Re: GG: GG as vocalist -- not sent

[Tim Conway <tpconway@ozemail.com.au>]

Subject:     Re: GG: GG as vocalist -- not sent
Sent:        14/2/97 4:18 PM
To:          f-minor, f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
CC:          Gregory T Romero, gregory.romero@yale.edu
BCC:         Tim Conway, tpconway@ozemail.com.au

I too find GG's humming a most attractive part of his playing. I have 
often wondered why he did it so much. After seeing some GG videos for the 
first time recently, and after reading other people's ideas on the matter 
in recent messages, I have formed a most preposterous hypothesis that 
should be laughed out of court, exiled and thrashed to within an inch of 
its life, so I am offering it to f-minor as The Only True Reason Why That 
Gould Guy Sang.

I once heard of a war casualty who nearly lost a hand. After the war, 
remedial surgery was used to sever and then rejoin the nerves in the 
damaged wrist. The operation worked up to a point, but

It all goes back to an English woman I knew many years ago. One of her 
relatives was in bombers during WWII. During a crash-landing glass cut 
one of his wrists very badly. The docs sewed it up as best they could but 
his hand became deformed and almost lifeless. After the war, surgeons 
like Archibald McIndoe (spelling?) did a great public service by using 
plastic surgery and similar techniques to patch people up. One of them 
was this bomber crewman.

They re-severed all the nerves in the affected wrist, joined them 
together 'properly' (my wife says it's impossible -- or was then), and 
told him to hang a brick from the thumb to unbend the deformity. For six 
months he carried this brick-on-a-string everywhere, and his hand 
gradually resumed its natural shape. When the docs eventually told him to 
throw away the brick he found that he could once again use his damaged 
hand. The only problem was that the damaged thumb would always perform 
the mirror-image action of whatever the other thumb was doing. This was 
before zips in trousers became common. He had great difficulty doing and 
undoing his fly-buttons

_________________________________________________________________
Tim Conway          mail:               Conway Consulting Pty Ltd
                                 301 Glenfern Road (P O Box 1042)
                                       Upwey, VIC 3158, Australia
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                    email:              <tpconway@ozemail.com.au>
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Never disregard a book because the author...is a foolish fellow.          
                                                 - Lord Melbourne
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