Louise Forestier would she like a glass of flat or sparkling water? “Sparkling,” she exclaims. “Sparkling, like the girl. The girl is obviously her. She who, without choker or necklace, to paraphrase the title of her autobiography, has always called a cat a cat.
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His most recent album published last April is called Old corneille And maybe the most Fley never launched by an octogenarian. Old, old, old: she will repeat this word throughout the interview, almost like a mantra, with the joyful conscience of its subversive content, as well as a salutary disdain for the euphemizing formulas using which we usually prefer to name the great age.
“Oh I love this word!” I can only love it, since it is my situation right now in life. I am an old. I was menopausal at one point, I was abandoned at some point and I never wanted to call these moments other than what they were for me. »»
She adds, with a happy mixture of wisdom and playfulness: “In the word oldthere is the word vie. » Break. “And he’s in the word vieux Also ! Don’t worry, gentlemen, we didn’t forget you. »»
Photo Charles William Pelletier, special collaboration
Louise Forestier a Studio
What is swarming below our collective refusal to designate old age without false-fuant? Our fear of death, thinks Louise Forestier.
Seeing someone older immediately makes us transpose us into old. And it’s very unpleasant. But there are people who age well, who have soothing wrinkles and that is good. But there are others who have terribly difficult wrinkles to see because they are bitter, they are violent.
Louise Forestier
At 82, Louise Forestier still lives on the first times, which undoubtedly contributes to pacify her relationship to her age. She will speak with an almost adolescent enthusiasm of her recent discovery of the universe of science fiction literature. And it is by showing it that she will intimate your journalist to read Dogs tomorrow (1953), New Collection of Clifford D. Simak, a big crush.
So it’s never too late to try new things? “No, it is never too late, as long as your mind is still wandering and a little offender. »»
Watch your jobs green
Her delinquency, Louise Forestier now devotes her a lot to cultivating her sense of contemplation. We briefly mention his friend François Guy, who left us in 2023. It was with him, as well as with France Castel and Michel Le François, that she recorded in 2016 the album The old criss (decidedly). François Guy has always been, she observes, ahead of his time, with what it can generate dissatisfactions, impressions of being at the overhang with his company.
“It makes beings that have a kind of constant frustration, and there are several among artists who live that. I had it for a long time, that feeling, and if I let myself go, I would still have it. But there, I tell myself that I have so little time left to live that I have to try to clean up and really enjoy I don’t know, me … the growth of a leaf on a tree! »»
The growth of a leaf on a tree becomes in my life a capital event. “What did you do today?” “I looked at my birch green.” WOW!
Louise Forestier
“Do not touch my madness/That’s all I have/It’s my California”, sings Louise Forestier in The seizure. Her madness, she will have made an ally, after having said, she burst out her legendary laugh of a benevolent witch, invested in therapies a money with which she could have paid a chalet.
“I have always been forced to make a living, because I put half my fortune in the hands of the shrinks,” she says, without any regret. “I have a doctorate know yourself. »»
Today, my madness is a door, a tunnel, a cellar, a cave, an ocean. This is the ink in which I dip my pen.
Louise Forestier
Crazy
Desperate but cheerfulit is the title of another of her songs, which sums up her relationship to life that has not always given her only gifts, but which she will have managed to get the best. An oxymoron that also reflects this duality between melancholy which permeates several of its refrains and its laughter which, when it sounds, eclipses everything spleen.
Photo Charles William Pelletier, special collaboration
Louise Forestier in an interview with our journalist
We are talking about the late writer Denise Boucher, who lived with Robert Charlebois, Claude Péloquin, Sophie Clément and Louise, rue Melrose in Montreal, at the time of the creation of Lindberg (1968).
“What a big woman! But what loneliness! All the poets, all the painters of this gang, they have sweated. They were ostracized in their society. They were considered crazy. Then still often, when a woman does something a little extravagant, a little eccentric, we will say that she is crazy and the guy is going to be a genius. So there you go, I’m a great crazy. »»
She approaches the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t believe myself when I say that. It is not really true. ” Silence. “But at the same time, yes, I believe it. Louise Forestier breaks out with her crazy laugh. Greatly crazy.
Three quotes from our interview
Regarding the absence of women in the show 1 time 5 In 1976
“That, I absolutely didn’t take it. Because, you see, if I liked Léveillée, if I liked Vigneault, if I liked Ferland, it is thanks to their performers. When Monique Leyrac released her disc Vigneault and Léveilléeone of the great, large, large Quebec records of the second half of the XXe A century, it was through her voice that I liked Léveillée. Same thing for Pauline Julien who sang Vigneault. For me, it could not be that Monique Leyrac and Pauline Julien were not there. I didn’t even think of me. I was insulted that there is not a girl in this. Where was Clémence? Câline, Clémence! »»
About his meeting with Tom Waits
“Oh, it was beautiful!” I went to see his show at the Outremont then, after, we went to celebrate this to the prince [le Prince-Arthur, bar chouchou de la communauté musicale dans les années 1980]. Who happens? Wait, it’s not true! Tom Waits, who will sit at the bar. I took my courage in both hands, I went to sit next to him. We started talking and he asked me what I was doing in life. We jased for a good half hour on the profession. He was charming. It was perfect. »»
About his inability to repeat himself
“The people of record companies were very depressed when they worked with me because they said:” You are hard to sell, you never do the same. ” And I replied: “Thank you, it’s the most beautiful compliment you can make me.” Unpredictability is often the characteristic of people a little struck by the ball or struck by a great talent. We can call it as we want. »»
