Sunday, July 28, 2013

Jacques Bertin - The Dashboard Light


Original Title: "La Lampe du Tableau de Bord"
Year: 1970
The dashboard light it's my north star I'm going far away
Next to me, you are sleeping or I'm alone or you are speaking to me but so far
I do not know anything anymore but the Gauloises with the matches and the silence
I do not know where I'm taking you, where we'll arrive
I do not know, I have with me all my night, my fear
All the girls I loved, all the lost friends, the road is long
My love, My love. It's always very late and it's always the night falling.

I speed in the dark with time to time the call of lights, the friends.
My love, the night glides, there is noone on the road anymore but the rain.
I've forgotten the map, I never remember the rules of the game but it doesn't matter.
I do not know where I'm taking you, where we'll arrive
I do not know, I have with me all my night, my fear
The cry of the widows motionless at the corner of their house, the road is long
My love, My love. It's always very late and it's always the night falling.

A mad woman ran toward me the arms very white, a dog's face
And I've seen big children's despairs that came drinking in my hands
The hunted women in the alcoves keep quiet and worry
I do not know where I'm taking you, where we'll arrive
I do not know, I have with me all my night, my fear
In the lights, I've nailed the call of an unknown christ, the road is long
My love, My love. It's always very late and it's always the night falling.

A morning, we'll arrive, wake up, in a frozen pub, a deserted village
There are sobs, dreams abandonned on the meadows, people's life.
Children going to school and the tied up scarf of friendships that flies away.
I do not know if it's the day or the sky or life
I do not know, it's bright and I am going to sleep
I have nothing left but my love all tired all sad
And something but so little a red hare that ran in the lights.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Serge Reggiani - Almost nothing would be enough


Original Title: "Il suffirait de presque rien"
Year: 1968
Almost nothing would be enough
Maybe ten years less
For me to tell you "I love you"

For me to take you by the hand
To take you to St Germain
To offer you another cream coffee

But why pretend
Girl, come on, look at me
And see the wrinkles parting us

What's the point of puting on an act
Of the old lover who feels younger
You would pretend to believe it yourself

Really what would we look like?
I already hear the comments:

She is pretty
How can he still please her
She in spring, he in winter

Almost nothing would be enough
still noone you know well
goes back through his youth

Don't be stupid and understand
If I was twenty like you
I'd cover you in promises

There is your smile
turning to water and capsizing
I don't want you to be sad

Imagine your life tomorrow
Next to a clown busy
making his last ring turn

Really what would you look like
I already hear the comments

She is pretty
How can he still please her
She in spring, he in winter

It's someone else than me tomorrow
Who will take you to St Germain
To take the first cream coffee

Almost nothing was enough
Maybe ten years less
For me to tell you "I love you"

On television in 1995:

Jacques Bertin - Where are you going?


Original Title: "Où tu t'en vas?"
Year: 1980
The empty place in the bed
Which one of us has lost the other?
Why are you leaving?
Our love is at the end of the Maulne
And giving back lost meadows
Why are you leaving?

Why are you leaving?
Why so far?
Where are you going?
Why alone?
Where are you going?

The empty place in my eyes
Which one of us is tearing the other one?
Where are you going?
I loved without ever understanding anything
People pass me without seeing me
Where are you going?

Why are you leaving?
Why so far?
Where are you going?
Why alone?
Where are you going?

The empty place in my life
Which one of us was guilty?
We do not know
I was not your ennemy
We didn't see evil come
We do not know

Why are you leaving?
Why so far?
Where are you going?
Why alone?
Where are you going?

Why are you leaving?
Why so far?
Where are you going?
When are you coming back?
For ever, it does not exist

André Dassary - Misraki - In my Heart


Original Title: "Dans Mon Cœur"
Text: André Hornez
Music: Paul Misraki
Year: 1939
In my heart, a tender hope blossoms
A sparrow sang on top of my roof
In my heart, a dream nested
All the flowers seem to open out for me

But the roses have to wither
The sparrow is going to turn back
And the dreams will abandon
all the hearts that are too heavy
But no matter! Everything sings today
Let our laughs rise in the night!
Let's quickly pick up the running hour
Happinesses are short

In your heart, I've placed all my love
All the bells have chimed
In your heart keep it forever
like an ardent and passionate flame

But everything passes and everything must end
Everything wears off even a memory
And the flame is going to die soon
In our hearts that are too heavy
But no matter! Everything sings today
Let our laughs rise in the night!
Let's quickly pick up the running hour
Happinesses are short

Love is in my heart!
Music from the move "Retour à l'aube" (Return at dawn) by Georges Tzipine et Georges Ghestem:

