The Soloist

Steve Lopez is a really good writer and has one of the most interesting jobs you can imagine. He wanders the streets of Los Angeles (he used to wander in Philly) looking for a good story. He found one such story when he came across a homeless man playing a two-string violin on Skid Row.

Lopez got more than he bargained for. He did some digging and found out that 30 years earlier, the violin player, Nathaniel Ayers, had been a child prodigy on the double bass. He was one of the few African-Americans admitted to Julliard, but at the age of 19 he had a breakdown and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. Like a lot of mentally ill people, he ended up living on the street, but he never lost his passion for music. After Lopez ran his first story, readers who wanted to help began sending him violins and cellos to give to Ayers. Thus began an intense relationship between the two men as Lopez tried to get Ayers off the street, into treatment, and back into the world of music. He was only partially successful -- Ayers continued to refuse treatment because of earlier bad experiences but eventually did begin sleeping at the Lamp Community, a facility that provides housing and other services for homeless people with severe mental illness. But most importantly, Ayers re-connected with some of the world's top musicians, particularly those at the world-class Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The story of their friendship is truly inspiring. In my bookclub, we debated whether or not they could really be considered friends, since their relationship was so unbalanced, but I believe that friendships can take on a lot of different complexions and in this case, they truly care about each other and each of them benefits tremendously from the relationship. I also really admired Lopez's honesty in reporting the story. He didn't try to sugar coat anything and constantly questioned his own motives and actions. The story is complex and troubling, but important.

Majolica returns

I was disappointed when I heard that Majolica in Phoenixville was closing down, and happy when it turned out that they were retooling with a more affordable menu. They now have a $25 prix fixe menu, as well as a number of less expensive items. When we visited recently, I had the prix fixe, Garrett ordered off the menu. My dinner was excellent and a good value.

They started us out with a small piece of home-made focaccia, followed by the dinkiest little amuse bouche that I had ever seen. It was a tasty bite, but alas, I've forgotten what it was!

The prix fixe for the night included an excellent cauliflower soup, poured tableside over grana padana cheese. The main course selection was duck leg confit with white bean ragout and broccoli rabe... delicious, and a great combination of flavors. Dessert was mascarpone sorbet with candied kumquats and almond praline. The sorbet was interesting, creamy like an ice cream or gelato but a little bit lighter. Not too sweet, but very good. The kumquats and praline set it off perfectly.

Garrett had the blue mussels in pernod butter which were extremely delicious, followed by steak frites with house butter. The steak was perfectly cooked, but Garrett thought the frites were a little too crunchy, and they did not have ketchup or any other sort of dipping sauce (like the yummy bourbon mayonnaise you get at Monk's). It sort of reminded me of when Josh was a baby and I asked a waitress at a restaurant to stick his bottle in the microwave for a minute. She was aghast that I would even think that they might have a microwave on the premises.

The Passion of Tasha Darsky

So many times I have written about how a book transports me to a different part of the world, or a different period in history. The Passion of Tasha Darsky by Yael Goldstein Love transported me in a different way -- to the world of a virtuoso musician who lives wholly in her art. So even if this hadn't been a really good story, full of romance, heartbreak, difficult family relationships, exotic travels, etc., I would have loved this book just for introducing me to the way a musician thinks about music. Here is the protagonist, violinist Tasha Darsky, as a young Harvard college student who has been asked by her revered professor to play a piece he composed:

"I couldn't say no to my demigod of a professor, I ended loving that music. I loved the way the overtly Romantic style hid something distinctively modern beneath its warm chords. I loved the periodic slips into atonality, the disenchantment these conveyed. I loved how, the deeper I sank into the piece, the clearer it became that it wasn't so much a piece written in the Romantic style as it was a piece trying to hide itself beneath that style, that the slips into atonality were the audience's chance to see through the trumped-up Romantic delusion to the real music underneath."

Tasha wants to be a composer -- creating music, she feels, is more important, more noble, than simply playing it. She falls in love with another composer, a man who she views as a genius and their love affair is as passionate as their love of music. But a misunderstood comment convinces her that theirs is a "partnership between two very unequal talents" and she returns to the violin and breaks off the relationship. From that point on, she pours all of her passion in to her violin playing, becoming what some people say is "the greatest violinist since Paganini."

This book explores the questions what does it take, and what are the costs of creating art at that level? Can one live a normal life and sustain normal relationships in the context of this kind of passion and commitment? It's a fabulous book.