Max Feinstein

New Site.. Who dis?

I am a performer and entertainer with a background spanning 25 years and various mediums including Rock n Roll, Musical Theater, and Improv Comedy.  I have been educating the world around me on Hemophilia my entire life and in the past few years I have begun to incorporate Bleeding Disorder advocacy and education into my musical platform, so welcome to my cross section!

How did we get here?  Well, I grew up in a household surrounded by classic musical theater and rock n roll ranging from the elder statesmen of the Stones and Beatles to any flavor of the 90s my cool older sister might leave around at least until I picked up the guitar and discovered P2P streaming at the age of 11.  As a youngster I was keen to escape into any form of media, though.  Albums, musicals, cartoons, video games, audiobooks, it really didn't matter, I was keen to escape the reality of living with Hemophilia and the pervasive feeling that something was fundamentally wrong.

For those who don't know, Hemophilia is a family of bleeding disorders where an individual is missing a protein esesntial to functioning blood.. a consequence of missing that missing protein is often that blood goes where it shouldn't normally go and that would most typically be the joints.  How does that factor into things?  Well, I had my share of ankle bleeds as a precocious child, but it seems that I took to the guitar so fervently that after 5 years of intensely focusing on the instrument I began bleeding into my right elbow and in another 5 years I had bled into my elbow so prolifically that I was formally diagnosed with bone-on-bone arthritis on par with what you would see in someone 50 or 60 years my senior.

That sucked.

I was in maddening pain and compounded mental anguish.  I was told to put the guitar down, but when I asked if it would make my pain lesser I was met with shrugs that set the middle finger in my heart alight.  I made a choice then and there that if I was going to suffer regardless of the situation then I would choose to do so for things worth the toil.  It was the only way forward.

Fast forward another decade and I have managed to put together a catalog of music, found a recording studio, and developed a music curriculum for guitar and production that I can bring to the Bleeding Disorders Community and beyond!  Through this persistence and the help and support of a great number of people I have managed to fight my way through chronic pain and share my story with the world.

Thank you very much for reading it.  May it be better refined with time