Mika on Paris Match - 26 September 2019

[Paoletta]

5 hours ago, Gabry74 said:

 

mais Fortunè il n'ya pas dans le photo...

[Szara.]

My mother died almost year ago so I can relate to what Mika must feel right now, the fears and the worries and feeling helpless.

If you let Sabine quote this piece of your text.

[mellody]

I didn't get so far why the album would be full of sadness, apart from Paloma's story... but this explains a lot. It's incredible that he finds the energy for work and for this long tour, where he can't be with his mum, despite all this.

 

I hope someone can do a proper translation - Google gives a good overview, but I'd love to be able to understand all the details of this important interview.

[krysady]

20 minutes ago, mellody said:

I hope someone can do a proper translation - Google gives a good overview, but I'd love to be able to understand all the details of this important interview.

Yes, it's an interesting interview and better to read a proper translation than rely on Google translation, I hope someone will find the time to do it.

[CristinaC.]

2 hours ago, Gabry74 said:

Tutti insieme! 

Wonderful ❤️

[Kumazzz]

francois.roelants

upload some photos to his instagram.

 

 

 

[carafon]

13 minutes ago, krysady said:

Yes, it's an interesting interview and better to read a proper translation than rely on Google translation, I hope someone will find the time to do it.

I can try but I'm affraid that my English is not much better than google

 

 

[krysady]

6 minutes ago, carafon said:

I can try but I'm affraid that my English is not much better than google

 

 

Thanks! I'm sure it's much better, don't worry 

[Anna Ko Kolkowska]

This is a drawing done by Mika's mom for his birthday in 2017 he is mentioning in the interview

 

 

[crazyaboutmika]

Tearing up after reading

A few people manage to survive a brain tumor and I hope with all my heart that she will  

 

[mellody]

6 minutes ago, Anna Ko Kolkowska said:

This is a drawing done by Mika's mom for his birthday in 2017 he is mentioning in the interview

 

 

 

He said he was about to deliver the final recording of the album, so I thought it was last or even this year. But he said she wrote "remember, may your head always bloom". So it might've been a reminder from her of this drawing from 2017 - or he's mixing up things.

[Anna Ko Kolkowska]

10 minutes ago, mellody said:

 

He said he was about to deliver the final recording of the album, so I thought it was last or even this year. But he said she wrote "remember, may your head always bloom". So it might've been a reminder from her of this drawing from 2017 - or he's mixing up things.

This is what I think too. She wrote "remember". Or there was another drawing of "blossoming Mika"? 

[miknikel]

19 minutes ago, mellody said:

 

He said he was about to deliver the final recording of the album, so I thought it was last or even this year. But he said she wrote "remember, may your head always bloom". So it might've been a reminder from her of this drawing from 2017 - or he's mixing up things.

I remember this drawing, I found it surprising. When you know the story, it gets really moving   

[Dominika]

As I wrote earlier that these photos looks so beautiful and happy but no one would know how many difficulties hides all these smiles. I perfectly understand his worries. I lost my mum when I was 15 then a couple years later my grandma, in both cases it was a cancer. Each time I felt like I've been starting a whole new life and each time it was much sadder and nostalgic. I don't think I dealt with it yet after so many years.

[crazyaboutmika]

2 hours ago, mellody said:

I didn't get so far why the album would be full of sadness, apart from Paloma's story... but this explains a lot. It's incredible that he finds the energy for work and for this long tour, where he can't be with his mum, despite all this.

 

I hope someone can do a proper translation - Google gives a good overview, but I'd love to be able to understand all the details of this important interview.

I don't have much free time this week but I will try to proofread google translation and fix what might be necessary to fix. Not sure when it'll be ready though...

[carafon]

1 hour ago, crazyaboutmika said:

Tearing up after reading

A few people manage to survive a brain tumor and I hope with all my heart that she will  

 

I may be wrong but from some of the symptoms he describes (speaking harshly ) it may rather be the frontal part of the brain that is "attacked" than a more vital part 🙏

"La pitié salpetrière " is a hospital whith research departments  ,but the question is how far and fast it grows as the skull doesnt allow much place for the brain if the tumor is too big 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2019 by carafon

[mellody]

Your album exudes gaiety, yet your sister paloma, who was born with a disability and then miraculously survived a fall in 2010, sings too. and we guess other dramas ...

