The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (60 page)

I love confidence in women, and I really need it in my woman. Cindy has a quiet confidence that comes from not having to prove anything to anyone. It’s a blessing to be with someone who is just comfortable in her own skin.

Besides being a lover and a friend, she is patient and compassionate and attentive—she’s always asking if I’m keeping myself hydrated, which is important in a place like Las Vegas. If she brings
along one bottle of water for a drive, she’ll always have a second one for me. I took her to her first professional basketball game, and now I’ve got her cheering for the Golden State Warriors and she’s got me into some Chicago teams. Now I’ve got a partner when I go up against basketball fans like Hal Miller and Chad Wilson, who always want to gang up on me and bet against me. I’ll tell them what we think about the Heat or the Spurs, and they’ll go off saying something like, “Oh, now it’s ‘Cindy and I’!”

Yes, that’s right. Cindy is one of the boys—I mean, she came up hanging with Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and Tony Williams and hearing all the guy talk and laughing and not getting all bent out of shape. Like any couple, we are still learning to communicate. We do it by phone and text and, when I come home, by words and touch.

There’s that saying again: you don’t necessarily attract what you want or what you need, you attract who you are. It didn’t surprise me to learn that Cindy studied kabbalah and is deeply spiritual. When I first spoke to her of things like angels and the invisible realm, it was as if we were just picking up a conversation that we had started a long time ago. When I told Jerry and Diane, they said, “You know, Cindy is a creation of your spirit. You created her, and she created you. You both prayed for each other, and you both did the inner work. Cindy is also here to help you clean your inner closet.” I said, “Inner closet?” Jerry told me that I needed to pull open all the drawers and bring out all my compulsions, my embarrassments, my fantasies, and get past the guilt, shame, judgments, and fears.

Now Cindy and I aspire together; we share the desire for divinity. Cindy and I read together every day to recharge our belief and to reinforce our hope, trust, and faith so that when we need to we have the strength to clear our paths and move our egos out of the way. Together we write poems and spiritual messages that we post on Facebook and share with all. Together we wrote the following poem, “I Am the Universal Tone,” on July 8, 2011:

Four years later I’m grateful—really, really grateful. I still can’t believe that out of everyone in this world God picked a partner so compatible with my energy and my principles and put her in front of me. As Wayne says, it takes courage to be happy, and right now I believe I am the happiest person on this planet. My most treasured possession right now is a new guitar that my wife commissioned from Paul Reed Smith and gave to me when we were married on December 19, 2010, in Hawaii. Written on the back between the tuning knobs are the words:
THE FIRST TIME EVER, EVERYTHING. ETERNALLY YOURS, CINDY.

Our wedding included everyone who is important to us—our families and best friends, my kids, and Jerry and Diane, who spoke and asked for a moment of silence so we could all behold each other without the distraction of words or thoughts. Herbie and Wayne were there, too, and honored us with their presence and their music—they played “Afro Blue” and “Stella by Starlight.” Before the ceremony I asked Sal whether he was okay with what I was
doing, and what he said still makes me wonder how he achieved such a high level of spiritual awareness. He asked if Cindy and I, as part of the ceremony, would fill a wooden bowl with rainwater and wash each other’s hands to symbolize the forgiveness of all things from our pasts—that we were starting fresh and clean. We did that, then Cindy read her vows from her iPhone and I read from my iPad, and then we danced to Ronald Isley’s recording of Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love.”

The second time I walked the red carpet was with Cindy, in December of 2013, for the screening of the HBO special of our concert in Guadalajara. That was her first time—she looked amazing, and I couldn’t stop checking her out. I’m constantly looking at Cindy anyway: her nose is so beautiful, her lips and her hair are incredible, and her heart brings it all together perfectly for me. When it came time to stop for the photographers that night, she forgot to look at the cameras, as you’re supposed to, and instead she was checking
me
out. I remember that we laughed about it, then Cindy got a little serious and said, “But can you see the way I’m looking at you?” Man, I could feel tears of joy coming, so I had to quickly say what I was thinking right then, the only words that came to me in that moment.

“Oh, yes.
Yes
.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and me, February 24, 2014.

W
hen we played live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1988 with Wayne Shorter, Wayne said in an interview, “I look for books that never end.” I love that idea. This book is like that—there’s much more to come, and yet it lives in the holy instant, a sanctuary from worrying about the future or being stuck in the past. Nobody’s insane if he’s 100 percent present in the now, you know?

In my life, the now that’s still being written has always included three parts—my music, the spiritual realm, and the domestic rhythm.

I said this before, and I’ll say it again: in my family, even after
the divorce, there remains nothing but blessings and beauty. I am grateful to Deborah for our years together and for our three beautiful children. I am so proud of them—they’ve never been in any trouble, and each has a natural feeling for staying in the groove with elegance and integrity. I can see members of my family reflected in each of them and I can see that they all come from a long river of music: my father was a musician, and his father was a
músico municipal,
as was his father before him. On their mother’s side, SK was the original King of R & B, playing blues and ballads before B. B., Albert, or Freddie ever did. Through Sal, Stella, and Jelli, the river keeps rolling.

While working on this book I kept thinking about my kids. “What will they think when they read it?” I know they’re going to say that I was honest, raw, and compassionate, and that’s enough for me.

I have learned from my kids how to be a dad—when to speak and when not to speak. From Santana, in the musical realm, I learned how to be a leader in a band. Even before Santana, I figured out that sometimes somebody has to step up and say something, and if nobody does, then I’ll have to be the one to be the chef in the kitchen. I learned that a leader is not hesitant to speak up and say, “The potatoes are still raw, and they’re too hard. Let them cook some more.”

