Lopez vs. Ayers/ part 3

Steve Lopez appeared slightly weird to me in the beginning because of the way he approached Nathaniel. However, Lopez is now showing how smart and positively manipulating he is. Steve Lopez has shown to have a way with words and to provide compelling arguments. Lopez has so far convinced Nathaniel to do all that he wanted to do. One can take that and say that Lopez is trying to force Nathaniel in to doing things or just doing things his way. I used the term positively manipulating because despite Lopez doing so, he is doing it for the good of the Nathaniel. Even though final decisions are up to Nathaniel, Lopez has an instrumental position in the making of his decisions; in a way it can be said that Lopez is making the final decisions.

The way in which Lopez is capturing the "weak" side of Nathaniel can be described as the basic rule of friendship. Most people side with their friends on most positions and decisions. In such cases, the most persuasive friend can always capture their friends vote. In Nathaniel's case, his friends are limited but more so inactive. This leaves Nathaniel with Lopez who is of sound mind and good intentions. Therefore, Nathaniel ends up subjected to the reasoning of Lopez and ultimately listening to him as well. It can also be attributed to Lopez's superior writing ability. Because of this ability, he can eloquently persuade Nathaniel into going with his reasoning, thus Nathaniel gaining things to benefit him. As is the case of the room and lessons, Lopez was able to convince Nathaniel into taking the room. As a result of this, Nathaniel could no longer be deemed homeless and acquired lesson to advance his gift.

The Soloist 2

We live in such an un predictable world. We do not have control over some of the things that happen in life and for Nathaniel Ayers, this holds true on a higher level. Nathaniel seemed to be a promising musician. But that career wasput on hold by a diagnosis of schizopherenia. Thats it!!!, is what went off in my head when this was revealed in Lopez's story. Now I realized what made him stick out to the point of writing a story about him. This disease is what ultimately landed Ayers in the position that he is in. In a way, I could almost feel his pain. As a musician, anything that threatens your career, brings great pain and distress. This left me with the question, " What could have been"? What could have been the outcome of Ayers' life had this sickness have remained dormant.

At first I was skeptical of Lopez. Lopez's job by nature is to find out information. It seemed as though Lopez was using Ayer. It slightly came across as Lopez taking of advantage of a sickness by trying to write a good story. As the book unfolds Lopez's kindness and genorsity begans to break through. I also noticed that Lopez gravitates to the stories which provide an inspiation for others. Lopez appears to be one who seeks to help others.

You can pick one or both, consider that they are 2 seperate thoughts

The Soloist

By far, the soloist has to be one of the easiet books to read and comprhend. This is made possible because LOopez is a modern writer, therefore the word choices and writing style are of today. So far the story of Nathaniel Ayers, reads as it was intended; a feature story. The book obviously explains things in greater detail, however, it still reads a story that is being written for the purpose of "reporting".

The actual story grasps my attention from musical aspect. So far we realize that Nathaniel Ayers is a street musician. My initail thought was, "Okay big deal". We live in a world with alot of those so I didn't really catch why he was so important. As I began to read further, Lopez's observation of classical training, began to make me want to know. This was mostly because I could relate to Lopez's observation. There has been plenty of times when I have heard musicians and could tell wether they were trained to play music. At this point my mind begins to wonder, "What is going on"? This question came to mind due my knowledge of music and the buisness. One of the biggest challenges for musicians is their ability to read music. Especially in the classical world, you have to know how to read music or it will be hard to land a job, even more so when you are called to fill in for someone at the last minute. Because of this, I wonder why Nathaniel Ayers was a street musician. If he studied at Julliard, I'm sure he read music so what happened.





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