Mélancolique anonyme [English translation]

[Intro: Soprano & Thierry Desroses]

- Good evening, everybody. Welcome to our weekly meeting of depressed anonymous. Let's give an especially warm welcome to our new members, for whom it certainly isn't easy to come to us. We're going to begin this meeting with a personal account. Who wants to start?

- Me

- You? We'll listen to you well.

- Thanks

-

[Couplet 1: Soprano]

Good evening, my name's Saïd (Good evening Saïd!)

I'm 27 and I'm depressed

I'm one of those artists who writes out their lives

Like leaving a final letter next to an empty bottle of Prozac

It's been very difficult for me to come here, to accept my addiction to sadness

It all started when I saw my mom in tears throw up everything she had drunk from my bottles by the sea

I blame myself for seeing her so sad when she had never been the reason for my scars

Nor anyone from my extended family, but they're dressed in black every time they listen to my CDs

I took the risk of making music

Detailing my life to the public to heal an unhappiness with life

I'm aware of my selfishness

When I see how they put up with the success of my lyrics

I fill up my verses with melancholic rhymes

And my voice grazes the over-rhythmic alcoholic coma

I'm the beer that froths with my themes

A drunkard who gets drunk with packs of anguish

-

[Refrain: Soprano]

Because I found my happiness in singing my misfortunes

Learned again how to laugh though my tears

But I realize that I hurt those that I love

Since I drank glasses of sadness to be less sad

Learned again how to live while being underground

Found again my heart after it was in stone

For my family, I'm with the depressed anonymous

-

[Couplet 2: Soprano]

At first I didn't rap to live through it

We all rapped on a block around a post for the high

I shared through improv, I strung together words

I turned on the mic and my mouth was a pipe

I worked on my word plays

I no longer slept

All my nights where blank so that my pages no longer were

I made my friends laugh thanks to le Petit Robert¹

But everything changed when they took away my role as a father

I was hurting to the point of wanting to cut myself

It was necessary to see myself saying I love you to hatred

It was necessary to hear my mom crying all night

Because of the customs that pushed my dad towards polygamy

It's true that I've left the shadows

But the world is amazed that I could just write "La Colombe"²

The more you grow up the less you smile

Time blows and destroys these sand castles that we've constructed

You know today that a woman has sobered me

Since I have a lower alcohol level in my writing

I'm less often in a state of sadness

But I still just as much blow up this fucking "mélanco-test"³

-

[Refrain: Soprano]

[Interlude: Diam's & Thierry Desroses]

- Thanks a lot, Saïd. Thanks for the personal account. Would someone else like to continue?

- I'd like to...

- We'll listen to you

[Couplet 3: Diam's]

Good evening, my name's Mélanie (Good evening Mélanie!)

I'm 26 and I'm depressed too

I'm one of those young girls who hates their lives

An artist in spite of myself because the psychiatrists couldn't live up to their job titles

Since forever the pain in the ink has moved me

I miss love but it upsets me so I sing my scars

A young girl lives, guided by Lexomil⁴

A little exotic like the future, so I'm attached to self-satisfaction

[Little girl, I wake up as I dream

That I could heal my pain, here at the Dôme de Marseille⁵

Yeah I dream of peace, far from paranoia

Yeah I dream of being 13 again, yeah I dream, Soprano!]⁶

[Outro: Soprano & Pascale Clarck]

- Has this therapy group helped you to heal your depression?

- Honestly it's done some good for me to see that I'm not alone and to have spoken more about it. It's true that it's done a lot for me, a lot of good.

- Have you figured out why you had fallen into depression?

- You know, the world is so crazy. People, they no longer have values, there are more people... I see a lot of people around me who hit rock bottom, and a lot of people around me who have nothing left to lose. All of that scares me...

- It scares you?

- It really scares me because there's nothing more dangerous than a person who has nothing left to lose...

• Artist:Soprano
• Album:Puisqu'il faut vivre (2007)