 

[Silence.] Yes, indeed, dramas that threatened to further destabilize my family and cause even more sadness for my mother. In the face of these catastrophes, we have always refused to allow ourselves to be defeated. On the contrary, we have become even stronger.

 

... this sounds as if we still don't know the whole story yet - what more is there to come?!  I like the last part of his answer though. It's true, the challenges of life make you stronger.

[Gabry74]

This interview made us understand a lot of things about these last years, both from a business and private point of view. I really hope that together they can overcome this battle. 🙏❤

[ellie]

17 minutes ago, carafon said:

I may be wrong but from some of the symptoms he describes (speaking harshly ) it may rather be the frontal part of the brain that is "attacked" than a more vital part 🙏

"La pitié salpetrière " is a hospital whith research departments  ,but the question is how far and fast it grows as the skull doesnt allow much place for the brain if the tumor is too big

 

She may be on research/clinical trials... Those vague symptoms and him saying it is an agressive form of cancer sounds like it could be glioblastoma though which doesnt have a good prognostic..

[crazyaboutmika]

So I fixed google translation :

 

 

My mother's obsession: that I am the best.  She's always afraid of others pulling me down "
 
An interview with Marc-Olivier Fogiel
 
MIKA
Marc-Olivier Fogiel. In your new album, "My Name is Michael Holbrook", your name in the civil registry, your mother sings.  She appears on the cover, appears in the clip "Tiny Love" and in photo on stage ... Why is she so present?
 
Mika. My mother built me.  She had in mind a "destination" and she told herself that I had to reach it at all costs.  Today, I am grateful to her.  This need to recognize her sacrifice and the intensity of our bond, I had not felt before.
 
Your mother wanted to save you?
 
She saved me.  For her, I had a lot of qualities but that put me a little at risk.  She always told me, "Either you'll be successful and you'll be happy, or you'll have a lot of problems."  It's strange to hear your mother say that when you're a child.  There was no alternative.  Hence a huge pressure.
 
How did she say that to you?  In a sweet or in a tough way?
 
Tough.   But at the same time with a kind of duality.  Because, on the other hand, she was extremely tender, maternal, protective.  I was fired from school, I truly had problems.  Instead of becoming a victim, I had to work and grow up much faster.
 
Did you understand then that it was for your good?
 
It seemed unfair to me.  Why did I have to do three hours of music a day while my sisters were not?  How many times have I been unable to sing for half an hour straight because I was just crying!  She forced me, "I'm staying here until you stop, you're going to sing me that song right now without crying."
 
Today, you speak of a need to thank her ...
 
I would have been terribly wrong not to pay a tribute to her while she is still alive, by my side.  One of the first songs I wrote for this album is "Tiny Love": it talks about surpassing oneself,  about going as high as we can with the means we have to give ourselves the feeling of having value.  And that's what my mother taught me.  By the time I finished "Tiny Love", she learned she had a serious heart problem.  She had to be operated on within 24 hours.  The same evening, I was on a plane to join her in Dubai.  As I sat down beside her, I felt invaded by a form of chaos linked to this coincidence; the day I finished this song, the disaster happened.  I thought, "What if the operation went wrong?"  Well, it went well, but there were complications.  My mother was bedridden with gaping wounds on her legs.  Yet she wanted to fight, because her heart had not stopped.  She decided to walk again and do everything to get there.  She was supposed to draw the costumes for a TV show I was showing in Milan.  I formally forbid her to come.  Now, the day of the first rehearsal, in Italy, she shows up!  In a wheelchair, accompanied by a nurse and one of my sisters.  And she said to me, "Here, I came to work."
 
Even sick, she could not help but accompany you?
 
Even if it was less present, she took risks ... I thought: my mother goes through hardships, life is difficult, so I'm going to dedicate myself to writing.  I want to make a beautiful album, a kind of medicine, not only for me but for my family.
 
Something that warms the heart. because you were touched in the heart?
 
Because I was touched by the fragility of life.
 
Have you thought of the worst?
 
If anything happened to my mother, if I lost her, I was afraid of not being able to work.  I would have said to myself: "It was me who hurt her by exhausting her, I killed her."  She is begged to stop and she takes a plane to cross the world.  For who?  For me.
 
