to part on amicable terms, and he eventually married and moved to New York.
And so it was I found myself madly in love and at the peak of my classical career. At that time I knew “The First Lady of the Guitar” had it all; a wonderful new family of four stepsons, a husband who adored me, a beautiful Beverly Hills home, and many international friends. I was even able to maintain an affectionate relationship with my former lover, Pierre Trudeau, who had come to visit us.
• • •
However, after fourteen fulfilling and happy years of travelling the globe with Jack and the World Presidents’ Organization, and performing everywhere from the Cairo Opera House to the Kremlin, from the Meyerson in Dallas to Windsor Castle, our fairy tale life began to unravel. I have always been a restless spirit, “taking a big bite out of life,” as my music producer once commented, and I have always sought new and varied adventures over security. It is often difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that causes a relationship to break down, and to this day Jack maintains that had I not experienced a little-understood condition called musician’s focal dystonia, we would still be together. Perhaps now is the time to recap how it all happened and go back to a time when my married life was still picture perfect, when the word divorce was not even in my vocabulary.
As early as 2000 I noticed that my arpeggios and tremolo were not as smooth and synchronized as before. I had always taken my right-hand technique for granted as the fingers seemed to work on autopilot and never required much attention, other than the scales and a series of exercises that I was in the habit of doing by rote while I sat watching television with Jack. We had come to an agreement that in the evenings, when we were home, if I threaded a Kleenex under the strings to dampen the sound, I could practise scales to keep my fingers limber while he flicked through the TV channels. I had no idea that this mindless activity would contribute significantly to the gradual loss over six years of my ability to use my right-hand fingers in the specialized movements required for classical guitar technique.
Learning about my frustration, Jack had taken me to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, where I underwent a series of rather unpleasant nerve tests that determined I had no neurological damage whatsoever. The doctors concluded it was probably something called “task-specific focal dystonia” or, more precisely in my case, “musician’s focal dystonia,” which can be triggered by repetitive fine motor motions and lack of mental attention to what the fingers are doing. When neurons in the brain have fired over and over again due to the same repeated movements, and the brain is not carefully focused, the brain maps can eventually become “smudged” and confused, sending incorrect messages to the fingers.
The doctors told me it was basically an incurable affliction and that most musicians have to end their careers once this condition occurs. They recommended, however, that I try finger splints and suggested I see a rolfing therapist as they also found the muscles in my arms to be pretty tight. Back in Los Angeles, I endured ten torturous sessions, during which my poor arms were kneaded by a rolfer, whose arms were three times the size of mine. But my stubborn fingers still misbehaved.
I began a series of therapies, each time praying for a miracle: I flew to North Carolina for a week to learn Alexander Technique, consulted acupuncturists and chiropractors, and even spent a month attending sessions in Scientology at the Celebrity Center in Hollywood where Tom Cruise assured me that Scientology would, of course, be the solution to my finger problems.
Scientology was one of the stranger experiences in my life — being “audited” using their E-meter, having to strain to remember any “bad” things I might have ever done, lying on a massage table while one of their zombie-like members did their standard “feel my finger” routine, touching various points on my back, arms, and legs. Needless to say, all of this accomplished absolutely nothing. I quit after a month, realizing I had just wasted a few thousand dollars.
Looking back I really must have been pretty desperate to have sought help from this bizarre cult, known for exploiting its members. I chalked it up to one of my rather weird life experiences and was glad I had not wasted too much time being brainwashed by L. Ron Hubbard’s techniques.
Despite the failure of all of these supposed “cures,” I refused to give up. Stubbornly, I did not want to accept the recondite diagnosis of focal dystonia and felt desperate to discover another explanation.
I wondered if, perhaps, my problem could be the result of some deep-seated desire to abandon my guitar or my marriage. To test this theory I drove over to the San Fernando Valley for five appointments with a renowned hypnotherapist, followed by a couple of further sessions with another one in Brentwood who had been recommended to me. I found this one to be unpleasant and condescending, and concluded that hypnotherapy was not the answer.
Everything I tried seemed to no avail, all the efforts and therapies had no noticeable effect, and to my dismay my right-hand dexterity continued to deteriorate. It was breaking my heart to realize that my fingers, once known for flying over the strings with a speed that even Andrés Segovia and Julian Bream had marvelled at, were now in serious trouble.
I was still able to play “rest stroke,” but the “free stroke” required for advanced pieces was deteriorating. And my perfect left hand was no use to me if the right-hand fingers could not keep up! Was it now my destiny to abandon my beloved guitar? Would I ever find a way back to the music I had devoted my life to? I felt as though I had a deep ribbon of sadness running through me. I remembered how poor Schumann had struggled to design a finger-strengthening device trying to correct his fingers when they began misbehaving.
There was only one guitarist I knew of who had recovered from musician’s focal dystonia, and he had apparently taken a ten-year break from playing before retraining from scratch. For me that was not an option. Nevertheless, I made the trek to his place in Manhattan, but after a month of following his approach, which involved making huge sweeping motions with the right hand while imagining the movement originating in the muscles of the armpit, my fingers were no better off at all.
• • •
At around this time, Strunz and Farah, a virtuoso nuevo flamenco duo based in Los Angeles, had invited me to be their special guest on a new CD they were making called Stringweave. At first I refused, knowing full well I could never compete technically with their dazzling “mile a minute,” Latin jazz style of playing, but after hearing a demo of “Rimas de Cuerdas” that Jorge Strunz had especially written for me, I agreed to visit their studio.
Jorge and Ardeshir were both workaholics who rehearsed daily for hours, to the point that their playing was mind-blowing in its synchronized perfection. As a result the duo had developed a fanatic following around the world. For me, it was a great experience to stretch musically and play jazz with these amazing guitarists. It fuelled the inspiration to put out my own Latin style album the following year. I was fortunate to have them return the favour, as my special guests, performing on a piece that I wrote with their dazzling technique in mind. The CD, aptly named Camino Latino, which means Latin journey in Spanish, did indeed lead me on a huge life-changing Latin journey … but that is a story for the next chapter.
My motivation for choosing this style of music was a practical one. With my right-hand guitar technique giving me major problems, a less demanding style of music seemed like a sensible option. Why not opt for pieces that my fingers could manage more easily, and invite some of the guitar world’s Latin jazz and nuevo flamenco superstars to do the heavy lifting? Besides that, I had developed an appreciation for this appealing, Latin-based genre that radio stations such as The Wave in Los Angeles were choosing to broadcast.
The guitarists who excel at this style of music play using picks, which enables them to play at double speed compared to classical guitar players since a pick can be plucked up and down on the strings, unlike the fingernails. Another advantage these players enjoy
