I asked Diki and Nigel to evaluate the guitar piece I had Don post in January. I'm still on the fence about giving up on guitar, given some serious physical limitations.

Nigel, bless his heart, is kind and supportive, which I appreciate. And, he comes from a guitar background...he really understands some of the issues.

Diki, spent a lot of time talking through the parameters of the process of deciding whether to give up or not. He looked at the issues with a clearer eye than I have. The process was multiple emails. He went WAY OUT OF HIS WAY to help...a sincere, extremely generous effort.

When you look beyond the occasional bravado, it's easy to see that Diki is one of the most passionate musicians here.

Look a little farther, and, in spite of the fact that he sometimes tries to hide it, you find a genuinely sincere human.

Thanks, both of you for the advice to the "old dude".


Your friend,


Russ

Definately DON'T give up playing the guitar. While you may have to modify your playing style to accomodate the problems you can still play beautiful music and that is the bottom line.
Your music comes from your heart.

As I said to you what would the music world have lost if Django, who had severe physical disability, had decided not to play guitar using just two functional fingers. Sure he had to work around his disability but wow .... what music he was still able to create. I think that having to work around the problem actually added magic to to the music.

If I was in your shoes I would most definately continue to play. Even if it became too problematic I would even consider learning to play left handed rather than discard the pleasure of playing guitar completely. I love to play guitar and I would never want to lose the pleasure that I get from it.