I remember reading when Bill fell he missed having a guitar in his hands. He had gone every day, for a long time holding the guitar in his hands, and now he couldn't. It must have felt awkward not to have it, like a monk that doesn't have his rosary or crucifix in hand. Les Paul said that playing the guitar kept him sane over the years. And from my experience of COVID, playing the guitar every day held back the terrible anxiety and depression that came with the illness. I was having fever and hallucinations about being stretched across Canada and being attacked by a gray lobster-like, crustaceanous COVID bug. At the time this image was telling me that I had “long” COVID (long in that my body was stretched over Canada, telling me that the length of space was really the length of time). But with anxiety, depression, fever, horrible hallucinations, acute tinnitus, pneumonia, and insomnia, I managed to pull through. And it's playing the guitar that helped me immensely, that gave me back my personality, my appetite, and interests that I thought were forever lost from the bug.
So I'm wondering if Bill will write a song or instrumental showing his appreciation for his instrument. I know he has his book of guitars as a thread on this forum. But will we ever hear about how the guitar helped him through both the good and bad parts of life? That would be an interesting story. Maybe he should come back to revisit the forum and talk about his missing the guitar and how it feels to have it back in his hands.
I came across a photo that I was going to use on my rendition of his song Shine where it looks like Bill is looking through the neck of his guitar with one eye. It just occurred to me that this picture kinda means that you see the world through the helpful view of your guitar ... yes, it may be a bit of a stretch... but the guitar supports and shapes us in ways we would never expect normally. Bill's fingers are curled like eyelashes. On some level, the guitar mirrors what we see, like holding up a mirror to reality. As well, we can't underestimate what our body is saying unconsciously by the gestures it assumes. The material tokens and totems that surround us are invaluable guides to navigating our spiritual worldview. The material points to the immaterial.
So the guitar is a powerful tool. We see that more clearly in some people rather than others. Bill is one of those people... a confluence, the nexus where the spiritual and material meet through the divinity of music.