Basically is a stem from a tuesdays with morrie tree. Trying to live by morries motto of giving is living. Albom dedicates much of his time to his charities, including one that helps impoverished children and orphans in haiti. I wasnt, blessed to have children of my own. And so, i kind of look at this as, as sort of my, this is what i was fated to sort of be when it comes to whatever father instincts i must have. Alboms career as a writer took off covering sports, a trade for which he won countless awards. I was fairly good at being a Sports Writer. And, i just felt that sometimes, you know, you could find the best story in sports by talking to the person who lost, or by talkin to the, person who finished second. I spoke to mitch albom in new york as his latest book was being released. Lets start with, with your new book because its about music. Its called the magic strings of Frankie Presto. And, this is a novel. It, it, whats so interesting to me about it is it is written, through the voice of music. Its narrated by music. What kind of voice or personality does music have . Well, in my imagination, music is very proud to begin with. Its proud of itself. It sees itself as the greatest of all talents. And in this book, it begins, youre right, by, at a funeral, where music has come to collect the talent that was inside the soul of Frankie Presto, who is my mythical hero, who was the greatest guitar player to ever walk the earth. And in, in this story, music tells you, he sa, he s, music so loves this child, its, its prodigy, that it comes to the funeral personally to get the talent out and then to distribute it over other newborn souls. And while music is at the funeral, it decides its gonna stay and listen to all the hosannas being thrown at its prodigy because its so proud of its, the, this young ma, this mans life. And so, as the book goes on, you start to hear about his life, you start to hear some of the mourners at the funeral. But you keep hearing it in the voice of music. And right in the very first page, music says, well, you may think that im being fickle, but i, i, i can be, but im also sweet and im also difficult and im also dissonant and im also angry and im all the things that, if you think of what music is, there is angry music, there is sweet music, there is loving music, there is disturbing music. And, music is all those things. And music is sort of personified in this way, through this book. Talk about Frankie Presto. So hes this virtuoso. And he works with all of the musical greats, duke ellington, elvis presley. You know, what story did you wanna tell through this character . So my theme that i wanted to do, having been a musician myself, i know that theres a certain, certain relationships within a band, when youre in a band, even though youre not speaking, youre speaking musically. And everybody has a certain role to play in a band. You know, the drummer has to maybe keep the time steady. Someone else gets to be the soloist and go off wild. Someone else has to be the rhythm player and keep it real. And i realized that thats very much what life is like in all the other bands that you join. Family, a workplace, school, army. Everybody sorta has a role, you know. So i wanted to do a theme about, well, a musical book but, but show that how we all influence each other, whether youre in a band, of musicians or youre just in a band in life, you influence people that you come in contact with with your talents. And so frankie became sort of this great symbol of that because he is, as you pointed out, hes the greatest guitar player to ever walk the earth. He loses his mother the day that hes born and becomes an orphan. And hes sent to america when hes nine or ten years old with, a single guitar and six magic strings. And those strings, empowered by his playing, can actually change peoples lives. And when they change a life, they turn blue. And he gets six sort of opportunities to, with these blue strings over the course of his life to change six lives. And the last element was, as you pointed out, hes sort of forrest gump. Hes fictional but Everything Else in the book is real. So hes with Duke Ellingtons band and he travels over with django reinhardt, the jazz guitar player. He ends up influencing Little Richard and singing tutti fruity and he backs up elvis and then elvis doesnt show up one night and he takes over for him. And hes, hes at woodstock and hes, meets tony bennett later in his life. Theres all these real people who were nice enough, many of them, to let me actually write in their voices in the book. But hes fictional. In some ways, did he have your dream life, to be able to meet all of these people . Yeah, i guess he did. Havent thought of it that way, but yeah, i suppose a lot of my own musical fantasies were sort of played out. He personifies what i would like my musical playing to do, except hes, Frankie Presto is a much better musician than i was or ever will be. But you wanted to be a musician from, from a young age, you wanted to be a musician. Its all i wanted to be. I didnt write anything until i was already well into my twenties, cause everything i wanted to do was based around music. And so, i put myself through college playing music. And i really didnt write much in college, not more than the average kid does. And then when i got out, i tried to make it as a musician