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Mika on Vanity Fair Italia - 20 May 2015

maggie112

By maggie112
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mamiam

mamiam

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Grazie mille - always funny to see how things are made,and get a look backstage! :)  MIKA is good with posing, imo, after doing it sooo much... :wub: 

 

Love,love

me

 

 

Grazie mille - very unusual photos of MIKA, used after this photoshoot :wub:   He looks really worried on the front pic of the mag, and very afraid,  and angry,  at some of those inside the mag. :teehee: 

 

Love,love

me    

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*Vv*
*Vv*

Here it is! Sorry for the delay!       The first Mika I meet in Milan is adrenalinic. He’s just finished to pose for this shooting. “A photographer should jostle you into doing things you didn’t t

tiibet
tiibet

Someone seems to enjoy posing      He is way too photogenic to be human, sigh. Thanks for the links and scans!

*Vv*
*Vv*

It's just the last part, as you asked, I think tomorrow you'll have the whole thing right away     Ho preso un volo per Montréal. La prima notte che trascorsi là scrissi Underwater, il giorno dopoO

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Lucrezia

Lucrezia

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Thank you so much Lucrezia, in my little village it won't be available untill tomorrow! I'll translate it now as I've got time, anyone already on it?

No you can do it if you want :) i can translate it in the evening so it's better that someone wil work on it before me

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Elwendin

Elwendin

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Thank you so much Lucrezia, in my little village it won't be available untill tomorrow! I'll translate it now as I've got time, anyone already on it?

 

 

Ahahahhaahha !!!!

I've logged in to thank Lucrezia cause in MY little village it won't be available untill tomorrow. 

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Alyara

Alyara

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Thanks for the scans. Interesting interview, it doesn't really say anything new, but I like how he adds some little new details everytime.
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Kumazzz

Kumazzz

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Vanity Fair : backstage video

 

http://www.vanityfair.it/people/italia/15/05/20/mika-backstage-video-cover-vanity-fair-foto

 

 

Sabrina uploaded the file to YouTube !

 

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Emelyne412

Emelyne412

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Thanks ! Beautiful video. He has all competences to be a model  :wub:

Thanks Lucrezia  :thumb_yello:

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*Vv*

*Vv*

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Here it is! Sorry for the delay!

 

 

 

The first Mika I meet in Milan is adrenalinic. He’s just finished to pose for this shooting. “A photographer should jostle you into doing things you didn’t think you would do when beginning. I believe it’s like skinning an onion, layer after layer”

The second Mika, I meet at his place in London is sore. “It’s always this way”, he says, “Whenever I’m too tired, I get ill”.

He’s worried as he’s about to fly to New York in a few days for a gig.

At least the new album, No place in Heaven, has been ready for a long time now. It’ll be out the 15th of June, anticipated by the single Good Guys.   

Mika sits close to the glowing fireplace, in the room with us there’s also his Labrador (yeah we know she’s a Golden retriever but they got it wrong! ndr) who’s desperately trying to get his attention with a tennis ball.

At a certain point, across the glass door I see his boyfriend, the English-Greek film-maker Andreas Dermanis passing. He doesn’t pronounce his name, but I saw them hunted out by paparazzi the last year and, even if I can only spot him for few seconds, he looks better-looking than he looked like in those photographs.

On the table, there is a computer. Mika opens it up and looks for an extract he wants to read to me. As he told me in our previous meeting, he’s writing a book, of which you’ll have a few sneak peeks underneath, that he defines “a kind of poetic diary, made of chapters which won’t follow a chronological order”. When I listened to the recordings of that interview, I thought: what if I do something similar with this interview?

So I allowed myself to use Mika’s words to build a portrait, made of chapters which don’t follow any alphabetic order.  

 

B as Book

“I’m finishing writing it, it’ll be released in autumn for Rizzoli. It’s named “Diary of an accidental optimistic”. At the beginning it should have been a corpus made of articles I had already written. But as I went over them, I thought they sucked. So I revised them. At that point I noticed that I started to hate them, they sounded untrue. I threw them away and I started writing some stories talking about everything, from my ancestors in Syria, to my grandmother in California who ends up sitting next to Grace Kelly and bursts into tears, as she can’t understand English.”

 

P as Pessimistic

“Basically I think I am a pessimistic person. Pessimists are generally happier. Optimists are spoiled snotty kids. To them it’s just normal that everything is ok. Pessimists appreciate accomplishments more than them as they don’t take them for granted. Whenever something positive happens to me, I consider it ‘an accident’, the outcome of a perfect chaos. It helps undertaking tasks in a better way. Let’s imagine you’re writing a song: if you think it isn’t coming out fine, you put everything to make sure it won’t. Having doubts about ourselves it’s fine. Since I was I kid no one ever told me I was good. Whenever I received a compliment it was a true reward for me. In my family we’re all like this, we never congratulate one another. Unless we have a very special reason for.”

