The article explains this but the link scrolls to the third paragraph. For anyone who missed it:

> If you are a guitarist, you might notice that there is something strange about her technique. She was left-handed, but rather than stringing a guitar in reverse the way lefties usually do, she just played a standard-strung guitar upside down. She had to learn her own idiosyncratic chord shapes, and she played them by alternating bass with her fingers and playing melody notes with her thumb. This must have required some dedication! But none of it is as important as her sound and her material.

As a (right handed) guitarist I can't even imagine playing upside down guitar. It shows you that the brain can do amazing things, if you do it for long enough, and are dedicated enough. Plus she stopped playing for decades and then just went back to this like nothing was lost.

Jimmy Haslip does the same https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-3gYIGLbKM

Completely different music style, of course, but Dick Dale did the same thing.

From what I know, guitars were originally designed to be played with the fingernails.

Notice on her closing stroke she simulates a right handed player's action of a guitar pick, which had become a more familiar and expected finale indicator during her lifetime.