An interesting interview on NPR recently with Steve Lopez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times about his new book, The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music. The book is about Lopez’s friendship with a homeless musician he met three years ago on the streets of Los Angeles and chronicles his story. The man, Nathaniel Ayers, had been a promising musician, a violinist, who had studied at Juilliard and had been forced to leave because of his battle with schizophrenia. Lopez talks about his developing friendship with Ayers and the ongoing process of getting him off the street and finding treatment for his mental illness.
I haven’t read the book as yet…it’s on my list. However, the interview was interesting. You can listen to the interview here.
In this interview and in a couple of others I have read, Lopez talks about the ways in which music has the power to redeem:
I think of redemption, in this sense, not as atonement but as deliverance. Nathaniel was in some ways destroyed, his career halted and his dreams snuffed. But also, music saved and sustained him, as if it were a spiritual, healing force. I’d have to admit, as well, that I had never adopted a cause in my life. One of Nathaniel’s many gifts to me was to get me outside of my own head, so I could experience the humility that comes from trying to help someone.
Music has the power to get us outside of our own heads, to transcend the ordinary and become aware of something bigger and to become aware of our connectedness to the world around us. As we are lifted out of our own petty concerns and worries, we become able to connect with the lives, the stories and the music of another’s soul. Lopez talks about the ways in which his life was changed by his encounter with this man:
He took an impatient man and taught him patience. He helped me appreciate, and feel inspired by, a kind of music I knew nothing about. His passion for his mission rekindled my passion for my own. My life is much busier now, richer, more challenging, more rewarding. And I picked up a guitar I had long ago abandoned.
I find the story moving and fascinating because I have a strong belief that music does have the power to heal and redeem and connect. More importantly, though, this story resonates with me because I also have a firm belief that our lives are changed (often in surprising and unexpected ways) by the people we encounter on the journey…those strangers who become friends. I never cease to be amazed how, for me at least, music is often an important part of those encounters on the road.
For another fascinating look at music and the brain, check out Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.
Tags:
Books,
Community,
Lopez,
Music,
Music Therapy,
Relationship,
Sacks