Street roots., June 12, 2009, Page 11, Image 11

it
CCXJBBUATIlffG M »E C A B Z
11
Street roots
Education * Dialogue * Independence
DUET, fro m page 10
was always gonna be Skid Row. There were
several thousand people asleep on the
street there in the evenings and a lot were
there because of the service agencies:
mental health programs, rehab and some of
the shelters where people could get food or
a bed for the night It was just so much a
part of the fabric of the city, and so much
accepted, that I didn’t give it a lot of
thought-
But here?was Nathaniel, living here in
this place where, at night there were
thousands of folks on die street, and you
would see drug dealers counting cash,
prostitutes working out of port-a-pottys,
people walking down the street with open
wounds; sirens 24-hours a day. Y’know, I
cared about Nathaniel and his welfare, so I
found it unconscionable that we could have
created this place, and became all the more
determined to not just help him, but to
shine a light on all of those issues.
But I’m as guilty as anybody else who
knew it was there and looked at it and
walked past it and didn’t think to do
anything. It took getting to know somebody
who lived there and caring about him.
R. R .:/ ’be read that there are an estimated
60,000 homeless people in L. A., which is just
an astronomical number. What were your
interactions with homeless people before
Nathaniel?
And despite the challenges of dealing
with somebody who is schizophrenic, there
was often a great deal of humanity in
whatever he was saying. Sometimes he’d get
very aggressive and it would be a little bit
ugly, but then he would say something that
would sort of redeem him. It was always an
adventure.
R. R.: On “60 Minutes” you said about your
relationship with Nathaniel: “It’s the most
meaningful friendship that I ’ve had in my
life.”
S. L.: I think the first time I realized how
meaningful it was was when I spent a night
on Skid Row and I felt I was really looking
into his soul. The things that, he said and
did that night: He recited the “Hamlet”
soliloquy in a Shakespearean accent; he said
a prayer; he talked very poetically about. g
the [psychiatric] hospitals shut down.
It was hard for me to imagine how we
could allow that to happen in this society,
say, “Well, it’s OK for them to live in the
street” I thought, “Can you do itif they all
had pancreatic cancer?” Whyhs it that on
Saturday mornings there’s a 10K race for
the cure of everything but paranoid
schizophrenia? I just knew that I wanted to
keep writing about it and put some pressure
on City Hall. So here was Prop. 63.
So it’s another way in which having met
Nathaniel seemed a blessing, a gift It all
was just very nicely timed. I’m not a
religious person. Maybe it’s just the way
things were, but I’m grateful it happened
when it did.
R.R.: You talked about readers sending you
instruments for him. What do you think - if
you’ll excuse the pun — struck a chord with
well.
[Then Lopez announces that to go
through airport security, he must shut off
his cell phone. He promises to call back in
five minutes. But when I phone him 15
minutes later; he says he’s been bumped to
an earlier flight Can he call me back? Sure,
I. say. About 80 minutes later, the phone
rings.]
R. R.: So we were talking about Nathaniel
handling all the attention. Has he-seen the
movie?
S. L:: Yeah. He was at a screening and
then hé was at the premiere, but he doesn’t
look at thé screen. He’s got a fear of two-
dimensional images: it’s a symptom of the
illness. It looks to him like there’s ghosts up
there.
R.R.: So he hears U like he hears music.
- S.L.: Yeah. He’s gonna buy the
soundtrack rather than the DVD.
I thin k people realized that this could have been anybody:
Schizophrenia hits one In 1OO people. And here's Nathaniel,
who conies out of the Cleveland public school system and
makes It to lu illia rd , against tremendous odds. 1 think that it
was, lor some people, a story of second chances. And 1 think
everybody can sympathize w ith that.
S. L.: Well, it’s unavoidable. When you
creativity; he talked about Mozart and
walk out of the L.A. Times building
Beethoven creating something that lasted
downtown, you almost invariably come
across somebody who clearly is living on the for centuries; he looked a t people and spoke
of them with such compassion and humility.
street Occasionally you give somebody a
T hat was when I realized that few people
dollar; other times you’re sort of morally
that I encountered had such a profound a\<
conflicted because you think, “OK, it looks
effect on me.
like they’ve got an addiction problem, Am i
It was around then that I began to realize
just feeding the habit?” But you don’t know
that he had something that few of us ever
what it is„so, you kind pf just avoid-it. And I
find: a passion for something that he really
think that’s what so many people do: you
: believed in. He’d been faithfulto it through
steer clear of it, you cross the street, you
the worst part of a horrible disease. And I
avoid it.
And, I think it was fair to say, I didn’t give found great inspiration in that. Each day — it
didn’t matter if he was not on a stage
[homelessness] a lot of thought. I knew
somewhere, it didn’t matter that he got h i t -
[L.A.] was a place with a huge homeless
population, but part of that I just chalked up with this unlucky break at the age of 20 or
21 — he had no regrets, no self pity.
to the great climate. But there are many
I was thinking about getting out of the >
other factors: It’s an obscene real estate
newspaper industry and envying what he
market, it’s a two-dimensional economy, it’s
had and wishing that I had that kind of a
haves and have-nots, rich and poor. And it’s
passion. Nathaniel helped me realize that
very easy in a place like Los Angeles to not
the story that I had — that I was telling
be able to pay the rent, to maybe descend
about him — was my passion. And I was as.
into despair, to maybe take a drink, to
safe and sane when I was doing that as he
maybe develop an addiction, to maybe have
was with the music. It made me realize that
a mental condition triggered: And you’re on
I tell stories: I make discoveries and share
the streets. You just fall out. That’S what
them with people. I realized I can probably
happens in L.A.
have
a bigger mark in the mental health
But we’ve got a problem. We certainly do.
field to hold onto this job and to write about
It’s at least 60,000 [homeless people in
what I’ve learned, and share it and to help
L.A.J; maybe closer to 70, 75 (thousand).
humanize people.
