wow! that whole adage, "where there's a will, there's a way ..."

The other week, a patient told me about Toni Lommi - the guitarist for Black Sabbath (same band as Ozzy Osbourne - for those who did not know like me).  At 17, he was working in a factory but wanted to pursue his dream of music.  On the day he planned to quit, he was placed on a huge machine that he didn't know how to work.  That afternoon, as he was pushing metal in to the machine, it came down heavily and chopped off the tips of his middle and ring fingers.  Understandably, he remained really down and depressed over the whole situation until his boss encouraged him to listen to jazz music by Django Reinhardt of which he ended up listening to the whole record and became inspired again after learning that Reinhardt only played with two fingers! Lommi made plastic covers for his fingers with melted down plastic liquid soap bottles and covered these with leather to get a better grip.  His unique style and sound came about from the combination of his fingertips, using banjo strings (lighter ones than even the lightest guitar strings) and down-tuning his strings to ease playing and bending.  How cool is that?! ...