in new york. And, you know. What happened . I failed. Like many people. And i, maybe if i had stayed with it longer, Something Else mightve happened. But i found that it was breaking my heart. I was so in love with music and music, had been everything i dreamed about my whole life. And so, i hadnt really thought of anything else other than being a musician. I went to college because, you know, i had a set of parents that said, thats fine, youll be a musician. First, youll go to college. Literally, the day after i was done, i went overseas and i started being a musician. I lived over in europe for a while as that, then i came back to new york. And i went the whole starving musician route. I knocked on Record Company doors and i wa, you know, i would play them my tapes and songs that i had written. And id pour my whole soul into these songs. So by the time you actually went into a Record Company, you know, you had poured out a lot into this. And theyd put it on and listen to ten seconds of it and say, nah, i dont hear it, you know, and out the door youd go. That mustve been frustrating. It was heartbreaking. It wasnt, frustrating wasnt as much of just, you know, i, i think the combination of being young, and i was very young when i got outta school, and, and having the lights turn red for me for the first time in my life. You know, music started to become, like, a source of, of anger and, and, and difficulty. And, during this time, while i was still working as a musician at nights and paying my bills such as they were, i had time during the day and i ended up volunteering for a local newspaper, that had a little ad little stories for us, and i thought, well, its something to do anyhow. And, i found that i had an aptitude for writing. And, thats where your talent was . Well, i think that theres actually more connection between music and writing than a lot of people think i, i do think that writing is very much rhythm, cadence, pacing, theme. And those are the same things you do when you write a song. Those are the same things you do when you compose. So theres a lotta techniques in writing, even the rhythm of a sentence. Where do you put a comma . Where ha, do you use an and or a the or do you just make it two sentences . Does your writing go babababababababa or does it go babababababababababa . So thats something. You know . Youre thinking about as. Constantly. You are composing . Constantly. A piece . Constantly. As i compose a paragraph. With this new book, the magic strings of Frankie Presto, theres also Something Special about it because theres a soundtrack that goes with it in which you are actually able to also do your music. Yeah, finally. Thirtyfive years after tryin to make it in the music business, i have a record. It grew out organically. You know, Frankie Presto has this real career and he, he comes to america and hes this virtuoso guitar player as you say, even by the time hes a teenager. But then he falls into the whole rock and roll thing and he becomes, hes very handsome and they turn him into, like, the next elvis. And for a period of time, they tell him, dont worry about the guitar. Just go out there and dance. And he does. And so, of course, its a metaphor for sort of losing what really is where your heart is. And he puts the guitar away, this magic guitar, and he becomes very popular but he loses his soul along the way and he loses the girl of his dreams and all the rest of it. And then eventually, when he kind of realizes whats happened and fame disappears on him, as it frequently does, he works his way back to the actual guitar. And so along the way, i wrote about these songs, like his first hit song was called i want to love you. I just made it up and i gave it some lyrics cause thats the kinda songs that they were singing in 1960. And then he had a ballad song called our secret. And i made up the lyrics. And after i was finished with the book, i said, you know, it would be really cool if these songs were real songs, because in my head, they were real songs. And so, i ended up calling a bunch of different people and meeting some of em for the first time and saying, would you like to write the real song of the fictional song that was supposed to have been written in 1960 . And they loved it. I mean, to, to a person, all the musicians i contacted, they loved, like, an assignment. Consequently, we ended up with a soundtrack album that has six original, original songs of fake songs that were created by me in the book. So i wrote the lyrics in the book. They took them and then they added music to them and they recorded them and theyre terrific. And then we added a bunch of real songs, you know, like, tony bennett songs and, and tutti fruity by Little Richard. Andtoday i met the boy im gonna marryby darlene love. And, and lyle lovetts god willand a bunch of other songs that are in the book. Lets go back to 1997 and tuesdays with morrie comes out, because that is one of, the bestselling memoirs of all time, i believe. But it is also a book that i think a lotta people still associate with mitch albom. It was a story, of course, about, a professor of yours who was dying of als. And sort of the lessons that he left you with. Do you still to think Morrie Schwartz . Sure. Probably every day. If i didnt, i wouldnt be able to help it anyhow because some point every day, if im out in the