What Friendship Means As Depicted in Steve Lopez's Novel, a Soloist

Friendship is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It can cross generations, cross oceans, and cross cultures. By dictionary definition, friendship is “the state of being friends; the quality or state of being friendly” (“Friendship”). However, this makes friendship sound very bland. In his webpage article “What is Friendship?” James Clarke defines friendship as “Knowing there is another human being you can trust completely. Realizing that someone else wants the best for you, too. Providing a gentle haven where the other can be relaxed and feel safe.

Helping solve problems without taking over your friend's life. Sharing the grief times along with the great times. Being together without needing to pretend. Forgiving pretenses when they do occur” (Clarke). To me, this is the true definition of friendship.

The novel and true story “The Soloist” by Steve Lopez, describes how Steve met and befriended Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man with an amazing gift for music. Steve first sees Nathaniel on a morning walk.

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At first Nathaniel is very hesitant and unsure of Steve and what his intentions may be. In reality, Steve, a columnist for the LA Times, wants to write about the man who plays an old, beat-up, two-stringed violin. By the third time Steve and Nathaniel meet on the streets of LA, Nathaniel starts to reveal a little bit more about himself: he’s from Cleveland, but has lived in New York and now LA, his life’s purpose is to “arrange the notes that lie scattered in his head” (Lopez 7), and the “scrawled names on the pavement where [Nathaniel and Steve] are standing… including Babe Ruth, Susan, Nancy, Kevin and Craig… ‘were my classmates at Julliard’ ” (Lopez 8).

Nathaniel is starting to trust Steve which is the first sign of a budding friendship.

Over the next couple of months, as Steve and Nathaniel continue to build a friendship out of nothing more than sporadic meetings in the shade of Walt Disney Concert Hall, Steve learns more about Nathaniel’s background. Nathaniel grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, started playing music during his early teen years at The Settlement, a nonprofit music school in the University Circle of Cleveland, and during his freshman year at Ohio University he auditioned for and won a scholarship to study music at Julliard. It didn’t take long, however, for good friends of Nathaniel’s to notice subtle changes in his demeanor, and by the end of his second year the pressures of practice and the environment that is Julliard had become too much for Nathaniel to handle and he dropped out. When he returned home to Cleveland his mother tried to get him help in the form of mental hospitals and psychotropic drugs. Steve starts to wonder what he can do to help Nathaniel, but “it’s not clear to either [Nathaniel or I] what my role is in his life, and I don’t know if I've earned the right to tell him he needs psychiatric help” (Lopez 78). At this point, Steve and Nathaniel have reached a pivotal point in their friendship; Steve cares about Nathaniel’s wellbeing so much that “every time the phone rings at night, [Steve’s] stomach does a backflip. I’m always sure it’s the police, calling to say Nathaniel is hanging on by a thread after a mugging” (Lopez 59).

Soon Steve has become so entangled in Nathaniel’s life he is sure he can’t walk away. He arranges for a room to be held at Lamp, a community shelter for the homeless with mental disorders. The task now is how to get Nathaniel into the room. After much scheming, bribing, and careful planning, Steve gets Nathaniel to use the room first to practice his music, then on an every-other-day basis, and eventually Nathaniel is living in the apartment full time. But this doesn’t mean that Nathaniel is completely cured and ready to begin living a completely normal life. On one particular day while in the courtyard at Lamp, Nathaniel, for lack of a better term, has a panic attack and blows up at Steve. He calls him several not-so-nice names, tells him not to ever come back, and that he never wants to see him again. Although Steve is momentarily hurt, he knows that it’s only a part of Nathaniel’s disease, and he doesn’t let it affect him. Instead, he gives Nathaniel his space and lets him decompress. This shows more potential than anything else for a real, true friendship.

Real friendships are like rare gemstones buried deep in the earth: they are extremely hard to find and polish into their full potential, but the final product is well worth that extraneous effort. The friendship that Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers found was one for the ages. They found a friendship based not on pretense, but on trust and a common interest. They found something many people go their entire lives without finding.