Malka’s cottage writing spotWhat question do you wish someone would ask you about your book?Why did it take you nearly 40 years from your first interview with Joni Mitchell to publish your book of conversations with her?Yes, it’s a huge gap, due to my penchant for bundling the past into the present and the future. Over the years I’ve treasured those two ’70s interviews with Joni. These interviews were so complete, I felt nothing could ever top them. That’s why I was reluctant to read the full transcription of them that had been presented to me on my birthday by my son Daniel. I kept these compelling pages in the drawer.Serendipity intervened: I can’t explain what else could have brought on the sudden, strong urge to pull the pages out of the drawer and read them. I found, to my amazement, that the interviews were much better on the page than on the air, where they escaped before you could reflect on what Joni said. Here the pages offered a moment to reflect on the nuggets embedded in Joni’s narrative.I was dying to share this bounty with the world! One afternoon, while buying groceries, I bumped into the great literary agent Linda McKnight. Right there I bubbled over at how surprised I was to find how much better Joni’s interviews read off the page, how timeless they were . . . Linda said she remembered hearing those interviews when they were aired, and that if they were even better on the page, they’d make a book that would live for many years, not just one season. She suggested I email her a few pages. So, as soon as I could get to my laptop, I sent Linda a condensed version of the interviews. A day or two later, Linda emailed me that the publisher of ECW Press, Jack David, loved the interviews and was interested in publishing them!
* * *
About MalkaI have an irrational fear of mice. I’ve roamed the desert with nomadic Bedouin tribes without fear — well, almost without fear — but if I see a tiny cute mouse at the cottage I shriek in panic as if it were a lion. I’m a grandmother who is crazy over her three grandchildren. (If you were to foretell it even when I was 50, I would have laughed my head off at the notion.) The older I get the more I go nuts over Ray Charles. He “ages” better than any good wine, as far as I’m concerned. I never had a clue how cold cold could be until the December when I first landed in Canada. Don’t kill me, but I don’t like Breaking Bad. (But I love The Wire.) I don’t like junk food — maybe that’s why I don’t like Breaking Bad.Whenever I’d be booked to sing at a casino, I’d get gambling chips “courtesy of the house.” I’d hand them to my guitarist/conductor. I believed, still do, that destiny allowed me only a certain amount of luck, good luck. I’d rather not blow it on casino tables. I’m crazy for soccer, and especially Messi. And so when I moved to a condo, I advised my next door neighbour not to call the police when she hears me screaming my head off.When I went down to the mine at Uranium City, all the miners came out. They believed that it was bad luck for a woman to go down to the mine. I’m very surprised to see my sons when they fly over to visit. In my heart they are still my babies, and here their hair is thinning or silvered. I’m moved to tears by how beautiful an autumn leaf is just before it dies. I learned to cook seafood dishes from the wonderful chefs at Joso’s fish restaurant. (Joso sang with me in the duo Malka & Joso.)* * *Thank you to Malka for answering our questions, and to Kat at ECW Press for making the connection. For more Writer’s Block, click here.Malka’s advice to writers: don’t even think of writing unless you couldn’t breath or live without working as a writer.What’s the toughest part about being a writer?Writing in English, my second language. Or more correctly my third. My first being my native Hebrew and my second, music. In Hebrew you read and write right to left. In music, not only horizontally — left to right — but vertically, which allows one to express at the very same moment almost as many elements at the same moment as in life. In comparison, writing prose felt so linear and dry, it frustrated the hell out of me. (Still does . . .)Why do you write?I have always been driven by a tremendous need to share the gifts offered me by circumstances of fate and history. I find it thrilling to share unique gifts like being the first and only western woman invited to stay in women’s sections of the Bedouin clan. This unique vantage point inspired my novel, Sulha.Or rare gifts like the interviews that Joni Mitchell gave me over the course of 40 years, which culminated in the book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, Conversations with Malka Marom. Joni is such a mystery — no one has yet been able to imitate her. Not even she herself. And when I realized that this book would offer a