public, someone will come up to me and say, you know, something about tuesdays with morrie. Sometimes its just, i like that book, tuesdays with morrie. Other times, its very personal. You know, my, frequently i hear, my father died from als, my mother died from al anyone who dies from als, im, im sort of a lightning rod for that story. He was an enormous influence on my life. Everything that i write basically is a stem from a tuesdays with morrie tree. And, even the themes of Frankie Presto and how we affect one another, i dont think i wouldve thought of those things if i hadnt been exposed to how a professor whos no longer here, okay, hes been dead for almost, 20 years this month, is still affecting people in schools and, and, and, and even in our conversation right here, long after hes gone. So that Ripple Effect of how you affect people is, is actually one of the themes of the Frankie Presto book. And, as you say, a lotta the subsequent books that you wrote also deal with how sort of the acknowledgement of death changes life and ones life. At what point did you realize you were sort of onto something, that you were hitting a nerve with people, with that theme . Probably the moment i finished the Oprah Winfrey program, and, i had gone on to, at that point, the book was tiny. I mean, it wasnt, people rewrite history and they somehow think that tuesdays with morrie was, like. Started out big. Yeah, started out some kinda big thing and one of the biggest books. It wasnt. It was a tiny, little book. I only wrote it to pay his medical bills. Many publishers turned me down when i tried to make a proposal for it. They said, y, itll be boring, itll be depressing and youre a Sports Writer so what do you know about this anyhow . They printed 20,000 copies and that was it. So i thought id have them in the trunk of my car for the rest of my life. You know, one of those guys who r, rides around and opens up, you want a book . Anybody want a book . Mostly known for his novels, mitch albom is also an Award Winning sports columnist. Up next, albom says how he is able to make the switch from one writing style to the other. Inside story takes you beyond the headlines, beyond the quick cuts, beyond the sound bites. Were giving you a deeper dive into the stories that are making our world what it is. Ray suarez hosts inside story. Only on al Jazeera America. Al Jazeera America gives you the total news experience anytime, anywhere. More on every screen. Digital, mobile, social. Visit aljazeera. Com. Follow ajam on twitter. And like alJazeera America on facebook for more stories, more access, more conversations. So you dont just stay on top of the news, go deeper and get more so you dont just stay on top of the news, go deeper and get more perspectives on every issue. Hey hows it going, hotcakes . Hotcakes. This place has hotcakes. So why arent they selling like hotcakes . With comcast Business Internet and wifi pro, they could be. Just add a customized message to your wifi pro splash page and youll reach your customers where their eyes are already on their devices. Order up. Its more than just wifi, it can help grow your business. You dont see that every day. Introducing wifi pro, wifi that helps grow your business. Comcast business. Built for business. When it comes to the fithings you love,. You want more. Love romance . Get lost in every embrace. Into sports . Follow every pitch, every play and every win. Change the way you experience tv with x1 from xfinity. Al Jazeera America brings you independent reporting without spin. Not everybody is asking the questions youre asking me today. We give you more perspectives the separatists took control a few days ago. And a global view. Now everybody in this country can hear them. Getting the story firsthand. They have travelled for weeks, sometimes months. Whats your message then . We need help now. Youre watching al Jazeera America. This is talk to al jazeera im stephanie sy. Im joined this week by mitch albom, best selling author and acclaimed sports columnist. You talked about how people werent expecting sort of this sensitive bone from a Sports Writer. And, and certainly, journalists in general, were not really known to be sentimental. Were known to be cynical. And yet, youve come out with all these feel good, oprahish books. Ha, has that in any way affected your credibility as a journalist laugh or as a sports journalist . I think. Can you be cynical . Yeah, im sure i can be cynical about sports. I never wanted to lose my soul just because i was gonna be a Sports Writer. And i like to think, before tuesdays with morrie came out, that i, i wrote with some compassion and some humanity long before people attached those traits to me from an outside book. And i dont think that they hurt me. I was fairly good at being a Sports Writer. And, i just felt that sometimes, you know, you could find the best story in sports by talking to the person who lost, or by talkin to the, person who finished second. And, i always approached it that way. So you dont have to be, a curmudgeon to be a journalist. I think what happens is you see so much, so many awful things when youre a journalist. And you see so much cynical behavior, particularly if youre covering pol, covering politics or business or, in many ways, sports, that you start to say, well, why should i be open and, and, and, and, and