Grace Notes of Caring in a Cold World

The quality of the instruments is improving these days for Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, the downtown Los Angeles street violinist who until recently was playing a beat-up fiddle with two strings missing.

Several readers saw my column two Sundays ago and offered to donate instruments to the former Juilliard student, who did a double-take when I told him the news.

“People are awfully generous,” said Nathaniel, 54, who has lived on the streets for roughly half his life -- ever since he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Nathaniel said he was uncomfortable about accepting instruments he couldn’t pay for. I told him the donors didn’t want anything but the pleasure of knowing they’d helped out a fellow musician, and Nathaniel gradually warmed to the idea.

The offers came from Dede Swartz, Kathy Harmon-Luber, Sara Cannon, Antonio Rizzo and Alfred Rich. Rizzo, a Torrance violin maker, offered to donate one of his hand-crafted instruments.

Rich, chief executive officer of Pearl River Piano Group in Ontario, put a new cello and new violin in the mail. He said all he hoped for in return was a chance to one day see Nathaniel play.

I too looked forward to seeing Nathaniel move up a notch from the banged-up violin he’s been toting around for several years. But I realized there was a risk involved. Nathaniel lives on the streets, and new instruments could be targets for muggers.

“It’s not like I haven’t handled muggings before,” Nathaniel argued.

The folks at Lamp Community, a downtown service agency for mentally ill homeless people, agreed to keep the new cello and violin locked up for Nathaniel each night. The hope was that with daily visits, Nathaniel would get comfortable enough to shower, have an occasional hot meal and get some help.

He agreed to the deal, and so I brought the instruments to him Tuesday morning in his usual spot just outside the 2nd Street tunnel near Hill Street. Nathaniel was playing the old fiddle when I arrived, and two of the new strings I had bought him were unraveling.

Nearby, he had propped up two hand-painted signs. One said “Bach and Brahms,” the other said “Beethoven’s 8th.”

“I saw you flying around, giving gifts,” said Nathaniel, wearing a pin of an angel playing a violin.

These particular gifts were from a Mr. Alfred Rich, I told him as he eagerly strung the cello, his eyes wide. Nathaniel was trained on bass, switched to cello and ended up on violin because it’s easier to lug around in a shopping cart.

He took Rich’s business card and set it on top of the tarp that was stretched over his shopping cart, as if this were a tribute concert. Then he pulled his orange Driftwood Dairy milk crate from the bottom shelf of his shopping cart and sat down, straddling the cello.

As the bow first stroked the strings, Nathaniel looked up and reverently uttered the name of the late cellist Jacqueline DuPre. He fiddled a bit more, tuning as he did, and then breezed through the pantheon of cellists. He named Pablo Casals, Yo-Yo Ma and DuPre again.

“And then there’s the coolest, calmest cucumber of all time, Janos Starker,” he said, coating his new bow with resin. “Putting resin on your bow is like feeding your parakeet. A bow needs resin in the same way a police car needs prisoners.”

Nathaniel finally began to play, but was interrupted by a homeless woman coming out of the tunnel.

“It’s always so relaxing to hear you play,” she said.

Nathaniel politely stood and thanked her.

“I’m starving,” the woman said. “I need a 99-cent hamburger, and a spider bit me. Look at this.”

Nathaniel moved his cello aside and asked Estella to please sit down on his milk crate so he could examine the golf-ball size lump on her lower leg.

“I’ve got bugs that bite me inside my trousers,” Nathaniel said as another homeless man named Mike came by to offer a diagnosis.

In time, the distraction was over, and Nathaniel was ready to play again. He had opened an Asian magazine and set it on the pavement, calling it a tribute to Little Tokyo. To his eye, he said, a lot of people in Little Tokyo look like Yo-Yo Ma.

Nathaniel played a Beethoven cello sonata, then moved on to Ernest Bloch’s “Rhapsody for Cello.”

Finding his way into the piece and getting used to the new instrument, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, and his face was pure ecstasy.

Two firetrucks were coming through the 2nd Street tunnel, sirens blasting and echoing through the chute. Nathaniel didn’t flinch. Eyes closed, he was alive in the music, his fingers performing ballet on the neck of his new cello.

I left him for a while and went back to find him still playing. He resisted when I said it was time to take the cello to Lamp for the night.

“I haven’t really heard the instrument yet,” he protested. “I’m just getting to know it.”

You can play it at Lamp, I said.

But this was where he needed to be, he said. At the mouth of the tunnel, with the roar of the city all around.

“This is the perfect music environment,” he insisted.

I left again, and when I returned I told him he had been playing for roughly eight hours.

“Eight hours seems like two minutes when you’re having fun,” Nathaniel said. “Mr. Rich has given me a new lease on life.”

He finally agreed it was time to surrender his instruments. The plan was for me to drive the new cello and violin to Lamp, and for Nathaniel to push his cart over and meet me there.

On my way through the squalor of skid row, I wondered if I’d done the right thing by Nathaniel. He has grown accustomed to doing things his way, despite the price.

No matter how many times I see skid row, it’s always shocking and new. Knowing how gentle Nathaniel is, I worried about his safety as I watched police break up gatherings and make arrests.

I put Nathaniel’s new instruments in safekeeping at Lamp and waited. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour. He didn’t show. I felt helpless, worried, a little naive.

Maybe he’s happier playing a beat-up violin on his terms than a new cello on mine.