Santana came about because I would hear a new musician such as Michael Shrieve or Chepito or Neal Schon and think, “Hmm. He could work well with the band we have now,” and that is still true today. There’s always room for growth and change. Santana in 2014 is not what it was in ’68, ’73, or ’89. It is not meant to be the same. I believe that is the Santana signature—the one thing that has stayed the same in our music is a consistency of higher and higher presentation.

I believe that’s why the music of Santana stays vital and strong. I also believe that our music reminds people that they don’t have to wait for heaven to arrive; it’s already here. It has the power to inspire, to transport, and to change people, even on a physical level. I get letters and e-mails and online posts from fans saying that a concert helped them heal in ways that they needed but never expected. In
the past year alone I’ve heard from people in Dayton and Spokane who’ve said that our music has reached their souls and transformed their bodies. It is all ignited and connected by sound, so when I speak about my musical life and the spiritual realm, you must understand that they cannot be separated. Sound assaults your senses and bombards your molecules, and your body knows that no matter what the mind is thinking the connection is always there.

More than a walk down memory lane, this book is meant to bring all the stories in my life to light so people can see that there’s always room for growth and enlightenment. By “enlightenment” I mean lightening up—having fun with your life. Even when my life was totally in balance, when the domestic, musical, and spiritual were all manifested at the highest levels—even at Woodstock and at the Grammy Awards—I had a hard time accepting myself and seeing myself the way others saw me. But now I can do that, and I’ll relax and lighten up. I’ll be brushing my teeth or combing my hair, and all of sudden I’ll yell out, “Damn!” Cindy will come in and go, “What happened—you okay?” I’ll keep looking in the mirror and say, “Man, that’s one handsome Mexican. No wonder you chased me all over the place.” She’ll look at me and just shake her head.

I am now sixty-seven years young, and I feel great—I have loads of energy. My typical day starts early and goes late into the night. I believe that my years of maintaining a strict vegetarian diet, even though I now eat meat, helped my body in the long run. I still am picky about my meals: I try not to overeat, and I eat salads when I can. I enjoy a beer or glass of wine, but I’m not a big drinker. I exercise daily, too. I’m happy to say that my eyes and ears don’t need any help, and everything else that needs to function—as a musician and as a man—is working just fine, thank you very much.

Wayne and I have spoken about what happens if we ever come to a time when certain things are taken away from us, when our fingers don’t want to work anymore, and he said he wasn’t worried. “Creative people will always find a way to create.” I take a lot of comfort in that and thank God every day that my fingers can hold a guitar and work the strings and hit the notes that can transform
and inspire. If a time ever comes when my fingers can’t do that anymore, I’ll just be grateful that there was a time when they could.

If my abilities leave me I think I might just start a tiny little church in Hawaii. I’ll call it the Church of the Holy Choice, because that’s what everyone has—a choice. It’ll be different from most churches, because the only thing required will be for you to make an inner commitment to attaining a tangible change within yourself, to take responsibility for yourself and stop being a bitter victim. You have to be like a dog shaking off water, shaking off all that stuff that you shouldn’t be carrying around.

I see the church as having pews and being open to the outside world, and it will have vibrant, vital music, the primary part of which will be the rhythm. It can be local music, but it will have to have congas to put away the false notion that drums and percussion are the instruments of the devil. I will speak, and there will be chanting, and even if I can still play I’ll put the guitar down and keep it to one side for special events. When the time comes that part of my life will be dedicated to presenting what the Holy Ghost wants me to present.

I’ve been on this beautiful planet since July 20, 1947, and I have never, ever prayed or asked anything from Satan, Lucifer, devils, or any other dark force. I believe in angels, archangels, thought adjusters, sentient beings, benevolent spirits, and family members who have passed on and are still here to guide me and protect me. I still read and meditate and do what I can to strengthen my belief muscles, just as going to the gym develops my other muscles. Some people might think that once you start discovering godly things and go down the path to enlightenment you have to lose your appetite for the world, and that’s just not true. That’s not how I’ve lived my life, and that’s not going to change.

I believe there is a supreme being, a supreme creator, and whether it’s Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, or Allah, it’s as John Coltrane said: “All paths lead to God.” Divinity has many names but only one destination. God is all harmony—not just one chord or one note. To say that one of them is the only one, and that everyone who worships another is wrong and going to hell, is mummified and petrified thinking.

I don’t want to go to heaven if it’s selective. And there’s another thing I pray for—I only want to go to heaven if they have congas up there.

My book started with a parade—it ends on an island.

I think about islands a lot. Sometimes interviewers want to know what music or other things I’d take with me to a deserted place. I usually tell them Miles Davis’s
Sketches of Spain,
my guitar, and a copy of
A Course in Miracles
. At the end of 2013 I was pretty much ready to move to an island: we went from the Kennedy Center Honors straight to Mexico to film the HBO special, and we were finishing
Corazón
around the same time.

That’s still a dream I have—to be able to cash in all the chips and move to someplace like Hawaii the way it was a hundred years ago. There are still places like that around the world, where you can escape and hide out and coexist with nature; where the sky is your roof, the ocean is your bathtub, and it’s always the right temperature. If you feel hungry, you can just pull a papaya or a coconut or a mango right out of a tree.

I used to tell myself, “Wow, what an incredible existence that would be.” Now I hear a voice that says, “Don’t kid yourself, man. You’d be bored to death in two hours.”

The part of my life that’s exhausting is the dichotomy between having all this energy and feeling that I really do need to find out how to relax and slow down the touring and the planning so that I can catch up with myself and get a better look at what’s up ahead. Being with Cindy has helped me with that; I have consciously made a commitment to get off the road and stop doing the Santana thing from time to time, to get away from the craziness. Now, as ever, I’m all about the holy instant, the state of grace that I always try to attain and maintain, ready everywhere and in every way to receive the Universal Tone.