Learning French

When we were little kids, I’d catch my brother talking to himself in faux French while pretending to curl his imaginary mustache, inspired, no duobt, by Pepé Le Pew. Like my brother, I’ve always loved the cadence of the French language and often find myself singing in made-up French. The language lends itself to melodies I wouldn’t write without pretending I was singing in French. The first time I sang the melody of a song I’m calling “What If”, I sang it in made-up French. The more I sang it – even after I wrote the lyrics in English – the more I wanted the recorded version to sound like I was singing in a Parisian café, or at least a café I imagined in Paris. I’ve never been there myself.

Here are the English lyrics and a simple recording of the song:

What if the light of a million stars
lit up the night showed you where you are

What if the rainfall on an empty stream
fed the seeds of a hidden dream

We’re sailing on a sea
searching for a breeze
reaching for the land we need

What if the tides and the moon above
pulled on your heart to another love

What if the light of a single star
lit up your night showed you where you are

           

When I need a plumber or a dentist here in Corvallis, I call my friend Beth. Last week, I needed someone who spoke French. Beth told me to call her friend Cath, who told me to call her friend Marilyn, who told me to call her friend Arthur. What I needed was someone to help me with a translation of “What If” that my Parisian friend Evelyne had done a few days earlier. She’d recorded her translation, but even her slowest performance was too fast for me to learn. I needed help. The last thing I wanted to do was sing verses of my song in butchered French. 

Here's Evelyne’s translation:

Imagine que la lumière d’un million d’ étoiles
éclaire la nuit et te montre où tu es

Imagine que l’ averse dans un ruisseau vide
nourrisse les graines d’un rêve caché

Nous naviguons sur une mer
À la recherche d’ une brise
Qui nous guidera vers la terre désirée

Imagine que la marée et la lune là-haut
te dirigent vers un autre amour

Imagine que la lumière d’une seule étoile
éclaire ta nuit et te montre où tu es

It’s interesting to me that the words ‘what if’ have no direct equivalent in French. Evelyne used ‘imagine’, a beautiful word, especially in French. Using ‘imagine’ makes me think about the song in a whole different way.

When I finally called Arthur, a Belgian gentleman in his mid-seventies, he invited me to come by the next day. He had typed up Evelyne’s translation by then, handed me a copy, and we got to work. The first thing he asked me to do was read the French out loud. I told him I didn’t know how. He said do it anyway, so I did, and frankly, I thought it sounded pretty good. But when I’d finished and finally looked over at him, his head was bowed, almost in prayer. He was smiling, not exactly laughing, but close.

 So, we began. He spoke the first phrase. I repeated it. He said, “No. It’s que.” So I said, “que,” and he said, “Nooo, it’s que,” until I said que more or less the way he wanted me to say que, at which time I recorded myself so I could practice at home. It went on like that phrase by phrase. He’d smile, then shake his head, then repeat, then smile some more, patient but impatient, willing me to improve. It took over an hour to get through the chorus. I’ll go back in a couple of weeks for the last verses.

Yesterday, I went to see Marilyn, the woman who’d originally told me to call Arthur. Marilyn’s in her late 80s. Her husband, Georges Lifermann, was a French songwriter, known to everyone in France for a song he wrote called, “La Lune est morte”. He died a few years ago. When I told Marilyn why I needed her Arthur’s help, she invited me for tea. She wanted to hear some of my music and to share some of Georges’s. I liked her immediately. We talked about chamber music and opera and songwriting for an hour before I sang “What If” a capella (in English), then played “Heaven” and “You” on Georges’s piano, two songs I thought represented my songwriting pretty well. Then we sat at her computer and looked at youTube videos of Georges’s songs being sung by various singers and choirs. My favorite was a video of him improvising on the piano in their living room, the same piano I’d just played. He was in his mid 90s then and still creating beautiful melodies; melodies from a time when songs like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” or “Everytime We Say Goodbye” were written. Songs that move through you like a movie, sweep you away into an imaginary world. Songs like that aren’t written too often these days. It made me want to listen to more of them and see what I can learn.