Tell me how Ayahuasqueros came about.
It was a project that initially started with France Culture, so it was national radio like NPR in America. The idea was to do a piece about poetry that still had an active relation to the society we’re living in. Months before that I met Jeremy Narby, who’s the narrator of the movie. I was fascinated by the concept of the icaros, which are the tribes’ poetry that they sing when they are under the influence of the ayahuasca. They have a function of healing, and of allowing you to go through the experience.

What do you mean when you describe icaros as “poetry in its active form”?
The way they’re singing it, especially the Shipibo tribes, it’s like a capella, and it only gets its zone and vibration when they are under the influence of the ayahuasca. They need to drink and intoxicate themselves, basically, through the ayahuasca.

What I meant by “active poetry” is that those icaros still have a function: a healing function. They allow you to open your heart or open your emotion. This is what icaros is about, to access parts of yourself that are blocked. I thought that was also what poetry had a function back in the days, in Europe. Not so much anymore, now it’s kind of a dead form.

I assume you drank the ayahuasca.
Sure. In order to be able to record it, I had to drink it, because they wouldn’t really allow me to be there recording it and not be in the same zone they were.