Q&A on Rice, Fish, Squid and Lamb - Part Two
Question: Besides the sporadic memories, what other things inspired you to craft the various tales in your book?
Miriiam Isa: Songs. I'm really into the top 40s and some really non standard stuff.
Q: 80's songs, like what Lila, Liz's kid sister, sang in the book?
MI: Not quite. Lila by the way, doesn't sing; she butchers songs because she's totally tone deaf. My taste on songs is pretty diverse, and I can provide some examples for illustration.
Q: Go ahead then.
MI: Star In A Jar is inspired by If The Stars Were Mine by Melody Gardot. It's a feelgood, lighthearted jazz and I couldn't help thinking that the 5 year Liz has the same exuberance as the song when she meets Adam for the first time. I wrote the part where Adam and Liz are having dinner during a rainy night, in a piece called Eclairs, while I was listening to Santa Maria del Buen Ayre from the movie Shall We Dance? JLo and Richard Gere did a tango with this song. I was imagining that the song, at a slower tempo, was playing in the background in Liz's dimly lit room. Romantic, isn't it? I'm such a sucker for romantic stuff.(laughs) On another note, I love Coldplay's The Scientist but it's Natasha Bedingfield's haunting cover that I thought of as the two main characters meet for the first time after so many years. My personal opinion is some lines from the song, like 'I had to find you, tell you I need you', 'I'm going back to the start' strike the right chord for the date as they really represent what's probably going on in the characters' minds. The two characters wish to say a lot of things, but certainly, due to the limited time they have, some are left unspoken. Oh, and one more example if I may - I had Bebel Gilberto's 'Cade voce?' playing in my head as I wrote about Adam and Liz looking wistfully toward the body of water and the Ambrose-Carlyle bridge one afternoon.
Q: I'm not familiar with the foreign songs. Tell me more, for example, about Bebel Gilberto's song and that Santa Maria number.
MI: Cade voce? is in Portuguese. It's a sad song about longing, about wanting to see someone badly, about questioning why one can't see the truth about the love of one's life. In a way, the song presages what Liz will experience down the road. Santa Maria meanwhile is a tango number and to me, it perfectly reflects the couple's mood of parrying each other with different moves during the meal.
Q: OK, I get it. So you're not kidding when you said songs inspired your writing, too?
MI: Yup. Seriously, I can list all the songs which go with different parts of the book. In chronological order, too.
Q: Seriously?
MI: Uh-huh. Here it goes -I've listed the one for Star In A Jar. For Liz's dream in Greek Myths, it's Goodnight by Melody Gardot, again. Just try to listen to the song if you haven't already; it's a very sexy number about a guy staying up late to see his girl sleeping! Then I think Santa Baby sung by Madonna is apropos for Christmas Lounge. It's a very festive song for the occasion. I've covered the song for Eclairs. We've got a lot of 80's songs, Debbie Gibson's, which Lila warbles for Negotiated Deal. Those were the in songs circa 1988. Laura Fygi's I Will Wait For You is perfect for Promises In The Sand. It's an ironic song nonetheless because none of the main characters waits for the other. I love the beat, though. I think about a Jacky Cheung's Cantonese song, and I believe the song is called Mui Tin Ngoi Ler Tor Yat Seh(Love you more every day)- pardon my bad Cantonese- as Liz writes to Adam about her then boyfriend, Jay, wooing her from Hong Kong. Lonely Afternoon by Shakatak was what I had in mind when I wrote Football. You've got The Scientist by Natasha Bedingfield for the start of The Meeting. There's this song by Sam Brown, let's see...Yup, Kissing Gate for the part Liz waits for Jay on the steps of 77 Mass. Ave. For the last bit of Italy 2009, when Liz heads back to the car, I imagine Someday by Gota is playing in the background. Finally, the song which Adam finds on the radio as he and his family drive home is Breakeven by The Script.
Q: Those songs can make one hell of a diverse collection on a CD.
MI: You can say that again! In fact, I strongly suggest to the readers to play these songs in the background as they read parts of the book I mentioned earlier. Please check them out on Youtube! They make for an extrasensory appeal to the book.
Q: Interesting! Now, if you were to summarize this whole book with just one song, what would it be?
MI: Hmm, that's a pretty hard one. I guess, well - this is just on top of my head- I think Adele's Rolling In The Deep would do justice.
Q: That's a very angry song, but let me ask you this -Why?
MI: I agree with you it's a very angry song. Adele wrote it right after she had a bad breakup. In the same vein, I wrote Rice, Fish, Squid and Lamb to deal with my devastating loss. And on both accounts, Adele and I were mad. Mad as in angry. Someone leaves you in the pits and never even bothers to say sorry, or at the very least, I didn't mean it. Well, maybe for me, I probably went a bit beyond angry because I realized that my ex premeditated the whole thing on hurting me again.
