Glenn, good point--we don't know all the many issues he could have been wrestling with.
gpoorman wrote:
To me there are always ways to make music.
Exactly. If I ever get so where I can't physically "play" any of my instruments, I can still type with a pencil in my mouth and still compose through MIDI and samples and still write sheet music for others to play. And teach!
If Stephen Hawking can explore black holes and quantum physics with a pencil in his mouth, I think I could rock it out.
But it is easy to distill everything down into the "he had nerve damage" excuse/explanation--because we try to make sense out of the senseless. That's probably a vast oversimplification but still no less tragic for whatever the complicated reasons.