Pleasures in delusion

Steve Lopez, a journalist at the Los Angeles Times writes about Nathaniel Ayers, a talented musician suffering from paranoid schizophrenia who lives and plays his 2-string violin on the harsh streets of Skid Row amongst drug addicts, murderers, pimps and prostitutes. Haunted by his mental illness, he left Julliard, one of the world’s most exclusive music schools, 30 years ago and is now living in his own world on the streets of LA near a statue of Beethoven.

Nathaniel doesn’t have to worry about a daughter who will be just fifteen when he hits retirement age. His computer doesn’t crash. He doesn’t have to call his HMO six hundred times to scream about a doctor bill it refuses to cover. He doesn’t have to call a bank and threaten to strangle someone over a “thorough investigation” that has determined I was lying when I reported a case of identity theft and the loss of $3,000. Nathaniel is 100 percent off the books. No Social Security card, no driver’s license, no address, no living will, no job, no lawn to mow, no phone call to return, no retirement to plan for and no rules except his own.

The day of the Beethoven rehearsal, we walked one block down from Disney Hall and he told me he had to go to the bathroom.

“Just hold on,” I said. “My office is only a block away and you can go there.”

“Mr. Lopez,” he said, looking at me like a six-year-old, “I can’t wait.”

“Well, why didn’t you go back at Disney Hall?” I asked.

“I didn’t think of it,” he said. “But I really have to go bad.”

Across the street was the Los Angeles County Courthouse. In the garden was a tree. Nathaniel made a dash for it, returning a minute later with a look of great relief.

How can I ever reel him back to the world of rules and regulations, of protocol and privies? He is tied to nothing but his passion and the world it delivers him into, a world in which the city is his orchestra and the conductor is a statue. He sees a swaying palm and hears violins. A bus roars by and gives him a bass line. He hears footsteps and imagines Beethoven and Brahms out for a stroll.

“I can’t survive,” he once told me of his refusal to come indoors, “if I can’t hear the orchestra the way I like to hear it.”

- The Soloist, by Steve Lopez