After Arm Surgery, Guitarist Ponders a Future He Can’t Pick

For that overwhelming percentage of us who work well within the margins, it’s tough to imagine being a virtuoso. Ballplayer, cabinetmaker, scholar, musician ... what must it feel like to glide above the crowd with a talent that soars?

And then, just like that, to lose it? Or, more specifically, not to lose it but to have it snatched away?

Eric Henderson spends much of his time these days at his mother’s home in San Juan Capistrano, pondering such a twist of fate. Gone for now are the trips to distant foreign capitals or American concert halls, where he would perform classical guitar--sometimes in front of great orchestras--to admiring crowds.

Once upon a time, even the temporary loss of his great talent would have left Henderson a wreck. It has, after all, been his life since as a Laguna Beach teenager 30 years ago he studied in Madrid with Andres Segovia.

Now 44, Henderson can only hope he’ll play again. But even if he doesn’t, he suggests he’s learned to appreciate life outside the concert hall.

His epiphany began after performing a matinee concert April 21 in San Diego. He didn’t feel well afterward, but not until a second hospital visit two days later did doctors diagnose that he had necrotizing fasciitis--more commonly known as flesh-eating disease--and said it might cost him his right arm.

“I had no idea what I was in for,” Henderson says now. “The last thing I remember saying to the doctor before I went in to surgery was, ‘Don’t take my arm.’ ”

Besides dexterous fingers and strong hands, a virtuoso guitar player must have strong arms. The arm was spared and, perhaps, Henderson’s playing career.

“I’d like to get back doing concerts again, but it’s going to be awhile,” he says in a halting, tired voice. “I can just last for a few minutes now. I don’t have a lot of endurance. My hand wasn’t affected, thank God, or my coordination. The problem, really, is in the arm. It’s numb from the shoulder down almost to my wrist.”

And during these idle, sometimes listless months of recovery has come much thought.

“You know, it’s funny,” he says. “When I did that San Diego concert, I was at the top of my game. I felt the best I’d ever felt as far as my technique, and everything was going well. I had plans for lots of concerts. When this hit me afterward ... this has been a life-changing experience for me. It is giving me such pause to look at what is really important, how precious life really is. I’ve had to stop and slow down and reflect and weigh things and thank God every day for my arm, that I still have it, and that I have my life. The things I took for granted I’m not taking for granted anymore.”

If he chooses, he could also reassess what friendship means. Sometimes the exceptionally talented, already set apart from the crowd, are lonelier than they realize. Henderson owns up to that, saying practicing as much as 10 to 12 hours a day as a teen-- followed by an adult life spent largely on the road--produced loneliness and a career that sometimes was “a real grind.”

“The pressure of performing, it would take a lot of the pleasure of the music away from me,” he says. “I always felt on the edge of disaster, only as good as my last performance.”

On July 25, he might have a better sense of his place. Friends are holding a benefit concert for him at seven-degrees, an arts and events complex at 891 Laguna Canyon Road.

The benefit is the brainchild of Nick Hernandez, a Laguna Beach sculptor who has known Henderson since he was 12. Hernandez says the benefit will start with dinner and drinks at 6 p.m. and feature local bands, a silent auction and a raffle of artistic items. Proceeds will help Henderson pay for some personal expenses, Hernandez says.

I ask Hernandez why he’s doing it. “Oh, geez,” he says, “I’ve got to tell you, his music, I’m in love with it. It’s one of the few things in life that is incredibly uplifting. It gives a richness and value to life.... When I heard his arm might be amputated, I wept. The thought of never hearing Eric play, when I’ve heard him from two feet away--what a gift that is. It’s like listening to angels.”

If he never plays the concert stage again, Henderson says, he’ll compose and teach a new generation of classical guitarists.

“I’m overwhelmed that Nick has done this,” Henderson says of the benefit. “Just everybody that has stepped up and offered help. The fact that they’re doing this, it’s humbling and kind of overwhelming.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons at (714) 966-7821 or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.