Monday, July 22, 2013

Jacques Bertin - Hélène


Year: 1968
The heavy secret of living together
Helene widow remember it
and your big love opened
with fear of impossible
The delicate and bitter love
Like water and wine together
Helene widow in your house
And who will never laugh again

And your long patient song
Your hands on his soul of holly
Your skin burnt on your lips
Your soul at the crossroad of you
The strength that hurted you
He talked about hurt of loving

You were hurting him atrociously
As if he had betrayed for you
Himself sticked his dreams
subdued far from everything

Life is the queen adventure
The so sweet oozing of doubt
Then he shifted on things
his too big madness of loving

You were only one then
Helene with the scent of the lilies
Helene sitting in your house
And who will never love again

Helene who knows everything about the man
And that he cheated on you for lilies

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Jacques Bertin - Portrait of Aude


Original Title: "Portrait d'Aude"
Year: 1974
She was coming back home early to settle herself in her dream
She did not see many people: she had so much to dream about
She was not going out often, with one or two childhood friends
After five years she did not know how to find her bearings in Paris

Time passed, she was now going slowly on her thirties
She had exhausted the wonderful field of dream
She was dreaming less. She was not seeing many people.
She was not going out often: she was making long days

She was falling asleep and drew a smile.
I've slowly left her body in my sticking warmth
It was near Place d'Italie: ruins, wind, building sites
From far you could see her lightened up window in the night.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Mouloudji - Renoir - Hillock's lament


Original Title: "Complainte de la Butte"
Text: Jean Renoir
Music: Georges Van Parys
Song from the movie "French Cancan"
Year: 1954
Up St Vincent street, a poet and a stranger girl
Loved each others for a moment
But he never saw her again
This song he composed hoping that his stranger girl,
One morning of spring, will hear it
Somewhere at the corner of a street.

The moon, too livid, places a diadem on your red hair
The moon, too red, spills glory on your petticoat full of holes
The moon, too pale, carresses the opal of your unimpressed eyes
Princess of the street
Be welcome in my wounded heart

The stairs up to the hillock are hard on the poors
The wings of the mills protect the lovers

Little beggar, I feel your little hand
Which is looking for my hand
I feel your chest and your slender waist,
I forget my sorrow
I smell on your lips a scent of fever of malnourished child
And under your caress, I feel an ecstasy that annihilates me.

The stairs up to the hillock are hard on the poors
The wings of the mills protect the lovers

And here comes the rain, the moon dashes off
The princess as well
Under the moonless sky, I cry in the dark
My vanished dream

Cora Vaucaire's version:

Jacques Bertin - For Julos


Original Title: "A Julos"
Year: 1975
We went, blinded by the sun of winter
In that tiny cemetary in the middle of winter
With a few white graves lost in the greenness of winter

We were nothing but a punctuation of the immense space
Lost in a movie, weirdly overexposed
that jumps constantly and the scene starts again
And the derisory ritual continues that is set on us

The musicians, the fingers absent, were playing the music of your kingdom
Your kingdom, my poor friend, bracing with all its strength
They were playing as if to say "Farewell, we remained proud"
They were playing, each in its terror creating lines
against the merciless who runs much faster than us.

A horse, who was probably a cousin of the dead woman,
Was looking at us and ate the green grass
Teaching us without letting on, lessons of tenderness

I do not bring back words from this outrun in the blinding sadness
That is the closest from the sun.
Comrade of comrades I came back empty handed
Went through the door made of metal and air where we have that other day hooked our fingers

If you find words it's because you won't be back
And I, I tell you that for the living, yours, mines, all those I love
I'm scared of that beauty there that is coming in the windscreen
The other day it was me who was put into the ground and I was looking at myself become nothing
I say "you have my friendship" it's a call for help

I bleed in that crossroads of hundred thousand road I'm scared
Oh if it's possible for someone to pull me back
Of only a quarter of a second
To soothe the heart

I hear the breath already of the hairy horse
He tells me that I have to be reconciled once for all with the earth
And prepare myself to disperse my consciousness in the earth
Reconcile myself with the earth and its breathing which is the song.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Jacques Brel - The Quest


Original Title: "La Quête"
Year: 1968
To dream an impossible dream
To bear the grief of the departures
To burn of a possible fever
To leave, no one leaves

To love, up to the tear
To love, even too much, even badly
Attempt, without strength nor armor
To reach the unreachable star

Such is my quest:
To follow the star
No matter my odds
No matter the time
Or my despair
And then struggle always
Without question or rest
Damn oneself
For the gold of a love word
I do not know if I will be that hero
But my heart would be peacefull
and the cities would splash themselves with blue
because a miserable man...