rare glimpse at what’s behind this mystery, I had a tremendous desire to publish it for the wealth it contains about art, music, poetry and the creative process; frankly, I was dying to share it with the whole world.What’s the most surprising thing about being a writer?That it would take me 14 years to write Sulha — and just as surprising that I, a social creature by nature and profession, would thrive on so much near-solitude.It was also surprising that my fictional characters would become such a part of my real life — relatives, friends, colleagues and lovers. This happened to such a degree my husband advised me to claim them as dependents on my income tax return!What are your must-read literary websites/publications?The New Yorker & brainpickings.orgHave you ever experienced writer’s block? What did you do about it?My remedy for writer’s block: I change my writing place. From the desk to bed, to a garden chair, from my study to the kitchen, or the living room and/or from the city to the cottage. More than once or twice, when no change of room, chair or bed proved helpful, I changed countries.Or I’d change my writing time: writing late at night, when my inner critic is too tired to interfere. Or writing before dawn, when my inner critic is still asleep . . .Malka’s cottage writing spotWhat question do you wish someone would ask you about your book?Why did it take you nearly 40 years from your first interview with Joni Mitchell to publish your book of conversations with her?Yes, it’s a huge gap, due to my penchant for bundling the past into the present and the future. Over the years I’ve treasured those two ’70s interviews with Joni. These interviews were so complete, I felt nothing could ever top them. That’s why I was reluctant to read the full transcription of them that had been presented to me on my birthday by my son Daniel. I kept these compelling pages in the drawer.Serendipity intervened: I can’t explain what else could have brought on the sudden, strong urge to pull the pages out of the drawer and read them. I found, to my amazement, that the interviews were much better on the page than on the air, where they escaped before you could reflect on what Joni said. Here the pages offered a moment to reflect on the nuggets embedded in Joni’s narrative.I was dying to share this bounty with the world! One afternoon, while buying groceries, I bumped into the great literary agent Linda McKnight. Right there I bubbled over at how surprised I was to find how much better Joni’s interviews read off the page, how timeless they were . . . Linda said she remembered hearing those interviews when they were aired, and that if they were even better on the page, they’d make a book that would live for many years, not just one season. She suggested I email her a few pages. So, as soon as I could get to my laptop, I sent Linda a condensed version of the interviews. A day or two later, Linda emailed me that the publisher of ECW Press, Jack David, loved the interviews and was interested in publishing them!
* * *
About MalkaI have an irrational fear of mice. I’ve roamed the desert with nomadic Bedouin tribes without fear — well, almost without fear — but if I see a tiny cute mouse at the cottage I shriek in panic as if it were a lion. I’m a grandmother who is crazy over her three grandchildren. (If you were to foretell it even when I was 50, I would have laughed my head off at the notion.) The older I get the more I go nuts over Ray Charles. He “ages” better than any good wine, as far as I’m concerned. I never had a clue how cold cold could be until the December when I first landed in Canada. Don’t kill me, but I don’t like Breaking Bad. (But I love The Wire.) I don’t like junk food — maybe that’s why I don’t like Breaking Bad.Whenever I’d be booked to sing at a casino, I’d get gambling chips “courtesy of the house.” I’d hand them to my guitarist/conductor. I believed, still do, that destiny allowed me only a certain amount of luck, good luck. I’d rather not blow it on casino tables. I’m crazy for soccer, and especially Messi. And so when I moved to a condo, I advised my next door neighbour not to call the police when she hears me screaming my head off.When I went down to the mine at Uranium City, all the miners came out. They believed that it was bad luck for a woman to go down to the mine. I’m very surprised to see my sons when they fly over to visit. In my heart they are still my babies, and here their hair is thinning or silvered. I’m moved to tears by how beautiful an autumn leaf is just before it dies. I learned to cook seafood dishes from the wonderful chefs at Joso’s fish restaurant. (Joso sang with me in the duo Malka & Joso.)* * *Thank you to Malka for answering our questions, and to Kat at ECW Press for making the connection. For more Writer’s Block, click here.