How would you define your links?
 
Very, very intense.  It can ignite quickly.  When people hear us, they are often shocked by our harshness:  it is honesty because there is nothing to hide.  But it's always guided by love.
 
Your mother finally recovered from her heart problems ...
 
Yes, and she said to me, "Now I'm changing my hips, so I will not be in a wheelchair anymore and I can follow you on the next tour."
 
She does it for you or for her?
 
She wanted to continue working.  Being mobile was very important.  And everything is going well.  Life goes on.  Until this summer 2018.  I wrote half of the album and we find a house in Italy, we set up a studio.  She comes to see how it goes.  I notice that she is a little hard with me, not too much, just a little.  But hey, I keep going

Following my birthday, we are meeting in a hotel in Sardinia.  And I realize that she is very worried, very tired.  My sisters are wondering too.  I'm leaving for a concert. T hey make her have examinations.  After the scan, I get a message:  there is a big mass in her brain and I must immediately go back to Milan.  There begins this new phase, this new fight.
 
She has a brain tumor ...
 
A very important tumor.  That's why she had this strange behavior.  We decided to have her operated at La Pitié-Salpêtrière.  We are told that she is suffering from an extremely aggressive brain cancer.  From that moment, the life, the album, everything is paused.  My sisters, my brother, my father and I, we put ourselves in a bubble, we hide.  After the operation, we go back to this little house in Italy.  We close the door and stay together.  Then the chemotherapy begins in France.  And there, life must resume.  My life must resume.
 
Does this mean that you continued to create as the earth collapsed?
 
Yes, I realized how much she was a big part of my foundation ... I did not know that much before.  I then I stop working a little, I take a step back.  But one morning I get an e-mail from my mother, who says [silence]: "You do not answer me.  You judge all my interventions around your work displaced. You're wrong.  Who more than me cares about your success?  I'm old now, about to die from a brain tumor, but all I can tell you is that none of this I do for myself.  All I wish is that you always stay the best.  I never taught you to be trivial.  Now, today, I fear that you are under too much pressure that pulls you to banality.  It leads to anonymity and self-satisfaction.  Talk to me before it's too late.  Why do not you take the time to come see me"?
 
How did you react?
 
It was crazy, was not it?  I got into a black rage.  Through my restraint, I showed her my affection, my respect.  A few days later, I realized that this fury that I felt was not directed against her but against me, because I was wrong.  I realized that it was the same process as when she provoked me so that I could make it through when I was 10.
 
Rather than compose, you did not need to spend more time with her, enjoying her presence?
 
Me, I thought about today, and my mother was terrified by tomorrow.  Not for her, for me, and for us, for the family.  She thought that the effect of her illness on the people she loves, this pause, this time that was devoted to her rather than the construction of the future, was terrifying.
 
And you started working again?
 
It compelled me to throw myself into the emotion rather than confining myself to this kind of misplaced modesty.  It compelled me to be as authentic as possible.
 
She came to "The Voice", we saw you at a Christian Louboutin party. she was there, solid, beautiful.  Normally, with this disease, it's impossible ...
 
She is in her sixth chemotherapy session and is working on the tour, on styling.  She goes out, goes to the opera, to the theater ...  My mother absolutely wants to live life to the fullest.  And it's dangerous.  This disease causes a lot of discomfort.  It's very risky for the brain and the heart.  We are trying to calm her, but she absolutely wants to go out.  She is impossible to stop.
 
Did you get this energy from her?
 
She inspires me.  The starting point of the album is the illness of my mother and the whirlwind of anxieties and emotions that resulted.  It put us in a sort of urgency:  we have to create.
 
In fact, she asked you to become an adult . Have you become in two years?
 
We become adults when we are faced with the fear of losing someone.  At that moment, one is obliged to open one's eyes, to open one's heart.  This can happen at age 15, it can happen at age 60.  This transformation means that we inevitably stop relying on others.  On the contrary, it is the others who can rely on us.
 
And that's the point where you at now?
 
Yes, we are here now.
 
Your album exudes gaiety, yet your sister Paloma, who was born with a disability and then miraculously survived a fall in 2010, sings too. And we guess other dramas ...
 
[Silence.] Yes, indeed, dramas that threatened to further destabilize my family and cause even more sadness for my mother.  In the face of these catastrophes, we have always refused to allow ourselves to be defeated.  On the contrary, we have become even stronger.
 