Keeps burning, even though having burned everything
Keeps burning, even too much, even badly
To reach, to the point of tearing one self
To reach the unreachable star

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Jacques Bertin - The blue lips


Original Title: "Les Lèvres Bleues"
Year: 1989
Your blue lips, I said, like a lagoon, your painted lips
Opening sky on a meadow of mother-of-pearl, veined with streams
Your breasts, I said, I wanted meticulously painted, O saints
stone and moon colored and to mark your shoulder with birds' beaks

A pendant going down, heavy, by a thread from your belly
Like to the temple's facade as well: the man that had his throat cut,
Remember, and whose blood was a cover on the wandering dawn
You drank it, a faceless teenager was watching you.

Voices, thousand of voices, were binding you, were reading you evil and proud
You found back sacred words, lost, germinated. The night was turning
on its base until your price was set. Me, I was trembling
from fever, in the dark door at midnight rings the light

A motif of horses rearing, lacquered on the inner legs
bridles and thighs I want, picked up like a tear each
And you stamp, the bit in the teeth, puffing and panting, the tongue violent
The dance or the hate shooting, I want pearls of sweat

Your wrists are held at your waist, this castle
Is the one that has been drestroyed the axe in the hip
And your gaze, last one in the marble like a knife,
Broke and the blade is a wing in the white countryside

I've crawled in the sunken ships, the forest of foam or fawn
Wet collar against collar pushed the tapestry opening
infinitely the cavern of rain where gold is widow. The time
stops when it hears your laugh that is new and of a child.

I love you like a poor coming back from the holy wars
Head bare and begging from farms for a bit of bread
And each farm is a treasure it's true, laid in a hand
I love you like this, stay above the golden farms your painted lips
Your blue lips, like a laggoon, I've said, your painted lips.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Barbara - The girl in love


Original Title: "L'amoureuse"
Year: 1968

The one who spread her arms out,
The one who loved so strongly,
But who didn't know,
That loving again and again
It burns you, it damns you

That one who, clear eyes,
walked arms spread wide
and who wanted to give everything
and take everything
That one went away
The heart, from love, bursted
The arms exhausted from spreading
and from waiting

Was she innocence, was she dementia
Who will ever know, who will ever know?

She played, as a child
already, at catching the wind
In her frail arms
But she retained nothing
The wind it comes, it goes
And it's unfaithful
She discovered the sea
The bitch gave her the green eye
In a dress of foam
She threw herself into it
Her blond hair tangling up
to the reflections of the moon

Then she wanted as well
To steal a piece of night
That she thought, dazzled,
about holding tight against her
But came back the heart in sorrow
Water, it glides from your hands
The night it goes and it comes
And it's unfaithful

Was she innocence, was she dementia,
Who will ever know, who will ever know?

We shouted "It's enough
to desire tearing yourself apart,
b by giving and taking
To want to give your blood,
by burning yourself so and so
You will turn to ash".
She did not answer anything,
She was hoping when suddenly,
We still remember,
As winter had arrived
A man appeared to her
Who was walking toward her

She opened him her arms
And the man warmed up to them
Caressed her so much
That she became beautiful from it
It has been, the night and the day,
the time for warm loves,
And the man remained always
He was faithful

Innocence or dementia
Who will ever know, who will ever know?

Then winter disappeared
The birds came back
He said "Listen,
I hear the trees creak
The forest has awokened
I am resuming my journey"
Then, she stretched her arm out
It was the last time
And her knife thrusted
Inside the unfaithful
Then calm, she lied down
That's how we found her
Dead in the daybreak
of loving too much from love

Was she innocence, was she dementia,
She is dead henceforth
Noone will ever know
She died at daybreak
Of loving too much from love...

Monday, July 1, 2013

Jacques Bertin - That girl


Original Title: "Cette Fille"
Year: 1972

That girl who threw a glance at me in St Germain, I've followed her for a long time.
One night I dreamt that I was penetrating in the breasts of a blond under the velvet vest
She had your face but I was certain it wasn't you
Another time I saw her eyes again laying upon me in a basement.

You thought I was silent but she, the other one, she was calling me
You asked me "Do you love me?" but the question was elsewhere

That belly movement against me of a woman asking for love
Then on the sandbank were remaining objects and scattered gazes
And I need each one like in the plain the lights, the smokes
They are only asking for one thing that you go with them for a short time

In their novel, page after page, offered their shoulder against my shoulder
And I who everytime step back without giving myself

I was coming out from a girl's home, in the street rain was welcoming me
You felt my love that from very far I was coming back toward you
One day, I will take you with my power and I'll know the fervour of the gift
It will be this evening and I come back from a journey

You open the door for me, you are in tears. You tell me:
I was expecting you yesterday evening but it has been four years that I'm waiting for you.

Léo Ferré - You never say anything

Original Title: " Tu ne dis jamais rien " Year: 1971 I see the world a bit like one sees the unbelievable This what the unbeli...