Singer, radio broadcaster, documentary maker, and writer Malka Marom recently published a collection of interviews with Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, Conversations with Malka Marom, with ECW Press. The interviews took place over a forty year period, the most recent of which happened in 2012; the common thread through each interview is the discussion of the creative process. This is something Malka herself is very well versed in so we asked her to share some of her inspirations and writerly experiences with us.* * *Is there one stand-out moment or experience you had that helped you realize you wanted to become a writer?It happened on my first afternoon away from the remote encampment of the nomadic Bedouin clan with whom I’d been roaming the Sinai for the past few weeks. At around 4 pm, just before the sun disappeared behind the towering granite mountains of the Sinai desert, I was munching on dried figs and dates while emptying every tin in the provisions box (diced tomatoes, tuna, olives, both green & black) into the pasta that I’d just boiled, when a story idea came to me in a flash. With it came an irresistible urge to jot it down quick-fast, before it evaporated like sweet lake water in a desert mirage.This had never happened to me before. I had never courted story ideas. I had never thought of myself as a writer, even though I was credited with writing radio documentaries I’d produced for the CBC. I had never entertained the idea of being a novelist, not when I was a child, not even when I read and fell in love with Austen, Tolstoy, Mahfouz, Melville, Conrad, Isaac Singer, Márquez, Agnon . . . I hadn’t thought of it on a conscious level, I mean. But unconsciously . . .Looking back on it now I wonder if it wasn’t the urge to write, that drove me to go “nuts,” as most of my friends and relatives suggested, and to accept the rare invitation extended to me by the nomadic Bedouin clan to stay with them alone for weeks and months at a time. Well, come to think of it, was it not the desire to be a writer what propelled me to go to the desert in the first place — and to prepare a CBC Radio documentary on Bedouin culture, as I believed it was at that time?And since I’m tracking back, was it not my desire to be a writer that drove me to read all the children’s books in my hometown’s library before I entered grade one public school, and to continue to read, read, read . . .Malka’s advice to writers: don’t even think of writing unless you couldn’t breath or live without working as a writer.What’s the toughest part about being a writer?Writing in English, my second language. Or more correctly my third. My first being my native Hebrew and my second, music. In Hebrew you read and write right to left. In music, not only horizontally — left to right — but vertically, which allows one to express at the very same moment almost as many elements at the same moment as in life. In comparison, writing prose felt so linear and dry, it frustrated the hell out of me. (Still does . . .)Why do you write?I have always been driven by a tremendous need to share the gifts offered me by circumstances of fate and history. I find it thrilling to share unique gifts like being the first and only western woman invited to stay in women’s sections of the Bedouin clan. This unique vantage point inspired my novel, Sulha.Or rare gifts like the interviews that Joni Mitchell gave me over the course of 40 years, which culminated in the book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, Conversations with Malka Marom. Joni is such a mystery — no one has yet been able to imitate her. Not even she herself. And when I realized that this book would offer a rare glimpse at what’s behind this mystery, I had a tremendous desire to publish it for the wealth it contains about art, music, poetry and the creative process; frankly, I was dying to share it with the whole world.What’s the most surprising thing about being a writer?That it would take me 14 years to write Sulha — and just as surprising that I, a social creature by nature and profession, would thrive on so much near-solitude.It was also surprising that my fictional characters would become such a part of my real life — relatives, friends, colleagues and lovers. This happened to such a degree my husband advised me to claim them as dependents on my income tax return!What are your must-read literary websites/publications?The New Yorker & brainpickings.orgHave you ever experienced writer’s block? What did you do about it?My remedy for writer’s block: I change my writing place. From the desk to bed, to a garden chair, from my study to the kitchen, or the living room and/or from the city to the cottage. More than once or twice, when no change of room, chair or bed proved helpful, I changed countries.Or I’d change my writing time: writing late at night, when my inner critic is too tired to interfere. Or writing before dawn, when my inner critic is still asleep . . .Malka’s cottage writing spotWhat question do you wish someone would ask you about your book?Why did it take you nearly 40 years from your first interview with Joni Mitchell to publish your book of conversations with her?Yes, it’s a huge gap, due to my penchant for bundling the past into the present and the future. Over the years I’ve treasured those two ’70s interviews with Joni. These interviews were so complete, I felt nothing could ever top them. That’s why I was reluctant to read the full transcription of them that had been presented to me on my birthday by my son Daniel. I kept these compelling pages in the drawer.Serendipity intervened: I can’t explain what else could have brought on the sudden, strong urge to pull the pages out of the drawer and read them. I found, to my amazement, that the interviews were much better on the page than on the air, where they escaped before you could reflect on what Joni said. Here the pages offered a moment to reflect on the nuggets embedded in Joni’s narrative.I was dying to share this bounty with the world! One afternoon, while buying groceries, I bumped into the great literary agent Linda McKnight. Right there I bubbled over at how surprised I was to find how much better Joni’s interviews read off the page, how timeless they were . . . Linda said she remembered hearing those interviews when they were aired, and that if they were even better on the page, they’d make a book that would live for many years, not just one season. She suggested I email her a few pages. So, as soon as I could get to my laptop, I sent Linda a condensed version of the interviews. A day or two later, Linda emailed me that the publisher of ECW Press, Jack David, loved the interviews and was interested in publishing them!
