February 2012

Hello everyone,

Winter?s first cold wave shows its face on the roads of France, with temperatures nearing 15 degrees below for the next few days... Stoically, Francette at the wheel, I navigating the iPad, we continue to trace our wake through the French provinces: our tour of lectures for ?Connaissance du Monde? (Knowledge of the World) is truly an extraordinary success, generally packed theatres, audiences that delight me when they laugh, whisper or shout , at moments now well identified in our film about New Caledonia? and especially the infinite kindness of people who come to see me at the end of the show for an autograph: they seeem to have caught a sunbeam in their eyes.

You know I?m a geek, and this year marks a truly decisive technological progress: we are now able, in many theaters, to project our film with the theater?s big digital in sizes and in image quality unknown to date: last week in the largest theatre of Strasbourg UGC Ciné Cities, our film - shot in high definition with high performance but modestly sized cameras - was projected on a 15 m wide screen... Very impressive! However, I still have some sympathy for more "classical" theaters as we continue to use our traditionnal projector projector, as in picturesque Salle Rameau, in Lyons, where we have half a dozen conferences pleasant, or ?boutique? theatres in Villefranche sur Saône, Seynod or Illzach.

January has seen us driving thousands of miles from the Charentes region to the Alps or the region of Alsace; this month ends in Champagne, which I deem a good sign ; in three weeks we?ll return to our catamaran Banana Split, in the Marquesas, in Polynesia, while Stanislas, a talented French singer and composer at work mixing the new album of songs - the first in 25 years! - He proposed to produce and direct for me: Stan is the son of François Renoult, composer of some of my first songs, such as ? Je l?appelle Canelle?, it felt strange, the other day, to be back in a Paris sound studio, with a dynamic team of musicians ... It felt like going ba k to the sixties and seventies when we spent so much time in the recording studio.

On January 31st, I have perormed from very poupular French music Tv show, Shabada, which will be published in march; Another French Tv star, Mireille Dumas, has also begun shooting a 25 minute documentary about my way of life; ilt will also be broadcast in March : so in a way, I will still be with you althogh I am flying back to the boat in the Marquesas on february 20

I wish you a lovely month of february, hopefully not too cold.
Antoine