses are similar to those on many of the ‘reaction videos’ of singers listening to Lara’s performances of years ago.
In other news, Lara discussed her participation in next year’s Star Academie, at (https://showbizz.net/tele/lara-fabian-souvre-sur-son-implication-et-ses-attentes-pour-la-prochaine-saison-de-star-academie). Here’s the translation:
-------------------------------------
Lara Fabian opens up about her involvement and expectations for the next season of Star Academy
"It's going to be a different story this year with the public ..."
We recently had the chance to speak with Lara Fabian as part of the Je passe à table book launch .
We obviously took the opportunity to discuss with the main interested party the next season of Star Académie , which will resume service on January 16, as well as her world tour, which must begin after four concerts presented in Montreal and in Quebec.
“My involvement was very big last year. I was sleeping at the academy, so in terms of investment, for me it will be the same. It's going to be just as important”, she said straight away.
The director of the academy obviously welcomes the return of a larger audience in the studio, especially for the participants, who will be able to directly reap the fruits of their efforts.
“It's going to be a different story this year with the audience. I am preparing to receive another family of young people who, individually, will present another way of functioning. Because I will not envisage a relationship with the young people who arrive as I could envisage it with Shayan, Maëva, Charles, William or Lunou. I'm really going to look at them as a group of special, special and unique individuals”, she continues.
Moreover, among the most significant lessons that Lara Fabian learned from the first season, there is the importance of knowing how to communicate frankly with the academicians, but also to allow time for a criticism to make its way in their minds. when necessary.
“Beyond all that is precious that can be transmitted, the lantern is a light that only illuminates the wearer. I learned that what one can transmit stops where the other wants to take it. It does not mean that we have to do without what we want to transmit, not at all, because there is never anything in vain, but it does not always seem to have been understood at the time. when we said it. It's still catching on. The goal is to pass on a part of what is precious to us so that it makes sense for the other”, she explains.
“How to communicate beyond a certain point of view or certain beliefs, which are often obstacles because of fear? In fact, to be able to formulate an observation without depriving it of any judgment is the start of communication, and it is transmitted through music. This is the place where you can't censor yourself as an artist."
After Star Académie , Lara Fabien will be back on tour, more than two years after seeing The 50 World Tour be interrupted due to a certain COVID-19 pandemic.
“It's always difficult to close a book whose front page has been torn from you. I'm going to have a hard time completely closing the book and moving straight to something else. There will be remnants, there will be remnants of what The 50 World Tour was. I'm still in contemplation, observing how I'm going to present this”, she confides.
Lara Fabian also intends to reconnect with a facet of her art that she had neglected for a long time, she who had offered modernized versions of several songs from her repertoire during the last shows she had offered in La Belle Province.
“I have more of a symphonic desire for the future. I went into something more original in the way of deploying the lyricism of my melodies and my voice. I want to go back there. It's been a long time since I did that”, she concludes.
---------------------------------
Once again there is the strong implication that Lara’s upcoming concert tour may have more symphonic components, although as stated here, it would seem to be songs from her past repertoire, rather than anything new.
Interesting photo(s) of the week: first, pictures of Lara from Showbiz.net, from an article (no longer available) as part of the book promo:
showbizz.net/tele/lara-fabian-souvre-sur-son-implication-et-ses-attentes-pour-la-prochaine-saison-de-star-academie
Note that the Lara Fabian Greece site also included these photos, along with two quotes from Lara. The first reads: "I have always been very natural with the table. It has always been a natural in education, in the pleasure of living, in the way of transmitting. The table has always punctuated very important moments in my life, and I have often been asked to write a biography. Yes, I could tell many things, but what is the common thread, the thing that has always involved me the most in my life outside of my art? It's always been cooking: preparing a beautiful table, designing a meal, thinking about the person I'm hosting, creating a moment around the table" - Lara Fabian
Very uncontroversial. But the second quote reads: “What pains me most is that we can no longer express ourselves. What is the human being looking for most? To belong to a clan, to make sense, and to be understood. And the only thing that can evoke these three elements is to make a choice that makes us happy in its expression, it is to summon a vocation that aims to contribute to the other to be part of a clan. However, we are going through a time when, when we summon this vocation, if we have the misfortune within this prism to express an idea that is not conformist, we find ourselves being expelled by our vocation. Hence the pain of humanity. We must have the courage to go beyond our judgments, our beliefs." - Lara Fabian
This parallels what Lara said in her Ici Radio interview, and while it is not in itself really controversial, and was met with positive responses on their website, one wonders if it was included in the article, was it the reason the article is no longer available…
Then, an oil portrait of Lara by Natalia Mensh from Les Papillons Blancs FB page,
www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10165892229835360
In the latest installment by Lara the Ring Fabian, a collection of Lara’s best advice plus funniest and emotional moments from last year’s Star Academie shows with English subtitles is available at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwdQuQbUftM
This showcases the true brilliance of Lara as a singing teacher, who knows exactly what she’s doing – and also how to get it across with empathy. Thanks again for all the work that went into this...
