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my datebook, no engagement, no performance coming up, no inter­view, no recording session, no gala. From now on, I could live my life from day to day.

A year ago, such freedom would have overwhelmed me with anguish.

But so many things had happened in the course of that single year. I was no longer the same person, I knew. I no longer had the same fears, the same apprehensions. And I was confident, happy about my newfound freedom, about the unknown waiting for me.

I believe that to live is to change, to discover what's new and to find surprises in everything, in music, in one's life and loves . . .

For a long time, I couldn't think of all this happiness in my life and my career without feeling a kind of fear or anxiety, without ask­ing myself a thousand and one questions, for which I had no answers.

Will it all last? What do you do, become, where do you go, when you've already realized your fondest dreams? Do you have to stay there and just watch the clouds roll by? Can you find other dreams to fulfill? Other lives to live? Is there life after the dream, after show business? Outside of show business?

And what will I do when my sabbatical is over? What will I have to say, to sing? And will I be able to find the audience I left behind on the night of January 1, 2000? Will I be able to reconnect with them? Will I find that we are still on the same wavelength?

I would always keep on singing. It seemed obvious to me. This sabbatical was only a pause. But I couldn't help thinking that I wouldn't be the same at the end of it.

For more than a year, for any number of reasons, we put off the day, month after month. Each time I realized that I was relieved, even if I didn't dare admit it. I was in the jaws of a strange dilemma. More and more I wanted to stop, to rest, recharge, and be alone with the man of my life. I wanted to take stock of my career, my life, my loves; and at the same time, doing such a thing really frightened me.

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