ishmael cove seems to have drunk from the fountain of youth. Always with his unalterable demeanor, his black hair, his tanned complexion, with just a few temporal lines, and especially with that controlled overflowing energy that seeps through his pores, thanks to that balanced mix of his celebrated Cuban roots and American perfectionist rigor. Extreme sympathy, in this professional interviewer with dream kindness and linguistic perfectionism, who today shows himself to the full in his enriched and stripped-down interviews with leaders from the political, business, sports and entertainment worlds in another renewed proposal from the America Business Forum, but which is not long ago, he knew how to get off the crest of the professional wave as a star presenter on CNN, to become a master in the search for his own destiny, an inner journey that served him to disseminate his learnings to his loyal audience, in a an approach as spiritual as it is very personal. He is the man who refers to himself in third when he remembers the not so happy past of that “Cala under construction”. That Ishmael, with the smile on the surface of his skin. A training that he forged in his heart, thanks to the wisdom of the nonagenarian Venezuelan plastic artist Carlos Cruz Diez, whom he asked how it was done to be able to continue smiling at that age. To which the teacher replied “Celebrating life. Be wary of those who don’t smile.” A mantra that accompanies him in this present.
News: What was it like to put yourself back in the role of interviewer?
Ismael Cala: I never wanted to completely leave the role of journalist. I wanted to stop for a bit, and instead of doing it daily, be once a week. But unfortunately that negotiation was not achieved. I am passionate about journalism, and through a trained curiosity it has allowed me to understand that all human beings have very interesting stories that deserve to be told.
News: Of all these life stories that you have been going through, which was the one that impacted you the most?
Creek: Many interviews have marked me in different ways. Some for political issues, such as the interview with Evo Morales, where I felt that the hostility in the conversation was personal due to the fact that I was Cuban. He told me that he was an imperialist and that he did not know or respect the democracies of Latin America. It was an intense interview that taught me not to lose my cool or my temper.
News: You also interviewed great divas from Argentina such as Susana Giménez or Mirtha Legrand. What did you discover about them?
Creek: I have a friendship with Susana, and with her I learned to flow. Her spontaneity served as a mirror for me, because I felt that he was a rather stiff communicator. I learned by listening to Susana and seeing that her success was in openly showing her reality and vulnerability. And about Mirtha, what can I tell you? All my conversations, like when we went to see a tango show and she told me the anecdotes of her in Cuba. She interested me a lot in following the career of someone who remains valid at 95 when many others lose it at fifty. There is a mastery of life and a passion for life, that I give her as an example in all my conferences when people want to reach an adult life well, with resilience, integrity and cerebral active. From all my interviews I always take something that reinforces my own philosophy of life.
News: You said it was “stuffy”, however, throughout your life you always broke with the established, where was this tie?
Creek: In the early years of adolescence. I was 15 when I found out that my father suffered from schizophrenia and I had to visit him in a psychiatric hospital and when they had just given him electroshock sessions. And although at that moment it was disloyal, I asked God to help me because I wanted another future. I decreed that in my life I would honor my father’s struggle, but that it would not be the mirror in which I could look at myself, because it was too much pain. I claimed that personal power to break with that karma of not wanting to grow up and look like him. From an early age I was always very determined in what I wanted to do, but also inhibited in showing myself as I was. As a journalist on a network like CNN, where I had to maintain my credibility, I couldn’t be funny, because tomorrow a president doesn’t see you as someone trustworthy. So my sense of humor, which I’ve always had, couldn’t express it publicly. When I spent a year-end with Susana, and I began to get to know her, I discovered that, in her, the person and her character were one. Instead, in my case, I had a mounted character called Cala and a person named Ismael, who only allowed himself to be authentic among his friends.
News: He was barely eight years old when he started on the radio in Cuba, what did he need to tell?
