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| Billie Silvey |
| May 2008 |
| The Redemptive Power of MUSIC |
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| Steve Lopez is my favorite columnist at the Los Angeles Times. A California native, he came here from Time magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer. I had been impressed by his columns about the police crackdown on the homeless community downtown in the wake of the young professionals moving into lofts there. Where most of the L.A. media focused on the new life gentrification was breathing into deteriorating parts of downtown and the restorations that were transforming spartan industrial areas into stylish living spaces, Steve focused on the distress of the homeless people being evicted from one area after another. One day, as he roamed the streets in search of a fresh approach for his columns, he heard amazing music. It was being played by a homeless man on a violin with just two strings. The man was playing, entranced, near a statue of Beethoven. When the music ended, Lopez met Nathaniel Ayers, who would become the subject of a number of his columns. A friendship developed between the men, and they attended a rehearsal at Disney Concert Hall and met with Yo Yo Ma, who had studied with Ayers at Juilliard. It was while he was at Juilliard that Ayers had been stricken with paranoid schizophrenia. Cared for by his mother until her death, he came to Los Angeles in search of his father. Lopez, the author of three novels, was recently interviewed by Tavis Smiley about his new book based on Ayers’ story. The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music is now in bookstores and available on Amazon.com, where I just ordered it. In it, Lopez writes: His first offering is a Beethoven cello sonata, and this drab concrete corner of downtown Los Angeles, with its nearby settlement of bug-bitten denizens and moving clouds of noxious vehicle exhaust, is transformed into a place of lilting repose. * * * Nathaniel’s bow is a fluid and obedient slave, his fingers dancing ballet on the fresh-varnished neck, and the music cuts him off from noise, worry, fear, illness. * * * Music is an anchor, a connection to great artists, to history and to himself. His head is filled with mixed signals, a frightening jumble of fractured meaning, but in music there is balance and permanence. The notes of Rhapsody sit on the staff as they did ninety years ago, precisely where Bloch left them. The work of Nathaniel’s beloved Beethoven has endured through parts of three centuries and will last beyond our time. Music is a meditation, a reverie, a respite from madness. It is his way to be alone without fear. A movie based on the book is due out in November. It is being directed by Joe Wright, who directed Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, and it stars Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez and Jamie Foxx as Ayers. This issue of the website on Music is a family affair, with my husband Frank, a member of the Mansfield Chamber Singers, writing about classical music; daughter Kathy, who worked fundraisers and jazz tours for our local jazz station, writing about jazz; and my writing about the church music I’ve sung almost every week since I was a child. What are your experiences with music? What impact has it had on your life or the lives of those you know? Write me at b.silvey@sbcglobal.com and share your story. |
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| Nathaniel Ayers |