Very happy new year, everyone, and I hope that you are all well rested and looking forward to 2026. Granted, it is an interesting time, but it seems that it pretty much always is.
In my latest newsletter, I teased that there were a couple of things I wanted to write a little bit more about. The first is something that affects my current ability to play and record music.
First, for those who are slightly squeamish, please be aware that I’m going to be talking a bit about bone and ligament structure.
A couple of years ago, I went to grab something that was falling and felt something go wrong in my left hand, right at the base of my left middle finger. I assumed I had sprained something and that it would simply get better over the course of a few days. Unfortunately, it did not.
A couple of weeks later, I saw an orthopedic surgeon and learned that I had what’s called a sagittal band rupture. In simple terms, the tendons that allow your fingers to extend and stay aligned are held in place by small ligaments at each joint. At the knuckle of my left middle finger, one of those ligaments had partially ruptured.
At the time, I wrote about needing to be in a brace for about six weeks. That did allow the ligament to mend. What I didn’t fully understand then is that “healed” and “unchanged” are not the same thing.
In November my hand started to act up again.
I fashioned a new brace and went back to the surgeon, who suggested that I lay off it for a while. Unlike the first time, I continued to play guitar and do other physical things – making the predictable choice to keep going when I probably shouldn’t have. Fairly predictably, any healing progress was inconsistent at best.
When I revisited the doctor yesterday, I received perhaps the most mixed bit of news one could hope for:
First, apparently my crafting skills are excellent. The doctor liked the brace I had made at least as much as the one that had been fabricated three years ago and felt it was perfectly fit for purpose (no need to replace it).
Second, the hand has improved over the past two months. There is still displacement of the tendon, but it’s not as severe as it was in November.
Third, surgery doesn’t seem like a particularly good option. There’s no guarantee it would meaningfully improve things, and it would disrupt what’s currently functioning.
What he was really telling me, I think, is that this isn’t a problem to be solved so much as a condition to be managed.
So that’s where things stand. The good news is that I’m not taking a break from playing, recording, writing, or any of the things I do musically. The harder truth is that I’m likely to be living with some level of pain in my left hand going forward.
That’s a humbling realization. Learning that my body can’t be taken for granted is an awakening for me (and I recognize just how lucky I am that for much of my life I’ve been as healthy as I am).
At the same time, there’s also the recognition that it could be much worse, and that I still have the ability to make music, create, and do the things I love.
I don’t love the idea of living with pain, and I don’t love learning that some things don’t go back to the way they were. But I’m also learning that continuity matters more than recovery. I can still write. I can still play. I can still make things.
Music has always been about accommodation anyway- working around limitations, finding shapes that fit, discovering that constraint often leads to better choices. This is just a more literal version of that lesson. The hand is different now. The work continues.
With that in mind, I’m going to try to once again fully participate in February Album Writing Month. I’ve also started talking with my engineer/co-producer about an album project to be launched later this year and likely released in 2027.
We’ll see where it all leads.
-Chris