AFTERWORD

Hoy y Mañana

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and me, February 24, 2014.

When 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.