 

J as Jail

“My mother told me: “Someone like you can just end out in two ways: either you do something really good, or you fail miserably. Do you want to be famous or to end up in jail?” At the time I was 9, I remember that, as I had just started taking singing lessons. I think she saw in me some sort of attitude, I would make a fool of situations, I would behave out of the ordinary, all things that either could put me in troubles or make me achieve great outcomes. She understood she had to channel my energies in the right direction. A bored Mika would mean troubles for himself too, she knew that. And she’s been able too handle each one of his children (Mika has two older sisters, Yasmine and Paloma, and a younger sister and brother, Zuleika and Fortuné) in a total different way, according to their own personality. With me she was really tough.”

 

B as Bow tie

“When I was a little boy I would always arrive late at school. One hour, one hour and a half. I hated going to school because I couldn’t read or write, and in France the school system was rather cruel. When I went living in England and I started attending a school in London, I was told: “You’re not stupid, you’re dyslexic” (in 1984 Mika’s parents evacuated from Beirut because of the civil war and end up in France, then, when Mika was 9 the moved to UK). It was the first time. In a short period of time I passed from bad to top marks. Then they started considering me different for other reasons. In the French institute I attended, everyone would wear a uniform, while in the English one it wasn’t needed. I started wearing my clothes and there, started the problems. I would enter the school dressed with a bow tie and a dotted shirt. Today I dress in a quite normal way, sometimes I wonder whether they really won and changed the way I am.”

 

W as Witch

“It seems like everything in my life happened when I was 9, but it’s true that, in that period I was kicked out of school. I had a very bad teacher: every year she would choose 3-4 kids to snipe at. She would write poems to humiliate us and she would have the whole class reading it. She made me stay upright on the desk or on the chair for the whole hour. I started feeling bad so much that I stopped talking. Going to school was such a horrible thing that I wouldn’t even bother to carry my books with me. One morning I even left my whole school bag at home. My sister Paloma noticed that and brought it to me. When she entered my class, the teacher made me get up from the chair and started her usual “treatment”. My sister, who’s two years older than me, was so shocked that she ran home and told everything to my mother who called my father. He showed up in the yard where we used to gather, he approached the teacher and told her “Mrs, now I’ll tell you everything you told my son and we’ll see what’s gonna be like” and he stared loudly: “You’re stupid, you don’t do your work as you should” and so forth. The teacher fainted and she blamed him of beating her. My father and I were summoned. They told us “Don’t come back, ever.” We went away and I remember that walking home, me, my father and my sister would hold hands and sing “The witch is dead, the witch is dead” from The Wizard of Oz.”

 

M as Mum 

“She works with me, as a stylist, whenever I have a shooting or I appear in a TV show. She was the one who had the idea to collaborate with Valentino, and she was also the one who, with my sister Paloma, introduced me to Christian Louboutin (who had never designed men shoes beforehand). She thinks out of modern industry schemes, she has a great sense of style and she pushes me to choose very eccentrics or rock clothes, more eccentrics than the ones I would feel normally at ease with.

In the album there’s a track, ‘All she wants’, about a woman who only has a wish: “A different son from the one she has” Does it talk about my mother? Of course. I’m referring to how I felt when I was a kid, the feeling that to her, it would have been easier to have another kind of son and the suspicion that she was focusing her hopes on my brother, dreaming that at least him, would one day marry a nice Lebanese girl. When my mother listened to the song she liked it a lot, but we never talked about it, we never speak about such topics. Songs are there to talk about things you don’t say in another way. There’s another track, that was a big hit in France, it’s called Elle me dit. The sense of those lyrics is: “My mother tells me this, that, and that thing too, and then she tells me that one day she won’t be there anymore, and it’s the thing that I like better”. Sometimes in the open and joyful cruelty there’s much more love than in many catch-phrases. Romanticism scares me. I find it bad, dirty, source of delusions.”

 

M as Money

“My family lost everything twice. We know what’s like to have money and not to have them at all. There’s a chapter in my book where I talk about this: we’re travelling to southern France and we have to stop to pass the night. How can you find a respectable place for two adults, 5 kids and a bunny with few money in your pockets? Luckily my mother has always a solution. Her father left Damascus on the back of a donkey and landed at Ellis Island as many other migrants. In little time he made fortune and built a big family who was then left without money once he passed away.

As everyone who’s grown up in wealth and found themselves without anything, my mother has always fought to remain the same person even where there were no money at all. That’s a characteristic she passed us. During hard periods she would hold the situation in her hands using music and creativity, that’s why we’ve all become artists. When you’ve got nothing, you can always create something, you can play or draw. I saved my first earnings to buy my house in London. The idea of having it made me feel surer. Even if now I’m economically ok, I imposed myself a lot of rules and restrictions: I never allow money to orientate my choices and I use it carefully. But when I go on holiday, I never travel alone: I invite over my friends, my family and their friends. The same thing happens when I go out for dinner. I don’t like been lonely. From tours I’ve never earned anything because I spend everything in settings, musicians, lights. Concerts have to carry the audience in what they imagine as my universe and make sure that they think “That’s exactly how I expected it to be like””.

