Testimony of faith. Who am I going to sing for?

Don’t be an actress, you won’t be able to earn a living. Dad’s severe injunction weighed on me for a long time. But my desire was stronger. At the conservatory, my vocation was strengthened: when I sing for an audience, I feel at home. Then the illness of bulimia caught up with me, and the atheist that I was, like my parents, had an unexpected encounter with the Lord. And he didn’t let me go. Summer 2018, installed in a large house in Lorraine, I have everything I need. Except the essential: singing.

A pressing suggestion arises within me: “Caroline, set out to sing every day. » I resist, take advice. “Trust in “your higher power”,” a dear friend whispers to me. How to do ? Organize a tour, plan performance venues and accommodation? It’s beyond my strength. I will therefore leave it to Providence. I terminate my lease, donate furniture to Emmaüs, enroll my daughter, Pauline, in a correspondence course in CM1, and we get into my little car fully loaded: around thirty notebooks containing the one hundred and twenty best-known songs in the repertoire , a keyboard with amps, a suitcase of costumes… Only our first night is planned, at the Poor Clares of Reims.

The next morning, I ask myself: who am I going to sing for today? In the sisters’ parking lot, as I put Pauline’s guitar in the car, a joyful group of Faith and Light appeared: “Oh no, we didn’t have the concert,” protests Patrice. I unpack my things, and off we go singing. Around 5 p.m., I worry about our next accommodation. They reassure me: “Don’t move, you’re going to go to Bénédicte and Jean-Pierre, in Compiègne!” » That same evening, the local manager of Faith and Light welcomed me with open arms: “Tomorrow, I will be manning the Red Cross stand at the sale. I had booked a DJ but he canceled! » There again, I sang all afternoon: Brel, Brassens, Sardou… For almost eighteen months, our roaming took us to the seaside, to the foot of the ski slopes, to hospitals, and even in a supermarket. Everywhere, I verified the solidity of my contract with the Good Lord: I help myself, you help me. So much so that I got a show out of it*. In songs, of course.

* “A call from heaven”, every Saturday in March, at 7:30 p.m., at the Clavel Theater, 3 Rue Clavel 75019 Paris. Show on tour throughout France. More info: youtube.com/@CarolineFerry.