The Fragilities upon which We Depend; or, I broke a nail today!

I’m thinking of the way our lives can revolve around some remarkably fragile things.

I broke my right thumbnail. Again.

I can hear the chorus of fingers on keyboards already -“Jeez, Le Ministre, suck it up!” “Grow a pair, creampuff!” - but here’s the thing for me - I depend on those nails for playing the guitar.

This was the third time in less than a year. On this particular occasion, it was a can of soup that was my downfall - I was unloading my shopping cart and the can caught on something. As it slipped out of my grip, it took the thumbnail with it. The previous occasion was repairing a toy for my son - I finished, he grabbed it while it was still in my grip and took off, saying “Thanks, Dad” just as the nail went ‘crick’. The one before that was taking my backpack out of the overhead bin after a flight. The backpack was stuck until I pulled too hard, at which point it came loose and I gouged a hole in the ceiling of the plane with my thumb.

I’m really lucky - I have extremely strong nails, which I use on classical, steel string acoustic and steel string electric guitars. Most folks can’t use their nails on a steel string without ripping them. I don’t use my thumbnail much on a steelie, but I use the nails on my fingers all the time with no problem. However, at the risk of sounding like the dime store Taoist that just took the aisle seat beside you on a trans-continental flight, their strength is their weakness. The one thing my nails cannot take is a direct blow to the end, or any blow which causes them to need to flex to get out of trouble.

I’ve got used to it - I use my left hand for just about everything I need (Get your minds out of the gutter, you lot!), I open cans left handed, drawers, lids. I have button flies on all my jeans, I don’t so much as change a light bulb without putting on my gloves. Basketball, volleyball, martial arts - all of them right out. For all that, once or twice a year, something stupid causes me to break a nail. A colander, getting laundry out of the the washing machine, I catch a rough spot that I haven’t had time to file on a thread and -boom- Le Ministre’s blaspheming again!

Today’s breakage could have come at a worse time - if I’d had a recording session or a performance in the next couple of days, I’d be looking into changing my repertoire about now. (My friend Pete had two auditions to get into the Faculty of Music at UVic - one as a voice major, one as a guitarist. As he stepped out the door to his house, he missed the doorknob and broke 4 of the 5 nails on his right hand - that’s why he’s a singer now and not a guitarist.) As it is, it happened an hour before a lesson. (There’s nothing like paying $80. an hour to hear someone tell you 'That’d sound a lot better if your thumbnail wasn’t f*cked up.) I also have some meetings with composers coming up next week, to give them some ideas about what I can do with the instrument for future compositions. (‘Now, if I had my thumbnail, I could show you some really cool things I can do with harmonics…’)

So, with the clock ticking on my lesson, I finish at the grocery store and blast home. Pull out the nail clippers and the Crazy Glue. Clip the thumbnail off the left - I keep it long for just such emergencies. (I also keep a stock of Latte lids, ping pong balls and patches of nylons. Why, yes, guitarists are a pretty weird bunch.) Yes, there are some things in life that are harder than opening a package of BandAids with one hand - among them is using Crazy Glue with your wrong hand to glue a nail together on your right hand. Before you begin this operation, have a look around at the ten most inconvenient things to have accidentally glued to your fingers. Sometime in the next fifteen minutes, they’re all going to be glued to your fingers at least once…

Crazy Glue will glue your fingers to each other, your fingers to the piece of your left thumbnail (the ‘splint’) that you’re trying to glue to your right, your other nails to anything they touch and that splint to anything other than what you’re trying to glue it to. Once it’s in the correct place, you need some means of holding it in place while it dries. This will shift it. Moving it back will cause it to stick somewhere you don’t want it. Swearing will become necessary. When your left hand fingers become glued together, don’t panic. Hold them under running hot water and wiggle them a lot. They will eventually become detached from one another as the first few layers of skin die. Swear some more; it’ll help.

I managed to reglue the nail. It’s ugly; in fact, if anything not spurting pus has ever deserved the adjective ‘carbuncular’, this is it. If my thumbnail were strolling through the forest, there’d be a mob of villagers chasing it with torches and pitchforks. If my thumbnail were a home improvement project, Mike Holmes would be punching his fist through it and tearing it out. It’s also not in any of the same planes as the real thumbnail, and it’s thick enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s going to pull the right string, but it’ll do for now…

You see, I need to have that thumbnail to make the bass notes louder than the rest of the chord, on occasion. It also makes all the difference between ‘harmonics’ that go ‘Ping’ and ring on beautifully for 30 seconds, and harmonics that go ‘pfffth’ and sound like an undercooked pancake hitting the range hood. I can’t use a thumbpick because I also need to be able to use the flesh of the thumb when that’s called for.

