“I try to create every day,” says Diane Dufresne. Every day is new for me. Because when you go to sleep at night, you never know if you’re going to wake up the next day. »
“I am always in this awareness of life and death,” she added during this rare and generous interview, recalling having lost her mother to illness when she was still only ‘a teenage girl. A founding event that instilled in her an incurable worry. “I am always surprised in the morning to see that I wake up. »
At 80, a mark she reached on September 30, Diane Dufresne is not only awake, but also awake. Awakened to everything that surrounds our world. No wonder its 15e album, State of siegewhich appears this Friday, is this dark prayer, sometimes biting, often empathetic, addressed to these billions of solitudes caught in their bugs and in the cabin of their car.
It was during the pandemic, while watching the webcasts presented by guitarist Michel Cusson, that she had the beautiful flash of the collaboration at the origin of this concept work, an incomparable combination of spoken word, jazz fusion, rock and funk, with surprise appearances by Paul Arcand and Sophie Thibault. And inevitably, lots of impetuous electric guitar solos.
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, THE PRESS
Diane Dufresne in interview
“Writing about tanks is not necessarily my cup of tea,” she jokes about the lyrics of what will undoubtedly be the most unique record – the most fly-on-the-wall! – which an octogenarian will have published this year, and in which her male and female characters are often captives of traffic jams.
But State of siege is obviously much more than a reflection on the horrors of congestion. It is above all a meditation on this era of speed, of morbid scrolling in the screen of our phones as well as global warming and minds.
A story where “gladiatorts” consider their car as the extension of their phallus (“How many balls are there under its engine”, asks Madame Dufresne in this dismaying and hilarious portrait of a certain masculinity), where the part of the dream is constantly losing ground to machines, but where lovers still persist in having children.
“I understand that life can be boring,” explains the singer and author about our obsession with our screens, “but you have to be in life, in reality.” “When you see people crossing the street looking at their phones, there’s something wrong. I understand it’s interesting. But you have to have the freedom to be bored, otherwise you can never create. »
“I’m worried”
Diane Dufresne has long been concerned about the fate of the planet and those who inhabit it. In the early 1990s, she attended lectures by the late astrophysicist Hubert Reeves at the University of Montreal in the hope of marveling at the cosmos. She will emerge with the new mission of warning her compatriots.
She already wished with Major diversion (1993), the first album for which she wrote the lyrics, to warn her peers of the possibility of our disappearance. Diane Dufresne, ecoanxious?
The magical lady in pink suddenly becomes very serious.
I don’t know why, for some time now, maybe it’s my age, but yes, there is an anxiety that is different. I’m worried. I’m afraid. And fear is not a good thing.
Diane Dufresne
“Obviously, I reason with myself. But what is it that when I wake up, there is this anxiety inside me, even though everything is beautiful outside? There must be something in the air. »
No appeasement
In Intersection/All in the same directionsurprisingly heavy rock and one of the most heady pieces ofState of siegeDiane Dufresne sings “the final station” that awaits us all, no matter the denial with which we lead our lives. “I think about death every day. It’s part of a sort of balance,” confides the one for whom aging, “it’s quite unpleasant, because you see your body transforming.”
Does the passage of time have at least some advantages?
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, THE PRESS
Diane Dufresne in interview
When you are healthy, your head feels much better. We have greater freedom. Not saying “I don’t give a damn”, but close. We can be creative. We are much freer.
Diane Dufresne
“But we are being made to age in advance, because we are afraid of old people,” she laments, pointing out the banishment that the West inflicts on its old people. “And I understand, because you see, I’m talking to you right now and I’m saying to myself: ‘Oh my God, I’m losing my memory,’ and that’s already scary. But we must dare to say: “It doesn’t matter, I’ll continue the same”, because we are still alive! »
Age is therefore not synonymous with appeasement for the artist of all permissions, especially “we cannot be appeased in a world like ours”.
But Diane Dufresne has not yet been enslaved by darkness. What good would it be for him to create otherwise? In 1979, in one of the greatest songs ever written, Diane Dufresne implored us, through the words of one of the men in her life, Luc Plamondon, not to kill the beauty of the world. Where does she find this beauty today?
“Beauty is in the arts. In the eyes of children. In animals. She is in the hope that we have. Beauty is everywhere. She is even in ugliness. Maybe not in wars, that’s impossible. But you have to find it. You don’t even have to look for it. It has to be natural. »
Song
State of siege
Diane Dufresne and Michel Cusson
GSI Music
Three quotes from our interview
About his relationship with his audience
“I don’t have to be pleasant when I’m preparing a show. You shouldn’t bother me too much, because I need to be centered. I’m going to see the people. And it’s no small thing to go see people! Every person in a room has a life, every person is important. I have a responsibility, even if it’s an exchange. »
About his first moment of musical intoxication
“That’s when I heard Barbara sing My most beautiful story in Bobino [légendaire salle de Paris]. I must have been 20 years old. Barbara was her life, music, a bit like me. She arrived in her dressing room well in advance. For her, it was her love story. She truly lived for the public. She was magnificent, Barbara. She was unique. »
About his mother
“My parents went to New York once a year, my mother went to buy her clothes there. My father always liked what was new, my mother too. In the 1950s, she had platinum hair, a duck tail, she smoked cigarettes, she wore very short shorts. It was the city firecracker of Anjou. She loved difference, she wasn’t afraid of it. »