R. R.: One of the things that is really
striking about Nathaniel and your portrait of |
him is he's dealing with paranoid
schizophrenia. How was it to interact with
him?
R. R.: Thanks to some sort of synchronicity,
California was about to put Proposition 63
into action. Could you describe its
importance?
S. L.: I mean, [paranoid schizophrenia is]
certainly a barrier, but we kind of
connected. We’re roughly the same age; we
had some of the same cultural references,
He was a big sports fan, which I am. And he
just can be a very charming, witty,
interesting guy. Who happens to have been
on a stage with Yo-Yo Ma at one point.
S. L.: That was a tax on the 1 percent of
the highest income earners in California,
and all of the money was to be dedicated to
new services in the mental health area. It
was long overdue because so many mental
health agencies across the state were,
struggling and we had never built the
community clinics that we promised when
people?
S.L.: I think people realized that this
could have been anybody: Schizophrenia -
hits one in 100 people. And here’s
Nathaniel, who comes out of the Cleveland
public school system and makes it to
Juilliard, against tremendous odds. I think
that it was, for some people, a story of
second chances. And I think everybody can
sympathize with that. So they were rooting
for him and rooting for me to help him. And
they saw also that one person can make a
difference.
R. R.: So you’ve gone from columns to book
to movie. How does that all sit with
Nathaniel?
S. L.: It’s been a concern of mine from
the beginning, whether he could handle all
of this. And there have been many times
where I’ve thought of turning back because
he — [Interrupted by taxi driver, to whom
hesays, “No you keep it.”}
[To me.] I just took a cab to the airport.
The cabby’s been listening to the story.
He’s a bit choked up, apparently. I tried to
give him a tip and he’s stuffing the'money
back into my hand. Sorry.
But that first column. It was like, “Can I
really help him?” The only way I can help -
him is to tell this story intimately, But if I
do that, what is the cost to him? And so, I —
Hang on. [Becomes distracted.] J ’m sorry.
I would talk to his sister, the director at
Lamp and say, “Can he handle it?” The
thing that kept us all moving forward was '
that Nathaniel seemed to — at least in part
— like the attention, although he: had trouble
processing it at times. More importantly, we;
thought this story is hot just about
humanizing him, but lots of people like him.
And how can we not advance this cause? So.
he is, for the rnost part, handling it really
STREAMING ONLINE!
KrIslIna._.SmocL____
...—
-- — ~ ConSy|tjng
WWW.
KBOO. fm
AND ON THE AIR:
PDX: 9 0 .7 FM I CORVALLIS: 1 0 0 .7 FM | HOOD RIVER: 91 .9 F M
d o m a m o o t M i$ G <
wuwomMwnes
Research & Evaluation ■ Policy Analysis • Facilitating diverse stakeholders
www.krlstinasmockconsulting.com
W w d u i& M n f
R. R.: Did he giveyou any opinion about
what he heard?
S. L.: The first time we saw it was pretty
extraordinary. He said he didn’t want to See
i t B uta bunch of people from Lamp
Community are in the movie: The director
insisted on having real people instead of
actors playing people with a mental illness.
And they were very excited about going to
see it, so he at thé , last minute decided to
go.
He loved the music. At times he
grumbled about certain depictions, and I
reminded him that it was a fictional
representation of a real story. So it was kind
of a test for him. Part of what you need to
advance your recovery is to be able to .
. develop some insight into your own
condition. I think that watching the movie at
the screening and then later at the
premiere helped him develop some insight
into his situation.
R.R.: So several years have gone by. Where
do you and Nathaniel go from here?
.S.L.: I’ll tell you where we go: right back
to where we were. We hang out. We’re there
for each other. I have taken a couple trips to
the San Francisco Bay area because of
family health issues, medical emergencies.
And when I’m dealing with all that
Nathaniel is a great friend.
He told me he wanted me to write his
sequel. [Laughs.] I said, “Well, we’ll talk
’about it.” Ldon’t know if that’s going to
happen anytime soon. So it’s just more-pf
the same. A1 of which will be easier now
that the movie is behind us.
And it’s me hoping that he continues just
, to make more progress with his continued
recovery.' There’s no cure. This isnot going
to just go away one day. But he shows —
despite occasional back-pedaling — a steady •-
arc.
It’s just been amazing to see a guy who
four years ago was living on the streets
playing a two-string violin who now has a
dozen instruments and will get into a car,
which he never wanted to do when I first
„met him. Or go to a concert So all of these
signs of progress are very encouraging,!
just hope to be there for him to help him
continue to improve.
C oming
in
A ugust ...
7-8 am W eekdays
flAM-NOON DURING JULY
D EM O C R A C Y