I crossed it for the first time in 2012 for a portrait in Liberty. Oxmo Puccino, 51, has done a lot of stuff since. He always sings, he also writes. I saw it again once or two by chance without taking the time to discuss. We found ourselves at the end of June in his offices in Paris, to speak of a first return to the Bled.
Do the first times make sense to you?
I get up, I am not dead and it starts again. I see every day as a first time. What I have to do during the day is organized but I always leave an empty space in the agenda that allows me to think and think. I meet new people when I walk in the city. We can also say that every minute is a first time but there are more important moments than others and the first times that bring together several minutes. I can tell you, for example, about my first return to the village, in Mali, in 2005, to see my grandmother after twenty-five years, almost a life.
Why so much time without going back?
Because life means that … because you have a strange relationship with the country of origin. A land that the parents left because they aspired to a better life. They went through a childhood with many difficks