sensitive when everybody around me that im covering is all just tryin to spin everything their own way . But i always felt that, if you sink to the level of the lowest part of what it is that youre writing about, how are you gonna write any better than whats going on . One of the lines, from morrie is, giving makes me feel like living. And it is actually a creed that you, mitch, seem to be living up to with the amount of charity work that you seem to devote. Talk about what the focus of a lotta these charities is. Theyre twofold. I have a charity called s. A. Y. Detroit, which is, basically just helps, needy detroiters from birth all the way till Senior Citizen years. It started when, i was on line at a homeless shelter, doing a story and, and, during the 2006 super bowl. And, and its a whole long thing about they were scooping all the Homeless People off the streets in detroit and tryin to hide them from the general public, which i thought was awful. And so, i went down to spend a night at the shelter to write about what this was all about. And while i was on line, the guy in front of me, you know, were waiting for the meal and he turns around, he looks me up and down, he says, arent you mitch albom . And i said, yeah. And then he looks me up and down again, he says, so what happened to you, you know . And, he just presumed that i had fallen from grace and was. And that you were a homeless person . Yeah, i was on line. And, you know, after i kinda chuckled, then i realized, you know, thats a perfectly acceptable question. Im pretty sure he never figured to be on that line himself. And, it really was one of those moments, you know, everybody has them, where you just cant stop thinking about it. And i wrote that column i think infused with the spirit of that moment. And it mustve been fairly effective cause i was tryin to raise 60,000 to keep all these Homeless People in the shelters for another couple months. And i ended up raising in a week 360,000, in a week, just from a bunch of 10 and 20 donations. So then it was, well, what am i gonna do with this . And i formed s. A. Y. Detroit, which stands for super all year detroit. And its now grown into a multimillion dollar operation that, supports nine different charities all over the city of detroit. And, every dollar we bring in, we spend right back out. We have no salaries, we have no offices, we have no, we laugh , our offices are our cars. Detroit and michigan in general is an incredible place for charitable, giving, considering how hard pressed it is and considering, you know, detroit, one of the most bankrupt cities in america a few years ago. And, still struggles greatly, but the charitable attitude is really incredible. So most of my work is there. And then i have an orphanage in haiti that ive been going to for the last six years, or ive been operating for the last six years. I go every month, for three or four days. Whats it like interacting with the kids . Oh, its the best. I mean, this is, this is childhood the way it was meant to be. There are no cell phones, theres no internet, theres no television, theres no anything. And so our kids, which range from three years old to 18 years old when, when they leave, theyve not been taught anything thats cool or not cool. So an 11 year old boy will take his arm and, and, and put his own arm around you and lean into you, you know, cause nobody told him that 11 year old boys arent supposed to do that. I love these children. You know, i wasnt, blessed to have children of my own. And so, i kind of look at this as, as sort of my, this is what i was fated to sort of be when it comes to whatever father instincts i must have. And, i know everything there is to know about these kids. I know where they came from, i know their backgrounds. You know, i was the one who, who said, okay, you, you and not ten other or 15 other kids, cause for every one we accept, i have to turn away at least that many. And i know that were helping them. I mean, i know in many ways, were saving their lives because a lotta these kids, one, one of our children was literally left under a tree to die. And i dont know his name. We never, we dont know who his parents are. We dont know anything. We took him. He was left there when he was about two months old. And, if someone hadnt heard him crying, he wouldve died under the tree. And, he eventually was brought to us and now were raising him with, a name that we gave him. And, you know, its just a remarkable thing, to think that you can have that kind of an impact on a young life. And these kids are the happiest, most joyous, most songful, you know, musical kids that you will ever meet. So it probably sounds like im goin on and on and i am. I, i, ah. Well, it sounds like youre passionate. I am. About this. And, i believe in what we do down there. And i dont ever think you can save haiti. I never tell anybody that you can. That, thats a country with a lotta problems. But you can save this much of it. And if everybody saves this much of it, you know, you can make a dent. And thats my, thats my this much, those 40 kids. So thats the other part of the charity that i do. Mitch albom writes about death but he says that dying is not the focus of his books. He explains, up next. I can neither confirm nor deny that theres a dark prison. They dont want anyone to know what is going on inside. He was