School and Breakdown
Ayers began playing the Double Bass during middle school. He attended the Juilliard School in New York as a double bassist, but suffered a mental breakdown during his third year and was institutionalized. Ayers was one of the few black students at Juilliard at that time.
For some years he lived with his mother in Cleveland, Ohio, where he received electroconvulsive therapy for his illness to no avail. After his mother's death in 2000, he moved to Los Angeles, thinking that his father lived there. Homeless and schizophrenic, Ayers lived and played music on the streets.
Read more about this topic: Nathaniel Ayers
Famous quotes containing the words school and, school and/or breakdown:
“Parental attitudes have greater correlation with pupil achievement than material home circumstances or variations in school and classroom organization, instructional materials, and particular teaching practices.”
—Children and Their Primary Schools, vol. 1, ch. 3, Central Advisory Council for Education, London (1967)
“Today, only a fool would offer herself as the singular role model for the Good Mother. Most of us know not to tempt the fates. The moment I felt sure I had everything under control would invariably be the moment right before the principal called to report that one of my sons had just driven somebody’s motorcycle through the high school gymnasium.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.”
—Art Buchwald (b. 1925)