With the release of Lara’s book tomorrow we’ll see what the reaction is on a broader front. Hard to imagine it will be anything but superb. Have a good week everybody, and stay safe.
David
www.facebook.com/larafabianofficial/videos/468464847829896
and
http://instagram.com/p/CVtA4lhPHiTd
with the caption, “I present to you my first book "Je passe à table", published this November 3 in Quebec.
Through the pages, I open the door for you, and invite you to come home... to discover everyone that I want to share with you... I'm telling myself how a friend would do it around a table and a good meal...
Between unreleased anecdotes, cooking recipes that I love, and photos from personal archives, this book is a space I found myself in to reveal a part of me that has never been revealed to you... ✨🙏✨”
One of the pictures included in the book, and in the promo, was taken out and used as a promo by itself, shown at
www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=461024382048527&set=a.259330805551220
and
http://instagram.com/p/CVlHoDUMA1e
[Lara liked this picture so much that she made this her new profile picture, www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=461035805380718&set=a.259330822217885]
and its caption read, “I can't wait to share with you my book "Je passe à table" which will be available in Quebec starting November 3rd...
I will tell you, in an unpublished way, a little bit of my history, from my childhood to nowadays... punctuated with anecdotes and some strong moments of my life... which were always lived around a good table and good meals...
Thus, I will share with you, through the pages, photos from my personal archives but also some of my recipes, which, like Proust's madeleines, remind me of all those moments of existence that made me the artist but especially the woman I have become...
I hope that it will give you the desire to sit down and eat with those you love ...”
And then there were various promotions for the general public. One was in (https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2021/11/01/je-passe-a-table--une-biographie-gourmande-pour-lara-fabian):
-------------------------------
Lara Fabian claims to cook every day of her life. She can eat a single tomato sandwich, but she will have sliced the fruit herself by brushing it with oil, salt and basil, in a gesture of love and delicacy.
We had a glimpse of the culinary talents of the director of "Star Académie" when she had simmered a succulent pesto and other sweets to some finalists of the competition, during a special meal at home, at the end of last season. Many were still unaware of how much Lara Fabian liked to handle the pan, a secret that her close guard knew very well.
For the singer with 30 years of career, each good little dish brings back a story. To her mum who was preparing baby pasta in a blue and white enamel pan, to her first endive gratin prepared herself at 16, to the thousand jobs her dad did, to the winters in Sicily, to her ascension, to the eating disorders she overcame ...
The idea of marrying her passions for food and people therefore came naturally to Lara, which is told today in a pretty gourmet autobiography entitled "Je passe à table" .
“Between stories and recipes, I tell the tribulations of a girl who had at least three lives,” Lara launches with a burst of laughter.
“The table is something that has always been present in my life. First by the transmission that my mother bequeathed to me, which came from her mother to her. I am the fifth generation of women to inherit this love of the table. I have nurtured and been through so many beautiful things, and others that are difficult - beauty can be complex sometimes! - so it seemed normal to me. Cooking is my way of life. What interests me most are the stories we create around a table, around the fact that we are together, and not just what we eat. Sometimes it can be absolutely simple, and may be enough to nurture the bond more than the rest."
