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Lopez tells the story of ‘the Soloist’
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“This is a man who has found something most of us will never find—true purpose. He has found his passion.”
Pacing the stage at Alumni Arena last night, microphone in hand, author and newspaper columnist Steve Lopez did what he does best. He told a story.
Lopez, who writes twice a week for The Los Angeles Times, recounted the events that culminated in his enduring friendship with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a musician whose schizophrenia ended his studies at The Juilliard School and relegated him to a life on the streets.
The relationship between the two men, which Lopez captured through his columns, became the subject of the writer's nonfiction book, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music.” A movie starring Jamie Foxx as Ayers and Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez appeared in theaters earlier this year.
Lopez’s talk last night was the third in this year’s UB Distinguished Speakers Series. He started his story in the same place it began in 2005, in Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, on a cool, drizzly day. Outdoors, in the open city, he heard music—classical music that sounded like the work of a trained musician.
Stopping to investigate, Lopez encountered Ayers, who was playing a two-string violin, a grungy thing, scratched up and missing two strings. A statue of Beethoven stood nearby. On a shopping cart carrying his belongings, Ayers had put up a sign that read, “Little Walt Disney Concert Hall.” The home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the big Walt Disney Concert Hall, sat a few blocks away.
“As I’m looking,” Lopez remembered, “one more thing stands out. He doesn’t have a hat out there, and he doesn’t appear to be playing for money.”
“I’m thinking, ‘Yes, this is my column. This guy’s got to be a column,” Lopez said.
Over time, Lopez learned Ayers’ name. The story of the musician’s life began to unfold. Ayers was from Ohio. When he was young, his mother owned a beauty salon. She would keep the radio on, and Ayers would visit after school to listen. He loved the music. He began to play his own, practicing with intensity. When he grew older, he flew student standby to New York City, where he had made an appointment for an audition at Juilliard. He nailed it.
He went to Juilliard a little nervous. Could he really cut it there?
“And he did,” Lopez said. “I went to look at his transcripts. There are all of these comments from the jurors, the professional musicians who sat in on his audition, and it was clear from their remarks that this was a great talent, that he might one day land in one of the great orchestras of the world.
“But in the second year, the grades began to fall, and he’s still doing well in performance…but when you’ve got to sit and pay attention, he’s having trouble focusing. And the next year after that, more of the same. And what nobody knew was that Nathaniel was seeing things and hearing things that nobody else did.”
Ayers left Juilliard, returned home, continued to struggle with mental illness. After his mother died, he went west to Los Angeles. He spent his nights on the city’s “skid row,” where legions of homeless congregated. His music offered an escape from a reality that terrified him.
“So I wrote that first column,” Lopez said. “And the reaction was a real surprise to me. I’ve been a journalist for 35 years. I’ve written stories and columns from all over the place, worked for (several) newspapers, worked for the magazines. I’ve written stories about natural disasters, hurricanes, volcanoes, floods, political conventions…Covered Olympics, followed presidential candidates, went to Iraq, went to Bosnia. And nobody responded the way they did to this first story about Nathaniel. People wanted to get personally involved. In the time it would take me to read one email, 10 more arrive. People were rooting for him, and rooting for me to find ways to help him.”
Besides letters, readers sent two cellos and six violins. They mailed in the two missing strings. Sheet music arrived. And Lopez’s relationship with Ayers continued. The columnist brought instruments to the musician, and then to a mental health agency where Ayers could play them.
Strangers who met through a chance encounter, the two grew to become friends. Together, they attended a rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, during which Ayers told Lopez, “Mr. Lopez, Beethoven is in the room. He is in the room. Do you hear this? Every note is perfect.”
The pair met the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who, Lopez learned, had been a classmate of Ayers at Juilliard. Professional orchestra musicians wanted to meet Ayers. They were awed. “We love music, too,” they would say, “But for us, it’s a job. For you, it’s pure pleasure.”
Today, Ayers lives in an apartment. He has a studio where he plays his string instruments, along with a piano, a French horn, a trumpet, a clarinet, a flute. He and Lopez go to concerts and ball games. They go to the beach.
They share their story at speaking engagements, advocating for improved services for the mentally ill. The existence of places such as skid row, Lopez said, is shameful when cost-effective alternatives—providing the homeless with housing and such resources as job training, for instance—have shown success in getting people off the streets.
Ayers did not attend last night’s UB event.
“He sometimes accompanies on these trips, but it’s difficult when they’re out of state,” Lopez explained. “He still does not have a photo ID…He doesn’t see why he should have a photo ID. He knows who he is, and nobody else really needs to know.”
If Ayers had been present, he might have played music.
“This is a man who has found something most of us will never find—true purpose. He has found his passion,” Lopez said. “He wakes up, and the world is a disorienting place, but music saves him…Each and every day, Mr. Ayers wakes up, and things are flying all around him, those things he can see and hear that nobody else does.”
And then he sees the notes on the pages of music—the notes that haven’t moved for 200 years, the notes that are right there, Lopez said, where Beethoven left them.
“And he’s saner,” Lopez said, “than we can ever hope to be.”
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