Me

and manifest themselves through your being, through you.”
    It is a beautiful belief and I feel that I lived it fully when I attended Carnival in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago. I had the chance to attend a parade at the Sambódromo, with one of the samba schools, and at one point during the musical rehearsals I was surrounded by five hundred drums, all beating at once. If just one drum can make you feel the power of rhythm, music, and life and you can’t resist the urge to dance—imagine what it’s like with five hundred drums! It was one of the most electrifying things I have ever felt in my life. For an instant you separate from your body, you let yourself be carried by the pulsating sounds, and in that moment you cease to be physical and enter the realm of the spiritual.
    So if the drums are truly the manifestation of my ancestors, I can rest assured that my ancestors are with me now, because I am never too far from a beating drum!
    I love that story. Because in the Afro-Antillean music of Puerto Rico—be it in candomblé, in samba, in salsa, in Native American music, or in guaguancó—drums are always present. Most religious ceremonies have drums. And this is because music has the power to liberate the mind and the spirit; it has the power to make you feel life at its most basic and natural form of expression. Music is a liberating force. Music is magical. Thanks to the fact that my life is always overflowing with music, I know I will always have a unique and fortunate existence.
    And for this, I am extremely grateful.
    I wrote this book while recording my sixth Spanish studio album. I had the privilege of working again with Desmond Child, and it has once again been a pleasure to feel his sense of structure, his calm, and the firmness with which he guides me throughout the creative process. The recording of an album, much like the writing of a book, is a very intimate experience. You have to sit and think, feel and allow the silence to bring about ideas that will eventually turn into sounds and words. Sometimes I start by humming a few loose notes that become a melody, and then a couple of words start to emerge. So I hold on to those words. I play with them. I toss and turn them around and start to piece them together like a puzzle. Slowly, full sentences start to appear, along with verses and stories, until they finally become something coherent, structured, something that conveys an idea or a feeling that I had never yet been able to put into words. When I start writing a song, I don’t always know where it’s going to go, and most of the time it takes me somewhere unexpected. A path of discovery.
    The same is true for this book.
    Like most of my albums, my latest is autobiographical, and it touches upon several different aspects of my life. The life I have, but also the life I want. It is a very honest and transparent record that is undoubtedly born from the renewed sense of strength I feel pulsing inside me. I have so much to say, so much to share, that I can’t wait to send it out into the world and see how it will connect with the audience, with all these souls who listen to my music. I want to go on tour, get up onstage and feel the audience’s energy. When I’m onstage, the audience fills me on such a visceral level, igniting me in the most powerful manner. I am happy to see how this whole process has come to be, and deep inside I know that all the days, months, and years I have ahead of me will, without a doubt, be extraordinary; I cannot wait to get there.
    If there is one lesson I’ve learned lately, it’s the importance of telling the universe what you want. If I want something in my life, if I want something in my career, or for my children or in my relationships, I have to tell it to the universe so it can become a reality. If I don’t have it in my mind, if I don’t absorb it and incorporate it into my life as a viable reality and not just a theoretical one, chances are it will never be actualized. I have to throw myself into the world, searching for what I want, dreaming of it, and not sitting around doing nothing, waiting for it to land at my feet like some kind of miracle.
    This is very true, especially when it comes to love. You have to search for love. You have to believe in it. You have to ask the universe for exactly what you want to call to your life. But most of all, you have to be patient.
    There are people in my life who have marked me very intensely. Every relationship