Souvenirs and photos
The book is full of precious memories and personal photos, which are added to recipes inherited from Lara's family or from her travels across the globe. Savory or sweet creations, pasticcio of lasagna or meatballs in tomato sauce, omelet with ricotta and mint or chocolate mousse and Nutella intersperse the touching or touching anecdotes.
“The relevance of 'Je passe à table' is that the recipe is really interesting because it comes from a moment, which is told in the book. It's so stuck to the stories that I can't separate them”, summarizes the artist.
Lara Fabian liked the playful and light aspect of such a book, halfway between confidence and a gourmet collection. Perhaps an authentic biography will follow one day. "If life allows me, when I will be really much older ...", ventures the woman of 51 years.
Above all, the formula of these gastronomic chronicles allowed Lara to relate slices of life that she might not have been able to approach otherwise, with humor and detachment. A traditional exercise would indeed perhaps not have allowed touching her gluten intolerance ("For an Italian, it was quite a transformation"), or even, the skills of her daughter Lou, gifted for French pastry. and Japanese food (“She's making crazy ramen!”).
“I have no expectations with this book,” concludes Lara. “I did it in this space where I want to share something ... "
“Je passe à table”, the gourmet biography of Lara Fabian, published by Éditions Libre Expression, will be on sale on November 3.
-------------------------------------
In addition, Lara also provided an interview for Ici radio, at
(https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/premiere/emissions/penelope/segments/entrevue/377175/je-passe-a-table-autobiographie?fbclid=IwAR2f8Gg385sgvPnB1KgiZ2SBxga9Q4dmhEEI41HhA2oPwT-ht76qgeS931w). This was a complex interview, with the interviewer trying to get at the question of why Lara has actually done this, so we’ll spend some time on it. Here are the main points of the interview called ‘Lara Fabian’s Path” (Lara’s comments are edited a bit for conciseness):
**The interviewer noted there were a lot of pictures of Lara’s mom Louisa (who is no longer here), but also some pictures with her daughter Lou (who is in the midst of adolescence). She noted that it must still be quite a journey, especially pleasant but sometimes also upsetting to dive back into all these photos and all these memories.
**Lara responded, “It ends up replanting little flags on the course. If you want when you make a journey like that in your head after having lived it, all of a sudden, it's like you can find it again…It is a book that tells the things of my life, putting them on the table. I wanted to tell the fruit of this pain, the resilience through which we are here, but we have to go through it, we are invited to go through it if we want to go through it… I'm telling myself, yes, I'm going to go back, but as if I’m looking at a copy of it, fortunately - that I had so much pain at that moment, or that it was also a good thing that I was able to go through it. it was so magnificent at that moment because I wouldn't have been able to measure the importance of each step along the way. It kind of let me collect the beauty and the ugliness and see what I finally got out of it.”
**The interviewer wondered why now, and why do it this way, rather than a traditional autobiography?
**Lara replied that “I’m 51 years old, so I was thinking that at 51 years old, you can really tell your story completely, with all the distance you need”. Lara wasn’t sure she really wanted to talk about all of it, but at the table it’s a bit safer. Being around a table has always allowed her to have confidence, her Mother gathered them around the table to speak of things. Whereas a standard autobiography, in effect saying things through a straight narrative, can be too impactful, doesn’t provide the hindsight that is needed.
And also, cooking has always been important to her, in the sense of transmission, it has been passed on to her, and she passes it on in turn - but she “didn’t want to wake up one morning and say to myself I am a chef. I am a girl who cooks and an artist who has often lived around the table…” So it was really a way to tell about herself but with a little hindsight, with a lot of humor and then doing things that cultivate joy, happiness.
**The interviewer, still focusing on the question of why Lara wanted to do this, asked if at the end of this (book) journey did she want to free herself of all the things that she still kept inside herself, things that she didn’t want to be inside her?
**Lara said "well there are things that one can transmit completely so you don’t have the same pain". But there are pains that she doesn’t have an answer for.