Q: Care to elaborate on that point?
MI: He planned everything from the start. He used the excuse that he owed me money to see me. Then when we met, he didn't pay me back but kept me hanging on to his words. He picked up I had some problems at home and he used that knowledge to his advantage. He made me crave to see him more with the email he wrote me after our initial meeting. He's good - it was one email after another. They were like drugs to me, and I was hooked on waiting for the next email to arrive. He's super smooth, I have to give him credit for that. He'd been feeding me all these things about how dreadful he felt not being able to catch up with me because of his heavy schedule when I was in town, how he was always thinking, dreaming about me etc. Because I'd convinced myself he was the guy I knew so many years back, I simply couldn't see beyond the pack of lies he wrote. Then out of the blue, he dumped me! Without even settling his debt. He gave me a reason for why he wanted to end the relationship, the friendship or whatever you call it. As usual, his pretext was a complete lie. It's like, he just woke up one day and told me he didn't want to see me anymore. He even had the gall to tell me what we had was nothing! And the saddest part is, he didn't even apologize to me. I was left out in the cold again wondering what I'd done to him to deserve such treatment. I came to the conclusion he wanted to see me because he needed to bolster his ego. He's no longer physically attractive. At 41, despite his appearance- flat, flabby and graying - he had me fall for him all over again. Obviously that gave him a great sense of pride and accomplishment. So I was traumatized because I felt used by that, oh, I can't say the words to describe him here, can I?
Q: It depends on what you have in mind.
MI: I think I can't say them here without insulting his mother.
Q: OK, then don't say it. By the way, did you ever think perhaps he deliberated many times, found out he couldn't have any future with you, and figured the best thing he could do was to let you go?
MI: Definitely no. He told me lies. He said he doesn't love his family and his family doesn't quite love him. But I found out the opposite from anecdotes from friends and photos made public to me. The truth is completely different from the picture he painted for me. So you can see why I became completely incensed. Went cuckoo in the head for a while! (smiles widely)
Q: You were one angry lady!
MI: Yup, cross me and I'll unleash this tremendous wrath! There's nothing to compare to a woman scorned.
Q: Luckily you channeled all your anger into a book.
MI: Fortunately so! And that's why you have this really crazy, crazy love story with a crazy selection of songs to go with it!
Miriiam Isa: Songs. I'm really into the top 40s and some really non standard stuff.
Q: 80's songs, like what Lila, Liz's kid sister, sang in the book?
MI: Not quite. Lila by the way, doesn't sing; she butchers songs because she's totally tone deaf. My taste on songs is pretty diverse, and I can provide some examples for illustration.
Q: Go ahead then.
MI: Star In A Jar is inspired by If The Stars Were Mine by Melody Gardot. It's a feelgood, lighthearted jazz and I couldn't help thinking that the 5 year Liz has the same exuberance as the song when she meets Adam for the first time. I wrote the part where Adam and Liz are having dinner during a rainy night, in a piece called Eclairs, while I was listening to Santa Maria del Buen Ayre from the movie Shall We Dance? JLo and Richard Gere did a tango with this song. I was imagining that the song, at a slower tempo, was playing in the background in Liz's dimly lit room. Romantic, isn't it? I'm such a sucker for romantic stuff.(laughs) On another note, I love Coldplay's The Scientist but it's Natasha Bedingfield's haunting cover that I thought of as the two main characters meet for the first time after so many years. My personal opinion is some lines from the song, like 'I had to find you, tell you I need you', 'I'm going back to the start' strike the right chord for the date as they really represent what's probably going on in the characters' minds. The two characters wish to say a lot of things, but certainly, due to the limited time they have, some are left unspoken. Oh, and one more example if I may - I had Bebel Gilberto's 'Cade voce?' playing in my head as I wrote about Adam and Liz looking wistfully toward the body of water and the Ambrose-Carlyle bridge one afternoon.
Q: I'm not familiar with the foreign songs. Tell me more, for example, about Bebel Gilberto's song and that Santa Maria number.
MI: Cade voce? is in Portuguese. It's a sad song about longing, about wanting to see someone badly, about questioning why one can't see the truth about the love of one's life. In a way, the song presages what Liz will experience down the road. Santa Maria meanwhile is a tango number and to me, it perfectly reflects the couple's mood of parrying each other with different moves during the meal.
Q: OK, I get it. So you're not kidding when you said songs inspired your writing, too?
MI: Yup. Seriously, I can list all the songs which go with different parts of the book. In chronological order, too.
Q: Seriously?