 

F as Family

My mother and My father are still together. Rarely do I speak about him as he’s a very reserved person. He works as a consultant; he lives between Bahrein and Dubai, in the Middle East. He’s never lived in the same place for more than 6 months in a row. He was in Kuwait just before the first Gulf War broke out and he was taken hostage by the Iraqi. When he was finally released, we experienced a very odd feeling. When you are a kid, you’re so happy about the idea of your father coming back home that when the reality is different from what you had imagined it to be like, you reject it.  He wasn’t as we remembered him to be, he was skinny with a beard. For a while we wouldn’t call him dad, we would just refer to him as Mike. Nowadays we live scattered around the world. Zuleika studied jewel design and lives between Dubai and Bangkok; Paloma and my brother, who studies Architectures, are in London: Yasmine (aka DaWack, collaborates with Mika as illustrator) is in NY.

 

G as Gay

Some time ago I heard a man in France saying: “Nowadays only gays want to get married”. maybe he was being fun but it can be very dangerous to denigrate normality. We’re not talking about becoming all the same, we’re talking about granting freedom of choice, to protect people from discrimination, to give everyone the same tools to achieve goals in life.  Was once the gay community more creative as it was isolated? Let’s remember that the aim of all those expressions in art, literature and music was to obtain equality. They haven’t fought for normality but for rights equality. There are countries in the world where men and women are still lynched, even killed because gay. Saying that the normalisation of homosexuality made gays less creative would be like saying that the fight for sex equality made women less interesting.

 

G as Good New

“The song Last Party, in the new album, is inspired  by a true story. When Freddie Mercury found out he had AIDS, he threw a party, a kind of orgy to be honest. I wondered: how do people react when facing terrible news? I’ll never forget the night when my sister Paloma fell from a window (in 2010, doctors feared she could be paralized). A friend of her knocked at my door at 4 o’clock in the morning. I was in boxers and t-shirt, I ran outside, without clothes, without shoes, till I reached her place. The Police stopped me. They told me I could decide: I could wait until the ambulance came or I could go and see her right away. I thought I had to see with my eyes what had happened to face the situation. From that moment I can’t stand people knocking at my door. Outside my dressing room there’s always a sign: “Don’t knock”. And I’ve never bought white flowers again: that night my sister had organized a party to inaugurate her new flat and as a gift I had sent her hundreds of white flowers. How did I react to that? At the beginning in a rational way: I cancelled all my work commitments to stay in London with her. Then after I knew that she was in life danger I left. I took a flight to Montreal. During the first night I spent there I wrote Underwater, the day after I wrote Origin of Love. I didn't know what I would do after. I told my boyfriend I would never come back. It's been the only time we've broken up, to win his love back I had to fight hard. When he saw me coming back me he did not say "You're welcome"  

 

L as Love

“We’ve been together for 8 years but if in the beginning you had asked me: Do you think it can last long? I would’ve burst out laughing, “Impossible”. We’re still together, I don’t know the reason why, it’s just the right thing for both of us. The relationship between my mother and him is turbulent at times. You can imagine: a Lebanese and a Greek together. Let’s say they’re both very territorial. Every time we’ve got a little free time, we meet somewhere: at the end we spend a lot of time together. It’s weird how distance sometimes gets people closer.                 

Edited by *Vv*
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tiibet

tiibet

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Posted

Thank you so much for translating!!!! :flowers2: Very interesting interview. Love the quote below  :wub:

 

Concerts have to carry the audience in what they imagine as my universe and make sure that they think “That’s exactly how I expected it to be like””.

 

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mamiam

mamiam

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Thanks a million for this translation, and presentation Vv!! :hug:   It's an amazing interview - I can't even remember that MIKA was so personal and private before! :wub:   He really shares a lot about his privacy these days... :)

 

Love,love

me

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Marilyn Mastin

Marilyn Mastin

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Thanks a million for this translation, and presentation Vv!! :hug:   It's an amazing interview - I can't even remember that MIKA was so personal and private before! :wub:   He really shares a lot about his privacy these days... :)

 

Love,love

me

Thanks Vv, from me too. The interview is awesome. I also am so very glad that Mika is so open now. I never saw the point of the secrecy. He seems so happy now and I'm happy for him.

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mellody

mellody

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thanks for the translation! :flowers2: lovely interview! :wub2: just... did i get it right that they weren't told the name of mika's bf during the interview, but just because they knew from the pap pix last year, they printed it anyway?! oh well... :doh:

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maggie112

maggie112

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thanks for the translation! :flowers2: lovely interview! :wub2: just... did i get it right that they weren't told the name of mika's bf during the interview, but just because they knew from the pap pix last year, they printed it anyway?! oh well... :doh:

yes ... the same did a French mag (Tele 7 jour) , they wrote it as an'editor's note  :mf_rosetinted:

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mellody

mellody

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yes ... the same did a French mag (Tele 7 jour) , they wrote it as an'editor's note  :mf_rosetinted:

yes, i know yellow press did it, but thought vanity fair isn't one of those tabloids...

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