**Continuing the line of question of why do this, the interviewer said “There are indeed confidences in this book and emotions that I believe are very reasonable for the people who will read them I think of your mother. When we make memories when we put them on paper we immortalize them.” The interviewer was suggesting that by going over the past painful episodes with her mother, Lara was making the pain live longer. She then compared that with Lara’s mother losing all her memories, due to her disease dementia with Lewy body, she lost all of her memories [and pains] during her life.
**Lara’s response was that, in essence, even if one loses one’s pains along with the memory, Lara herself didn’t want to lose her memory, for that allows her to transmit to others. Lara’s mother even forgot Lara’s name. In fact, Lara felt that “sometimes we have too much tendency in this society to censor ourselves on what hurts us because we do not want to impose our pain onto the others. We tell ourselves that it's useless because it’s not like it’s really shared. I understood by watching my mother that it's vital to say what's on our mind, it's vital to say that something hurts me, we forget to share it also with the ones we love or those we have available. We do that because we do not want to darken their heart. But sometimes we forget that it is very relevant to open our heart. You have to work through it if you want to end up knowing yourself. I think my mom was deeply alone in what hurt her and I would have liked to be more helpful to manage it together but in those silences she made the choice not to talk about it because she made the choice to not weigh on my heart. That's one thing in this book I'm trying to say: tell yourself, even if it takes the humor of the modesty and delicacy to do it, but show yourself to those who love you, exit the mask of this dress of this disguise that you carry and be yourself. It is what I say in fact and it is very beautiful.”
**The interviewer agreed that it was very beautiful, and that it took Lara 51 years and perhaps the experience of interacting with the youngsters of the Star Academie to value this transmission. She raised the question of what would Lara have liked to know to do when she was younger.
**Now Lara took up the opposite stance – after talking about how important it was to expose one’s true feelings and pains to those whom one loves, she warned of the dangers of too much exposure to journalists. “It is necessary to put a filter on a microphone or whatever vehicle one’s using. It is extremely dangerous and cruel, indeed the price of a confidence that mistakes the journalist for a friend can cost you your growth… caution is required when you are young, a young girl like me who was extroverted and hands over one’s needs to others, so that one confides in them. I would have really benefited from someone who helped me understand the value of the silence in some places.”
**The interviewer then switched topics to the question of freedom of expression, and the question of singing songs that go against the prevailing ethic of a society, whether it be of race or anything else.
**This aligned with one of Lara’s pet peeves. “Listen I believe that we have entered a point where humanity is crossing a stage that in my opinion is measured by a change of civilization and through this interface there is an impediment to speak that rages whatever the subject, whether we speak of our cultural identities, of religions, or, well, any of the spectrum of what the society makes us glimpse. I would like to find the words to speak about this freedom, that it is fundamental to find it again while preserving the respect of the subject. It is not easy to speak about something if you want to leave a layer that resonates to different states of the society and yet at the same time one must. I try to approach it with a lot of simplicity, to laugh at the pain, while the song must popularize a subject and make it complex. It must allow all to contract it and then to sing it with eyes closed. But in this new paradigm in which we live, I find that our spirits in this moment now only live in two dimensions. I believe after watching for 30 years that we are more, we are greater than what we now are.”
**The interviewer recently learned (from a previous interview) that Lara had received death threats, and had to pay fines for having sung certain songs in certain countries for certain ideas, such as homosexuality marriage for all.
**Lara said, “Absolutely that it is in the countries of the Middle East as in some other countries, it is not easy to sing the fact that the identity of a being goes well beyond what you can specify by putting it in a group. How many veiled women did not have the right to attend a show, I sang against all that in front of some 80 veiled women on the international day of the woman. Yes, it's true that I often have done that. You don't know because I don't put a camera on me while I'm doing this kind of thing. I've done it. I did it and that's it. So that's a little bit of the price but it's not always the case that I tell everyone.”
**The interviewer said that in the documentary on Lara that “It is on Illico we come to understand that it is the team of Celine Dion which plays very hard so that you do not come to play in the beds of the Americans. We presume that’s an image that will imprison us, that situations like that make it necessary to measure to navigate, where you can go and where you disturb the talent so that the producers and environment don’t want you.”
