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
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—Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)