It's all your story ...
 
Our family was built on this spirit of resistance, reinvention against loss, destruction.  My mother calls this " blooming, flowering ".  This summer, I was about to deliver the final recording of the album, it was my birthday and I decided to take a three-day vacation.  I'm in the car, on the road to my hotel, when she calls me furiously: "You did not want to be with me because it's hard to be with me!  Did not you think it would be nice to come back for your birthday"?  "I say angrily, " I just wanted a break. Why are you doing this to me"?  We fight, I get to the hotel, I go up to my room.  She had it filled with nine bunches of flowers!  I find a drawing of my flowered head and a little letter in which she wrote: "Remember, may your head always bloom."
 
So what…
 
I am filled with joy.  I call her back... she does not answer.  I insist.  My sister responds, yells, gives the phone to my father who puts the speaker on and says, "Talk to your mother, talk to your mother".   She was having a stroke.  And I, rather than being there, by her side, I'm in my room, trying to thank her, to calm her.  We reassured her, we hospitalized her.  When I hung up, I looked at all these flowers ...  All day she had only thought of these flowers.  That day, I made the decision never to react impulsively again.  Because now, in our relationship, the slightest gesture counts.  The next morning, I made the final recording and told myself it was a good thing to have her sing it.
 
Why ?
 
Because I gave her all her power . I put in the light this woman from the shadows.  When we know that she recorded this passage just three weeks after her brain surgery and the day before the start of her chemotherapy sessions, we realize that she has the power.  She has the last word, her and my sister Paloma.  They are similar.
 
How important is it for you to speak about it the way you're doing it?
 
The only things that matters in life are the people we love and the stories we tell about them.  In the old days, I was discreet when I talked about intimate questions.  Now, I understand that these difficult things must be tackled and made into beautiful things.  In the song "Paloma", there are these two lines: "I found you fighting in the darkness"  "And there was beauty in that too".  It seems incredible:  where is the beauty in someone dying?  And yet, I promise you there is beauty.  A horrible beauty, wild, murderous, but beauty anyway.
 
There is also beauty in your mother's illness ...
 
And there is also beauty in the way our family, and my mother in particular, manages such a frightening situation.
 
When you project yourself, are you still afraid?
 
[Silence.] Yes, it's inevitable.  But this fear, I compensate with a feeling of liberating gratitude for the love of life that the disease has injected into our family.
 
Is it complicated for your companion to find a place in the middle of all this?
 
Andy has a very strong relationship with my mother.  It was with him that I revealed my homosexuality to my family. We were sitting in the kitchen.  My mother said to me: "In the end, what difference does it make? I always knew it. If you did not know it, that's your problem". [Laughs] There was a moment when Andy and I separated briefly.  And she fought for two months to bring him back.
 
The album is called "my Name Is Michael Holbrook". We could add "Son of Joannie and Michael", right?
 
Yes, I am Mika, son of Joannie and Michael.  And I'm proud to be part of this lineage.
 
Interview Marc-Olivier Fogiel

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z_nSrn7owWV4HO_FqJFqdJpXcOMd5Yvc3zLjLX7WMeo/edit?usp=drivesdk

[carafon]

55 minutes ago, ellie said:

 

She may be on research/clinical trials... Those vague symptoms and him saying it is an agressive form of cancer sounds like it could be glioblastoma though which doesnt have a good prognostic..

I know but didn't want to be too pessimistic here..... Especially as she seemed to be quite OK while being at the Louboutin show.... 

[Vicki]

Thank you, thank you once again crazyaboutmika for your time and love put into your translation skills. Very much appreciated  😘😘😘

[crazyaboutmika]

7 hours ago, Vicki said:

Thank you, thank you once again crazyaboutmika for your time and love put into your translation skills. Very much appreciated  😘😘😘

I fixed google translation and as it is much better nowadays it took less time than translating it all

[Mikasister]

Thanks so much, Anne.  Very emotional interview. Just wish with all my heart everything goes well for Mika's mom. 

Edited September 26, 2019 by Mikasister

[Treasa]

1 hour ago, crazyaboutmika said:

I fixed google translation and as it is much better nowadays it took less time than translating it all

Thank you Anne.