**Lara replied: “I believe we all have a course, a course that precedes us even before, like the actions that are that of a child, you see who made a dream of child. So today I am really someone who looks at her course with a lot a lot of gratitude especially in the sense of the human being that I became. I am not at all in regret or caught in the crap of the world, in my heart in relation to anything, it was my destiny. That was my path, my path. Here at 51 years, surrounded by nature, I am the mother of Lou, the wife of Gabriel, and have nevertheless 30 years of career and have a believing public in the international sense. I have that in spite of what you saw there that one could be excited about, therefore I see what is that I am. And not the opposite, you see, I say to myself that I am not very defined by the things that have been represented by a y to an X, I am defined because of what I have made. You see I believe that the true resilience it is not just to make something out of a difficulty, or of a pain an opportunity, it is also the pain does not have to accompany us, we can let go of the pain which existed at that moment in my head as a young artist of 29 or 30 years.
**The interviewer noted that Lara’s dream of being a dancer had been crushed [by a mean teacher] and it was thanks to that that she was where she is now.
**Lara agreed, saying it was the non-realization of a childhood dream; and then she said she jokes that she chose to become a singer to prove her dad wrong.
**When the interviewer asked her to expand upon that, Lara said, “I think the teenager in me, I think I need to define myself in showing him that he could trust me, I understand that I could go to a place where he maybe in his life did not. He too would have wanted to make that profession, so I believe that there was a kind of joust between how a young teenager sees herself and the adult. It is rather relevant because he did not believe (I could do it) since he himself had not been able to pass through certain tests. But one always says that one makes children who are better than us. I believe it sincerely, that I believe that the children that one makes, because of all our projects, they are better than us so I see that with my daughter and I say to myself is that a fair go. It is success that was the demonstration that he could have confidence in me but not finally all that was enough for me and that avoided me another big pain now that I have a daughter.”
**The interviewer ended by saying that it was a beautiful book, and did achieve a transmission from mother to daughter, from Lara’s mother, going all the way to Lara’s daughter.
**Lara said her mother probably transmitted to her by default, and, “At some point, we have the duty to choose ourselves. So it would be that in retrospect. One wants to remember that love is not a feeling but a vibration and we have to let it pass through us so that it is constructive and foundational. That would be the two things that my mother taught me, to choose myself, by letting me cross by the love.”
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With respect to Lara’s noting how hard it is to speak about certain topics nowadays, see also Lara’s comments below in association with the ‘Showbizz.net’ pictures.
As part of the overall promo, as noted last week Lara had appeared on the show “Dans l'univers de...”. A highlight was her singing “Je t’aime” and the complete performance of hers is now available at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAHFskK15rA
(plus a little bit of the song “Aime-moi encore”).
Lara’s performance here showed great vocal power and clarity – if Lara had been told 25 years ago that she would still be able to sing this song that way at age 51, she probably would have been overjoyed. Roxane Bruneau, whom Lara was singing for, is a Quebecoise singer and humorist – and her responses are similar to those on many of the ‘reaction videos’ of singers listening to Lara’s performances of years ago.
In other news, Lara discussed her participation in next year’s Star Academie, at (https://showbizz.net/tele/lara-fabian-souvre-sur-son-implication-et-ses-attentes-pour-la-prochaine-saison-de-star-academie). Here’s the translation:
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Lara Fabian opens up about her involvement and expectations for the next season of Star Academy
"It's going to be a different story this year with the public ..."
We recently had the chance to speak with Lara Fabian as part of the Je passe à table book launch .
We obviously took the opportunity to discuss with the main interested party the next season of Star Académie , which will resume service on January 16, as well as her world tour, which must begin after four concerts presented in Montreal and in Quebec.
“My involvement was very big last year. I was sleeping at the academy, so in terms of investment, for me it will be the same. It's going to be just as important”, she said straight away.
The director of the academy obviously welcomes the return of a larger audience in the studio, especially for the participants, who will be able to directly reap the fruits of their efforts.
