I typed “erase and start over” into Google and there’s an article about a fiery hockey game that popped up, followed by stuff from geek to properly delete your data and start over on a cell phone. OK, let’s let the inspiration on the Internet take its course for today, that’s not quite what I want to pay tribute to.
I wanted to share with you the beauty of a girl I know called Viviane who plays music with her boyfriend. Basically, together they make records and soundtracks. The last film with Karine Vanasse, Arsenault and son, for example: when your heart wants to come out of your chest during a poaching scene, it’s their fault. No music, no thriller. Some say that in cinema, music can even be a character in itself.
Viviane also often sits at her piano, alone, for her own music. With Robin not too far away if she needs to. But it was Robin who wrote most of their last album.
Him. I saw him write. Rewrite. Doubt. Restart. Compose. To throw in the bin. Redial. Doubt again. Regain confidence. It’s been several moons that this project germinates, grows… Tonight, it blooms.
It was just before the launch of the new disc of their group Mentana, which took place in the evening. And it touched me. Because having such close access to someone’s creative process reveals even more the heart and the tears that are at the bottom of the work. Beneath Viviane’s words appeared a photo of her cowboy revising lyrics printed on a piece of paper, sitting on the ground and surrounded by his instruments, as if to be as diligent and as sheltered as possible. How many words and how many times have these words been crossed out before finally being deposited, forever? We do not know. But one thing is certain, when Robin came on stage, he had found the right people to tell his story. Not that of characters invented for the cinema; that of his family, of his descendants, of those who sowed a part of who he is.
In 1919, Sandy was 15 years old and left his native Acadie for Western Canada. All by himself. At the time, we weren’t teenagers, we were already a man. His mother and several of his brothers died with the Spanish flu. What he was left with was the freedom to jump on trains, try to build a life elsewhere. Life tough. Jobines. Hired in the mines. As wrangler in the Rockies. Then, the meeting of Rosanne, with whom he will return home to New Brunswick… and will start a family of 14 children. “But what could Sandy have said to this woman to convince her to go and live with him in BOISHÉBERT? launched Viviane on stage, speaking of Robin’s grandmother. Maybe love, they didn’t say. They just started Rosannethe song dedicated to them.
Then came the Black Steel Dragon. The one who took Lac-Mégantic. And that’s where I broke down. Because in real life, that of our peers, ours, that of our ancestors, there are data that we can never delete.
Still on stage, Robin and his fellow musicians continued to play. But I also thought of Viviane alone at her piano. When she was composing the songs for her album The mountain girls two years ago, in memory of the victims of Polytechnique, she told me:
“I have access to testimonies from the girls’ families, details, confidences, it’s all there in a big, precious binder to help me compose. But Maya, I just can’t open it on my own. So I sit down at the piano, and Robin reads them to me from upstairs. That’s how I get there, finding the melodies for them. »
In real life, there are also things that don’t fade away. So we move on, we start again by wearing them, walking on the same path as the people we love.