not just a person, he was a human being. Faultlines. What do we want . Al Jazeera Americas hardhitting. Today the will be arrested. Groundbreaking. Theyre firing canisters of gas at us. Emmy awardwinning, investigative series. Im stephanie sy and youre watching talk to al jazeera. Im speaking this week with mitch albom, author of tuesdays with morrie one of the best selling memoirs of all time. So much of what im hearing you say, seems to go back to these lessons from morrie. But, you know, reading your writing is almost like a spiritual, almost quasireligious experience i think. I, im just curious whether that is a part of your life in any way, whether youre driven. Faith . Whether you had a rabbi or you have a faith. Yeah. I was raised with faith. Faith is a big part of my life. Probably more in a spiritual and, and knowledgeable way than, like, rapid attendance at any particular place, mostly because im not in a particular place. When im in haiti, its a Christian Mission and, theres church and so im sitting in the church services. When im at home, or go back to where i grew up on the east coast, ill go to the synagogue that i was raised in. My wife is christian. So i move between a lot of faiths. I pray every morning and i thank god for what i have. I also dont believe that youre, you know, youre supposed to start telling everybody else what theyre supposed to do with their faith. I think i got more than my own hands full just tryin to figure out my relationship with a higher power than for me to tell you or anybody else what theyre supposed to do with theirs. Im always, pleased and a little surprised when my books are embraced by different religions, many of whom dont believe the same thing, but they, theyll embrace the book. Its, like, wow, okay, so you can write a novel and people of one faith can say, yes, this is, we can see our lessons in this, and then people who are in another faith can say, yes, we can see our lessons in this. And what does that teach us . You know, that be, because it didnt have a label on it, everybody embraced it. I think a lot of what faith is about, people react to because, oh no, thats a jewish idea. Thats a christian idea, thats a hindu idea, thats a muslim idea. But if you didnt know where it came from and you just heard the idea, you might say, thats a great idea. And, you know. If the idea is, as, as simple as just giving makes you happy and makes you want to live. What difference does it make where it came from, you know . And i think you, i think, morrie said to me at the end of his life, he said, ive become a religious mutt, like a dog, mutt, you know . I, i, i, i take a little from here and a little, i got a little of this in me and a little of that in me and, you know, thats not a terrible way to be. It means that youre open to hearing ideas from, backgrounds other than your own. With all of these writings, has it really sort of given rise to your own thoughts of mortality and, and how you view, i mean, do you believe in heaven, for example. Yeah. Well, number one, i dont know, sometimes people will ask me, you know, well, why do you always write about death . And i, i say, i dont really think i do. I, in my books, theres usually one death. It usually happens at the beginning. And then the rest of the book is sort of an explanation. I use it as a springboard for, to examine the life. I think they might be getting a little confused with the fact that we really dont often think about our lives and the value of our lives or how we should be leading our lives, until were faced with our mortality. You know, you always hear about, boy, i had a near scare, or, you know, i had a heart attack and i survived it. Now im quittin my job. Im not doing all these things. Im, im gonna go h, enjoy my life. Well, why didnt you do that before the heart attack . cause you didnt think that your life was actually going to end. We all think weve got endless sand in our hourglass, right, until something happens that shakes the hourglass up. Thats essentially what i write about. I use death to, ricochet your attention back onto life and say, okay then, if you now recognize that the days are limited, what, what are you gonna do differently. How old were you . When you wrote tuesdays with morrie . Thirtyseven. So to have, realized that at 37 must unintel . It was a blessing. It was a great, great gift. Its, im sure i would not have stumbled upon that on my own accord until i was probably at least as old as i am now, 20 years later, or, or maybe even older, you know . And, i had my eyes opened to this very early on. I watched a guy die in front of me and i watched the way that he lived. And then i sat down and wrote about it so it was, like, while it was fresh in my mind. I am mortally afraid of dying. Not because of the pain or the, i dont want life to end. I enjoy being here. I really do. I, i like, im blessed to be one of those people, i wake up in the morning, i, im busy as all can be. But i never, i never open my eyes with regret. Mitch albom, thank you so much. Sure. Thank you. Thats great. All right . Thank you so much. My pleasure. At the end of the weekend, the president of the United States makes the geographically small but diplomatically long trim trip to havana. Something that an american president hasnt done since calvin coolidge. Obama sees havana, its the inside story