“It's going to be a different story this year with the audience. I am preparing to receive another family of young people who, individually, will present another way of functioning. Because I will not envisage a relationship with the young people who arrive as I could envisage it with Shayan, Maëva, Charles, William or Lunou. I'm really going to look at them as a group of special, special and unique individuals”, she continues.
Moreover, among the most significant lessons that Lara Fabian learned from the first season, there is the importance of knowing how to communicate frankly with the academicians, but also to allow time for a criticism to make its way in their minds. when necessary.
“Beyond all that is precious that can be transmitted, the lantern is a light that only illuminates the wearer. I learned that what one can transmit stops where the other wants to take it. It does not mean that we have to do without what we want to transmit, not at all, because there is never anything in vain, but it does not always seem to have been understood at the time. when we said it. It's still catching on. The goal is to pass on a part of what is precious to us so that it makes sense for the other”, she explains.
“How to communicate beyond a certain point of view or certain beliefs, which are often obstacles because of fear? In fact, to be able to formulate an observation without depriving it of any judgment is the start of communication, and it is transmitted through music. This is the place where you can't censor yourself as an artist."
After Star Académie , Lara Fabien will be back on tour, more than two years after seeing The 50 World Tour be interrupted due to a certain COVID-19 pandemic.
“It's always difficult to close a book whose front page has been torn from you. I'm going to have a hard time completely closing the book and moving straight to something else. There will be remnants, there will be remnants of what The 50 World Tour was. I'm still in contemplation, observing how I'm going to present this”, she confides.
Lara Fabian also intends to reconnect with a facet of her art that she had neglected for a long time, she who had offered modernized versions of several songs from her repertoire during the last shows she had offered in La Belle Province.
“I have more of a symphonic desire for the future. I went into something more original in the way of deploying the lyricism of my melodies and my voice. I want to go back there. It's been a long time since I did that”, she concludes.
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Once again there is the strong implication that Lara’s upcoming concert tour may have more symphonic components, although as stated here, it would seem to be songs from her past repertoire, rather than anything new.
Interesting photo(s) of the week: first, pictures of Lara from Showbiz.net, from an article (no longer available) as part of the book promo:
showbizz.net/tele/lara-fabian-souvre-sur-son-implication-et-ses-attentes-pour-la-prochaine-saison-de-star-academie
Note that the Lara Fabian Greece site also included these photos, along with two quotes from Lara. The first reads: "I have always been very natural with the table. It has always been a natural in education, in the pleasure of living, in the way of transmitting. The table has always punctuated very important moments in my life, and I have often been asked to write a biography. Yes, I could tell many things, but what is the common thread, the thing that has always involved me the most in my life outside of my art? It's always been cooking: preparing a beautiful table, designing a meal, thinking about the person I'm hosting, creating a moment around the table" - Lara Fabian
Very uncontroversial. But the second quote reads: “What pains me most is that we can no longer express ourselves. What is the human being looking for most? To belong to a clan, to make sense, and to be understood. And the only thing that can evoke these three elements is to make a choice that makes us happy in its expression, it is to summon a vocation that aims to contribute to the other to be part of a clan. However, we are going through a time when, when we summon this vocation, if we have the misfortune within this prism to express an idea that is not conformist, we find ourselves being expelled by our vocation. Hence the pain of humanity. We must have the courage to go beyond our judgments, our beliefs." - Lara Fabian
This parallels what Lara said in her Ici Radio interview, and while it is not in itself really controversial, and was met with positive responses on their website, one wonders if it was included in the article, was it the reason the article is no longer available…
Then, an oil portrait of Lara by Natalia Mensh from Les Papillons Blancs FB page,
www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10165892229835360
In the latest installment by Lara the Ring Fabian, a collection of Lara’s best advice plus funniest and emotional moments from last year’s Star Academie shows with English subtitles is available at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwdQuQbUftM
This showcases the true brilliance of Lara as a singing teacher, who knows exactly what she’s doing – and also how to get it across with empathy. Thanks again for all the work that went into this...
With the release of Lara’s book tomorrow we’ll see what the reaction is on a broader front. Hard to imagine it will be anything but superb. Have a good week everybody, and stay safe.
David
