I was a teenager when I had a chance to hear the legendary flamenco guitarist, Sabicas, play a concert in Toronto.

Sabicas was in his mid 70s then—a diminutive old master, dressed in black tie and matching toupee, nearly blind, but his purist flamenco heart still beating hypertensive picados.

In an interview he once gave, Sabicas said that he was just five years old when he started playing the guitar.

My mother, poor dear, would say to me, “Please, go to bed, it is already 3 o’clock in the morning!” I would reply, “Yes, yes, Mama,” while still going tram, tram, tram on the guitar.  I loved it then and continued doing it all my life.

His recommendations for practicing? “Two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening should be enough,” he said, “but no less than that.”

Sometimes after you have been practicing a certain piece for hours, you still make mistakes.  “Why am I making a mistake? You ask yourself.  “My fingers are all right.  Why?”  The guitar is, of course, very fickle. I have always found the guitar very difficult. Now I find it more difficult than ever.

That night in Toronto was approaching the end of the road for Sabicas.

Born in 1912 in Pamplona he died in 1990 in New York, his home away from home for 40 years. “New York,” he said, “is the only city in the world where you can go to a restaurant at any time, day or night,  and if you feel like eating a paella at 3 o’clock in the morning you can get it.”

Drawing on this data, here are three rules for living a passionate life, according to Sabicas:

1. Work hard at what you love to do
2. Accept imperfection, albeit reluctantly
3. Whether it’s deep into the night, or late in life, order up a paella and keep on playing, no matter who tells you to stop

¡Olé!

Robert