Extract of Interview in Side Line Magazine, Belgium #36, August 2001, Belgium

Interviewer: Stéphane Froidcoeur for Side Line: www.side-line.com

I hope your husband didn’t read my review about the Ariel album, he would suspect me to be in love with you!? 

He did read it, and I found him crying himself to sleep. But the therapist says it’s all for the best and the self-mutilation should stop soon ;-)

An impressive list of guest-musicians contributed to this new album. How did you work and compose together with them and why do you prefer working with other people …? 

Ideas are pollen on the feet of bees. Tension sparks energy … Mark and I write the bare bones, inviting guests to help sculpt… The duet between Samantha’s flute and Brett’s classical guitar on ‘Tale of a Thorn’ was so intimate, I removed my vocal … Harry’s charango was also spontaneous.

What kind of garden, Alice is visiting in ‘The garden of live flowers’? 

It is the moment when Alice defies the Queen: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” It is the game of royalties: “The knave of hearts, he stole the tarts.” It is the time for jam: “your cards are all blowing away in a Marmalade Parade”. Flowers speak, petals scatter, waterlilies swirl, trees hum, mountains sigh, a salamander swims in fire, a bird steals a soul, and far out in the ocean, a seagod stirs under coral reefs. Nature is on the march: King and Queen of Hearts: Chess, Checkmate.

Evoking a new-age style, Enya is undoubtedly one of the most popular artists, but I personally feel a bit sad when much more talented and emotional artists like you will probably remain unknown! 

“A Hundred Lucky Days. A Thousand Several Ways”, so goes the libretto in The Fairy Queen (Purcell) … There is a tale by Dunsany, where Fame rejects a poet. After years of neglect, Fame walks by once more. Again she turns her back. But this time she whispers over her shoulder: “I will see you in the graveyard in a 100 years.”

You released your album Alexandria, a few months before Hyperium went on other territories… How do you look back on the whole story? 

Birds played in the city-square, where I held my first contract and foreign reviews. Rain began to fall. I could not believe my music was heard in distant lands. For 18 months, payment was promised. The album sold out, was pressed again, listeners wrote from afar. I discovered compilations, featuring my music on other labels. Then came nightmares: executives slicing off the tops of heads to make cds of human flesh. These they stacked into metal pipes. As they pressed, blood poured. My cd was in a full pipe, but in a back room new pipelines were started … a hotel on fire. I held my mandolin, a voice screamed “Jump!”: falling, flying, I became the Blackbird.