Creek: The radio saved my life and adolescence. As a child I had throat diseases and many infections. Neither my mother nor I understood why, but now I know that the throat is the energy portal of communication, and I was a child who did not express himself, a self-conscious, isolated, almost antisocial child. I think that, if it had not reached the radio, I would have ended in a not so happy ending. The radio allowed me to have a voice, because at school I did not dare to speak about bullying. That Ismael had all kinds of identity conflicts, ghosts, because he was a family of great shame, taboos. Mental illnesses have always run in our family. We have a history of suicides practically in series and I was silent. First it was the Church and then the radio, my only two safe spaces to be able to express myself without fear.
News: At some point you felt that the island was too small for you, at what point did you feel that desire to leave?
Creek: It is true that, as an adult, at the age of 28, I left Cuba because of the regime, because I did not want my mind to be controlled by an ideological party and by an autocratic system. But I remember wanting to leave Cuba and explore the world was a desire that I had since childhood.
News: You always stressed that one of the important values is integrity, something essential for leadership, but you always reneged on politics. Did you change your mind?
Creek: I really didn’t like it, but none of us can escape politics, because if I create apathy for politics, it’s a bad message for young people, and I become part of the problem. Apathy and resentment leave a void, where few want to get involved. Not all of us are corrupt and we must make a difference. Something personal happened to me that I never imagined I would feel. If Cuba ever opens up, I think it could return to occupy a place in the public sector. I would do it to set an example of integrity, although I know it would mean a great personal sacrifice, because when someone gets involved in politics there is brutal scrutiny on them and their family. But I believe that if we want to change the course of Latin America, we must get involved, not leave political vacuums. Only then will integrity overcome corruption.
News: Is the future candidate for president cala in Cuba?
Creek: I don’t know if that much, but when you post that, they’re going to put me on one more blacklist in Cuba! I hope that Celia Cruz doesn’t happen to me, because she always dreamed that there would be a Cuba where she could sing again and she couldn’t do it. During the 16 years that I could not return to Cuba, my father, my grandmother, who was like my mother, and my great-aunt died, and I was not there because they did not let me in. I know that it was the price I had to pay for my freedom and for forging my character. Hopefully Cuba wakes up. It is a pity that this political caricature of dismembering all of us who are Cubans, but who do not share ideologies or disagree. The battlefield of ideas is dialogue.
News: His path was never linear but 180 degree turns. After leaving CNN, the stuffy journalist went full-time to become a spiritual communicator. What was that change like?
Creek: It was little by little. Actually, our company Cala Enterprise and the foundation started in 2012, four years before I left CNN. It was a great effort. I preferred to leave a success at its peak, and not when it started to decline because I knew that my passion was no longer there. I was honest with my heart, even though my ego litigated me saying it was professional suicide. Since I was 15 years old, I have been in a deep search to find Ishmael in his most spiritual and loving essence. He was a journalist who did not talk about his tribulations, until in 2011 he began to write “The power of listening.” That process of catharsis when writing the book was Ismael’s public breaking point. I transformed my wounds into wisdom.
News: What are you scared of?
Creek: To lose control of my mind. But it doesn’t scare me, because it forces me to have the discipline to do my rituals to have an increasingly healthy mind. If I weren’t afraid, I would live on autopilot.
News: Are you afraid of breaking down like your father?
Creek: Not so much, but I am afraid of losing control of my conscious mind. That fear is a reminder to work every day to continue to maintain mental health.
News: And what about the control of his heart?
Creek: I’m not afraid of getting out of control, because when your heart guides you, it knows the best of you. It is not that in your heart you have kept too much grudge. For two decades I have dedicated myself to cleaning my heart, to draining those things that you think you forgave but that are still there. When I understood that it is not a poetic and philosophical metaphor but an intelligence organ where there are forty thousand perceptive neuronal cells and that has memory. No resentment is justified in your heart, because it is a seed of revenge, and that is violence, and violence takes away peace and joy. Today I have my heart at peace. I do not curse anything bad that happened to me in life, but I am eternally grateful for this life that I designed. I am a happy man.
