I wish you endless dreams and the furious desire to make a few come trueNew Year best wishes offered by Jacques Brel on January 1st, 1968 in an interview for Europe 1 radio.

For once, no picture in this first article of 2018. I would like to share with you New Year wishes offered 50 years ago to the day by one of my favorite song writers and singers, Jacques Brel. They deeply moved me.

I wish you endless dreams and the furious desire to make a few come true

I wish you to love what should be loved and to forget what should be forgotten

I wish you passions

I wish you silences

I wish you bird songs when you wake up, and children laughter

I wish you to resist the rut, the indifference, the negative traits of our time

Above all, I wish you to be yourself

Jacques Brel seems to have improvised this during an interview he gave on January 1st, 1968 to Europe 1 radio station in France.
Respect... and gratitude.

Now, this pushes me to raise my new-year resolutions one notch – or two...

The original (French) version is here. If you have suggestions on how to improve this English translation, let me know (translating quasi-poetry is hard, and I know the above is not perfect from a grammatical perspective, but I wanted to stay as close as possible to the original meaning)

More to come, stay tuned!

P.S. Many thanks to Laure for having enabled me to discover this beautiful text, and to Mr Francis de Laveleye at Editions Jacques Brel (Brel's official publisher) for having given me the authentic version (many variations are floating around on the web, I wanted to go back to the original).