MI: Uh-huh. Here it goes -I've listed the one for Star In A Jar. For Liz's dream in Greek Myths, it's Goodnight by Melody Gardot, again. Just try to listen to the song if you haven't already; it's a very sexy number about a guy staying up late to see his girl sleeping! Then I think Santa Baby sung by Madonna is apropos for Christmas Lounge. It's a very festive song for the occasion. I've covered the song for Eclairs. We've got a lot of 80's songs, Debbie Gibson's, which Lila warbles for Negotiated Deal. Those were the in songs circa 1988. Laura Fygi's I Will Wait For You is perfect for Promises In The Sand. It's an ironic song nonetheless because none of the main characters waits for the other. I love the beat, though. I think about a Jacky Cheung's Cantonese song, and I believe the song is called Mui Tin Ngoi Ler Tor Yat Seh(Love you more every day)- pardon my bad Cantonese- as Liz writes to Adam about her then boyfriend, Jay, wooing her from Hong Kong. Lonely Afternoon by Shakatak was what I had in mind when I wrote Football. You've got The Scientist by Natasha Bedingfield for the start of The Meeting. There's this song by Sam Brown, let's see...Yup, Kissing Gate for the part Liz waits for Jay on the steps of 77 Mass. Ave. For the last bit of Italy 2009, when Liz heads back to the car, I imagine Someday by Gota is playing in the background. Finally, the song which Adam finds on the radio as he and his family drive home is Breakeven by The Script.
Q: Those songs can make one hell of a diverse collection on a CD.
MI: You can say that again! In fact, I strongly suggest to the readers to play these songs in the background as they read parts of the book I mentioned earlier. Please check them out on Youtube! They make for an extrasensory appeal to the book.
Q: Interesting! Now, if you were to summarize this whole book with just one song, what would it be?
MI: Hmm, that's a pretty hard one. I guess, well - this is just on top of my head- I think Adele's Rolling In The Deep would do justice.
Q: That's a very angry song, but let me ask you this -Why?
MI: I agree with you it's a very angry song. Adele wrote it right after she had a bad breakup. In the same vein, I wrote Rice, Fish, Squid and Lamb to deal with my devastating loss. And on both accounts, Adele and I were mad. Mad as in angry. Someone leaves you in the pits and never even bothers to say sorry, or at the very least, I didn't mean it. Well, maybe for me, I probably went a bit beyond angry because I realized that my ex premeditated the whole thing on hurting me again.
Q: Care to elaborate on that point?
MI: He planned everything from the start. He used the excuse that he owed me money to see me. Then when we met, he didn't pay me back but kept me hanging on to his words. He picked up I had some problems at home and he used that knowledge to his advantage. He made me crave to see him more with the email he wrote me after our initial meeting. He's good - it was one email after another. They were like drugs to me, and I was hooked on waiting for the next email to arrive. He's super smooth, I have to give him credit for that. He'd been feeding me all these things about how dreadful he felt not being able to catch up with me because of his heavy schedule when I was in town, how he was always thinking, dreaming about me etc. Because I'd convinced myself he was the guy I knew so many years back, I simply couldn't see beyond the pack of lies he wrote. Then out of the blue, he dumped me! Without even settling his debt. He gave me a reason for why he wanted to end the relationship, the friendship or whatever you call it. As usual, his pretext was a complete lie. It's like, he just woke up one day and told me he didn't want to see me anymore. He even had the gall to tell me what we had was nothing! And the saddest part is, he didn't even apologize to me. I was left out in the cold again wondering what I'd done to him to deserve such treatment. I came to the conclusion he wanted to see me because he needed to bolster his ego. He's no longer physically attractive. At 41, despite his appearance- flat, flabby and graying - he had me fall for him all over again. Obviously that gave him a great sense of pride and accomplishment. So I was traumatized because I felt used by that, oh, I can't say the words to describe him here, can I?
Q: It depends on what you have in mind.
MI: I think I can't say them here without insulting his mother.
Q: OK, then don't say it. By the way, did you ever think perhaps he deliberated many times, found out he couldn't have any future with you, and figured the best thing he could do was to let you go?
MI: Definitely no. He told me lies. He said he doesn't love his family and his family doesn't quite love him. But I found out the opposite from anecdotes from friends and photos made public to me. The truth is completely different from the picture he painted for me. So you can see why I became completely incensed. Went cuckoo in the head for a while! (smiles widely)
Q: You were one angry lady!
MI: Yup, cross me and I'll unleash this tremendous wrath! There's nothing to compare to a woman scorned.
Q: Luckily you channeled all your anger into a book.
MI: Fortunately so! And that's why you have this really crazy, crazy love story with a crazy selection of songs to go with it!
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