Does anyone still listen to Julio Iglesias? He is the Latin artist who has sold more records in history. When he was 20 years old, he was in a car crash that damaged his spine severely. Everyone was convinced he would never walk again. I was never a fan of his, but this must have impressed me because I kept a clipping from Interview magazine on my journal:
“It’s all about making a disadvantage an advantage,” the Spanish heartthrob told the reporter in 1992. “That accident showed me for the first time that there is a connection between my brains and my body. I couldn’t move, so I opened my eyes more, I listened more, I was more alert for signs, smells, thoughts, and motivations that I never would have discovered without the accident. I started developing my mental powers. I discovered I could write something, how to put the songs and the words together. Little by litte,
I found I could move my toes, that with my brains I could move my muscles — that my brains were the motor of everything in my life. And I developed that sense every day for three years, even when I was sleeping”
While at the hospital, his nurse gave him a guitar to practise finger mobility. He wasn’t a singer then, but was studying law. The Spanish newspaper El Tiempo called it “un accidente bendito”. Yes, quite a happy accident!
—Raúl Rodriguez, NYC, 12.18.2018