Lopez, the author and Los Angeles Times columnist who is portrayed by actor Robert Downey Jr. in the film "The Soloist," was the guest speaker at UTT

Lopez Details How One Man Helped Him Reconnect With His Work
By STEWART SMITH
Staff Writer

Steve Lopez encouraged several hundred incoming freshmen at the University of Texas at Tyler to develop a passion that would define their lives.

Lopez, the author and Los Angeles Times columnist who is portrayed by actor Robert Downey Jr. in the film "The Soloist," was the guest speaker at the freshmen convocation held in the R. Don Cowan Performing Arts Center on Tuesday morning.

Beginning in February 2005, Lopez began writing a series of columns about a homeless man he saw playing a two-stringed violin on Los Angeles' Skid Row. What was initially a piece about a "violin man," exploded into something much larger, igniting what Lopez describes as an unlikely friendship as well as a shifting his point of view regarding the city's homeless population.

While the columns, book and feature film have provided Lopez with national recognition, he considers the real gift to be the day he met Nathaniel Anthony Ayers. The meeting launched a friendship, and Ayers gave Lopez a new perspective.

Early on in his life, Ayers was a promising, naturally talented musician studying at The Juilliard School in New York City. However, a mental breakdown and schizophrenia left him reduced to living on the streets, crushing cockroaches and keeping sticks to ward off rats at night. His musical talent remains, however, despite often not being able to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined.

Encountering Ayers, Lopez said his eyes were opened to the lack of attention society pays to those with mental illness.

"We wouldn't let 7,000 people crush cockroaches and go to sleep on the pavement of any city if they had cancer, if they had muscular dystrophy. It's OK because it's mental illness and we don't want to deal with it and we haven't through the decades and we've never come to grips with that. But that's not acceptable either, and Mr. Ayers has shown us why," Lopez said. "He's made it clear that those people are not strangers, they are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, and that we can do better. I was never a giver. And I found so many rewards, probably in part because of the great challenges. It was a gift the day I met Mr. Ayers."

Lopez said Ayers has progressed. He no longer refuses assistance for housing and has begun to talk about his mental illness, thanks in part to watching the film, "The Soloist," Lopez said.

During his brief time at Juilliard, Ayers was a classmate of world renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. However, because of Ayers' perseverance, Lopez said he considers his friend to be more successful in life than Ma.

"They were launched from the same stage at the same time, which one though, really has been more successful? It's obvious Yo-Yo Ma became an international icon. Few people in the history of classical music have had commercial success like he has, but Nathaniel wakes up every day fighting demons, trying to distinguish between the real and the imagined," Lopez said.

"And each and every day he gets through that with his belief in music. And he clears a space and whether he plays the cello or the piano or the violin or the string bass or the flute, trumpet or French horn, he finds peace and it is because he has this passion that nothing can defeat. Few people in this world ever find this passion. I hope that you find it at UT Tyler. I hope you find something in your life that gives you purpose. Nathaniel's got it. And, to me in some ways, given his challenges, he is the more successful of the two when you look at Yo-Yo Ma and Nathaniel Ayers."

Lopez said his passion continues to be writing, thanks to Ayers.

"I think he reconnected me with column writing. I had done it for so long. I thought maybe I should try something else with the last years of my working life," he said. "But I think Nathaniel reminded me how much I enjoy doing this. I feel privileged all over again to have a stage. And that's more precious to me now, having gotten the chance to write about Nathaniel and do so in ways that might be helpful to educate people on public policy issues. So it's as if that longtime passion had been rekindled by him."