* * *
About MalkaI have an irrational fear of mice. I’ve roamed the desert with nomadic Bedouin tribes without fear — well, almost without fear — but if I see a tiny cute mouse at the cottage I shriek in panic as if it were a lion. I’m a grandmother who is crazy over her three grandchildren. (If you were to foretell it even when I was 50, I would have laughed my head off at the notion.) The older I get the more I go nuts over Ray Charles. He “ages” better than any good wine, as far as I’m concerned. I never had a clue how cold cold could be until the December when I first landed in Canada. Don’t kill me, but I don’t like Breaking Bad. (But I love The Wire.) I don’t like junk food — maybe that’s why I don’t like Breaking Bad.Whenever I’d be booked to sing at a casino, I’d get gambling chips “courtesy of the house.” I’d hand them to my guitarist/conductor. I believed, still do, that destiny allowed me only a certain amount of luck, good luck. I’d rather not blow it on casino tables. I’m crazy for soccer, and especially Messi. And so when I moved to a condo, I advised my next door neighbour not to call the police when she hears me screaming my head off.When I went down to the mine at Uranium City, all the miners came out. They believed that it was bad luck for a woman to go down to the mine. I’m very surprised to see my sons when they fly over to visit. In my heart they are still my babies, and here their hair is thinning or silvered. I’m moved to tears by how beautiful an autumn leaf is just before it dies. I learned to cook seafood dishes from the wonderful chefs at Joso’s fish restaurant. (Joso sang with me in the duo Malka & Joso.)* * *Thank you to Malka for answering our questions, and to Kat at ECW Press for making the connection. For more Writer’s Block, click here.Malka’s advice to writers: don’t even think of writing unless you couldn’t breath or live without working as a writer.What’s the toughest part about being a writer?Writing in English, my second language. Or more correctly my third. My first being my native Hebrew and my second, music. In Hebrew you read and write right to left. In music, not only horizontally — left to right — but vertically, which allows one to express at the very same moment almost as many elements at the same moment as in life. In comparison, writing prose felt so linear and dry, it frustrated the hell out of me. (Still does . . .)Why do you write?I have always been driven by a tremendous need to share the gifts offered me by circumstances of fate and history. I find it thrilling to share unique gifts like being the first and only western woman invited to stay in women’s sections of the Bedouin clan. This unique vantage point inspired my novel, Sulha.Or rare gifts like the interviews that Joni Mitchell gave me over the course of 40 years, which culminated in the book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, Conversations with Malka Marom. Joni is such a mystery — no one has yet been able to imitate her. Not even she herself. And when I realized that this book would offer a rare glimpse at what’s behind this mystery, I had a tremendous desire to publish it for the wealth it contains about art, music, poetry and the creative process; frankly, I was dying to share it with the whole world.What’s the most surprising thing about being a writer?That it would take me 14 years to write Sulha — and just as surprising that I, a social creature by nature and profession, would thrive on so much near-solitude.It was also surprising that my fictional characters would become such a part of my real life — relatives, friends, colleagues and lovers. This happened to such a degree my husband advised me to claim them as dependents on my income tax return!What are your must-read literary websites/publications?The New Yorker & brainpickings.orgHave you ever experienced writer’s block? What did you do about it?My remedy for writer’s block: I change my writing place. From the desk to bed, to a garden chair, from my study to the kitchen, or the living room and/or from the city to the cottage. More than once or twice, when no change of room, chair or bed proved helpful, I changed countries.Or I’d change my writing time: writing late at night, when my inner critic is too tired to interfere. Or writing before dawn, when my inner critic is still asleep . . .Malka’s cottage writing spotWhat question do you wish someone would ask you about your book?Why did it take you nearly 40 years from your first interview with Joni Mitchell to publish your book of conversations with her?Yes, it’s a huge gap, due to my penchant for bundling the past into the present and the future. Over the years I’ve treasured those two ’70s interviews with Joni. These interviews were so complete, I felt nothing could ever top them. That’s why I was reluctant to read the full transcription of them that had been presented to me on my birthday by my son Daniel. I kept these compelling pages in the drawer.Serendipity intervened: I can’t explain what else could have brought on the sudden, strong urge to pull the pages out of the drawer and read them. I found, to my amazement, that the interviews were much better on the page than on the air, where they escaped before you could reflect on what Joni said. Here the pages offered a moment to reflect on the nuggets embedded in Joni’s narrative.I was dying to share this bounty with the world! One afternoon, while buying groceries, I bumped into the great literary agent Linda McKnight. Right there I bubbled over at how surprised I was to find how much better Joni’s interviews read off the page, how timeless they were . . . Linda said she remembered hearing those interviews when they were aired, and that if they were even better on the page, they’d make a book that would live for many years, not just one season. She suggested I email her a few pages. So, as soon as I could get to my laptop, I sent Linda a condensed version of the interviews. A day or two later, Linda emailed me that the publisher of ECW Press, Jack David, loved the interviews and was interested in publishing them!