It also ticks me off that it’s always the left side of the nail I break. It’s the left side that I use to play - I don’t need the right, except to support the left. Maybe that’s why it breaks…

Ever since the can of soup incident today, the words of my wife (better known as “The Organized One”, “The Brains in the Family” or “The Dog Trainer”) have been echoing in my head. When I began to get serious about the guitar after years of being a singer, she cocked her head to one side and said “So, you want to have to worry about your fingernails now, in addition to worrying about catching a cold or shouting too loud at the hockey game?” Well, um, yeah, I guess, now that you put it that way…

So all this has had me thinking - what fragile things are there in your lives that you depend on? That most other folks wouldn’t give a second thought to but that are absolutely essential to you? Tools? Cooking utensils? Instruments? Computer rigs where you are one cable away from the whole thing not working?

Pets. The small, fragile variety where they die on you for no apparent reason and then you’re crushed. (My day gecko died last night.) Like 3 inches long, anything goes wrong and it’s gone, and if you take it to the vet it’ll die of shock anyway. And essential to my life, anyway.

On the nail side of things, I’ve seen women with truly horrendous-looking artificial fingernails that they assure me are stronger than the real thing, guaranteed to stick on until after the apocalypse etc. I wonder whether, embarrassing as it might be, something like that might be sturdier than the nail from your other thumb Frankensteined on. (Awesome as your description of that impromptu patch-job is!) The main advantage IMHO is that there’d be more surface area to stick the glue on; the artificial nail could cover your entire real one, and you could cut it to the right length and shape. Not sure though as I have no experience with such things, I hardly ever even paint mine.

My psyche is pretty fragile.

Where would I be without my team of psychiatrists?

Le Ministre de l’au-delà: Not to ignore the main question of your post, but would you object to having acrylic nails (or whatever the strongest artificial nail there is) put on in case of natural breakage? Not sure if any could withstand your playing, but they may be an option?

I haven’t met any guitarists who have had much success with false nails. Please, indulge me in an anecdote…

A friend of mine, who broke his index fingernail with about 6 hours to go before his recital, went to a shop and got one of the acrylic false nails put on. His first piece was Asturias (Leyenda) by Isaac Albeniz. If you watch at about 0:41 seconds in that video clip, there’s a specific stroke that’s needed, called a rasgueado. It’s a vigorous strum produced by ‘flicking’ the fingers down across all the strings at once, characteristic of Flamenco style playing. First one of those rasguados, and the false nail popped off and went flying across the stage. It sat there for the rest of the recital, like some fleck of Brobdingnagian dandruff. All his friends felt for him…

The thing is, the acrylic nail doesn’t have much give, and so every stroke is putting strain on the glue which holds it in place - a fundamental problem with any nail fix. This thing squatting on my thumb right now is probably going to drop off in the next week, maybe even in the couple of days, needing to be redone. If it can just hold out until next Tuesday, I’ll be content. This split leaves about 1.5 mm of white nail after the quick - I need about 8 mm, but I can get by with 4 if I have to. 3 weeks and it’ll be into a useable range. It’s one of those things - if I didn’t play, it would stay on, but the only reason I need the damn thing in the first place is so I can keep playing…

It also just feels bizarre - as if I had an extra 20 grams on the end of my thumb. There’s just nothing like your own real nails for playing. I’m just glad this isn’t the week I’m recording that demo that I’ve been planning to get around to ‘one of these days’…

Oh man - I am on the road and off to meeting; I just want to say how much I feel for you. What a pain! Reminds of reading interviews with Mark Knopfler and Stevie Ray Vaughn where they discussed crazy gluing their calluses back on when they got ripped off during a fierce move.

I hybrid pick - using a flatpick and my middle and ring fingers for fingerpicking at the same time - but I don’t really use my nails in my attack, only the flesh of my fingertips, with maybe a little bite from my nail if it is long enough at the time. I don’t play often enough to wear out my calluses - if I toured like those guys, though, I would have to come up with something…

My husband plays guitar in what appears to be the same manner you have described, and gotten manicurists to splint and repair half-split or broken nails. I will have to ask him what he had them do. He has not reported the “nail dandruff” problem from your anecdote. He does play Flamenco, but I mostly try to stay out of the way.