* * *
About MalkaI have an irrational fear of mice. I’ve roamed the desert with nomadic Bedouin tribes without fear — well, almost without fear — but if I see a tiny cute mouse at the cottage I shriek in panic as if it were a lion. I’m a grandmother who is crazy over her three grandchildren. (If you were to foretell it even when I was 50, I would have laughed my head off at the notion.) The older I get the more I go nuts over Ray Charles. He “ages” better than any good wine, as far as I’m concerned. I never had a clue how cold cold could be until the December when I first landed in Canada. Don’t kill me, but I don’t like Breaking Bad. (But I love The Wire.) I don’t like junk food — maybe that’s why I don’t like Breaking Bad.Whenever I’d be booked to sing at a casino, I’d get gambling chips “courtesy of the house.” I’d hand them to my guitarist/conductor. I believed, still do, that destiny allowed me only a certain amount of luck, good luck. I’d rather not blow it on casino tables. I’m crazy for soccer, and especially Messi. And so when I moved to a condo, I advised my next door neighbour not to call the police when she hears me screaming my head off.When I went down to the mine at Uranium City, all the miners came out. They believed that it was bad luck for a woman to go down to the mine. I’m very surprised to see my sons when they fly over to visit. In my heart they are still my babies, and here their hair is thinning or silvered. I’m moved to tears by how beautiful an autumn leaf is just before it dies. I learned to cook seafood dishes from the wonderful chefs at Joso’s fish restaurant. (Joso sang with me in the duo Malka & Joso.)* * *Thank you to Malka for answering our questions, and to Kat at ECW Press for making the connection. For more Writer’s Block, click here.
Singer, radio broadcaster, documentary maker, and writer Malka Marom recently published a collection of interviews with Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, Conversations with Malka Marom, with ECW Press. The interviews took place over a forty year period, the most recent of which happened in 2012; the common thread through each interview is the discussion of the creative process. This is something Malka herself is very well versed in so we asked her to share some of her inspirations and writerly experiences with us.* * *Is there one stand-out moment or experience you had that helped you realize you wanted to become a writer?It happened on my first afternoon away from the remote encampment of the nomadic Bedouin clan with whom I’d been roaming the Sinai for the past few weeks. At around 4 pm, just before the sun disappeared behind the towering granite mountains of the Sinai desert, I was munching on dried figs and dates while emptying every tin in the provisions box (diced tomatoes, tuna, olives, both green & black) into the pasta that I’d just boiled, when a story idea came to me in a flash. With it came an irresistible urge to jot it down quick-fast, before it evaporated like sweet lake water in a desert mirage.This had never happened to me before. I had never courted story ideas. I had never thought of myself as a writer, even though I was credited with writing radio documentaries I’d produced for the CBC. I had never entertained the idea of being a novelist, not when I was a child, not even when I read and fell in love with Austen, Tolstoy, Mahfouz, Melville, Conrad, Isaac Singer, Márquez, Agnon . . . I hadn’t thought of it on a conscious level, I mean. But unconsciously . . .Looking back on it now I wonder if it wasn’t the urge to write, that drove me to go “nuts,” as most of my friends and relatives suggested, and to accept the rare invitation extended to me by the nomadic Bedouin clan to stay with them alone for weeks and months at a time. Well, come to think of it, was it not the desire to be a writer what propelled me to go to the desert in the first place — and to prepare a CBC Radio documentary on Bedouin culture, as I believed it was at that time?And since I’m tracking back, was it not my desire to be a writer that drove me to read all the children’s books in my hometown’s library before I entered grade one public school, and to continue to read, read, read . . .Malka’s advice to writers: don’t even think of writing unless you couldn’t breath or live without working as a writer.What’s the toughest part about being a writer?Writing in English, my second language. Or more correctly my third. My first being my native Hebrew and my second, music. In Hebrew you read and write right to left. In music, not only horizontally — left to right — but vertically, which allows one to express at the very same moment almost as many elements at the same moment as in life. In comparison, writing prose felt so linear and dry, it frustrated the hell out of me. (Still does . . .)Why do you write?I have always been driven by a tremendous need to share the gifts offered me by circumstances of fate and history. I find it thrilling to share unique gifts like being the first and only western woman invited to stay in women’s sections of the Bedouin clan. This unique vantage point inspired my novel, Sulha.Or rare gifts like the interviews that Joni Mitchell gave me over the course of 40 years, which culminated in the book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, Conversations with Malka Marom. Joni is such a mystery — no one has yet been able to imitate her. Not even she herself. And when I realized that this book would offer a rare glimpse at what’s behind this mystery, I had a tremendous desire to publish it for the wealth it contains about art, music, poetry and the creative process; frankly, I was dying to share it with the whole world.What’s the most surprising thing about being a writer?That it would take me 14 years to write Sulha — and just as surprising that I, a social creature by nature and profession, would thrive on so much near-solitude.It was also surprising that my fictional characters would become such a part of my real life — relatives, friends, colleagues and lovers. This happened to such a degree my husband advised me to claim them as dependents on my income tax return!What are your must-read literary websites/publications?The New Yorker & brainpickings.orgHave you ever experienced writer’s block? What did you do about it?My remedy for writer’s block: I change my writing place. From the desk to bed, to a garden chair, from my study to the kitchen, or the living room and/or from the city to the cottage. More than once or twice, when no change of room, chair or bed proved helpful, I changed countries.Or I’d change my writing time: writing late at night, when my inner critic is too tired to interfere. Or writing before dawn, when my inner critic is still asleep . . .Malka’s cottage writing spotWhat question do you wish someone would ask you about your book?Why did it take you nearly 40 years from your first interview with Joni Mitchell to publish your book of conversations with her?Yes, it’s a huge gap, due to my penchant for bundling the past into the present and the future. Over the years I’ve treasured those two ’70s interviews with Joni. These interviews were so complete, I felt nothing could ever top them. That’s why I was reluctant to read the full transcription of them that had been presented to me on my birthday by my son Daniel. I kept these compelling pages in the drawer.Serendipity intervened: I can’t explain what else could have brought on the sudden, strong urge to pull the pages out of the drawer and read them. I found, to my amazement, that the interviews were much better on the page than on the air, where they escaped before you could reflect on what Joni said. Here the pages offered a moment to reflect on the nuggets embedded in Joni’s narrative.I was dying to share this bounty with the world! One afternoon, while buying groceries, I bumped into the great literary agent Linda McKnight. Right there I bubbled over at how surprised I was to find how much better Joni’s interviews read off the page, how timeless they were . . . Linda said she remembered hearing those interviews when they were aired, and that if they were even better on the page, they’d make a book that would live for many years, not just one season. She suggested I email her a few pages. So, as soon as I could get to my laptop, I sent Linda a condensed version of the interviews. A day or two later, Linda emailed me that the publisher of ECW Press, Jack David, loved the interviews and was interested in publishing them!
* * *
About MalkaI have an irrational fear of mice. I’ve roamed the desert with nomadic Bedouin tribes without fear — well, almost without fear — but if I see a tiny cute mouse at the cottage I shriek in panic as if it were a lion. I’m a grandmother who is crazy over her three grandchildren. (If you were to foretell it even when I was 50, I would have laughed my head off at the notion.) The older I get the more I go nuts over Ray Charles. He “ages” better than any good wine, as far as I’m concerned. I never had a clue how cold cold could be until the December when I first landed in Canada. Don’t kill me, but I don’t like Breaking Bad. (But I love The Wire.) I don’t like junk food — maybe that’s why I don’t like Breaking Bad.Whenever I’d be booked to sing at a casino, I’d get gambling chips “courtesy of the house.” I’d hand them to my guitarist/conductor. I believed, still do, that destiny allowed me only a certain amount of luck, good luck. I’d rather not blow it on casino tables. I’m crazy for soccer, and especially Messi. And so when I moved to a condo, I advised my next door neighbour not to call the police when she hears me screaming my head off.When I went down to the mine at Uranium City, all the miners came out. They believed that it was bad luck for a woman to go down to the mine. I’m very surprised to see my sons when they fly over to visit. In my heart they are still my babies, and here their hair is thinning or silvered. I’m moved to tears by how beautiful an autumn leaf is just before it dies. I learned to cook seafood dishes from the wonderful chefs at Joso’s fish restaurant. (Joso sang with me in the duo Malka & Joso.)* * *Thank you to Malka for answering our questions, and to Kat at ECW Press for making the connection. For more Writer’s Block, click here.
