This poor guy...

From the LA Times this morn came this sad, but fascinating story:

May 17, 2005
In England, a Silent Stranger Comes to Life at the Piano
By John Daniszewski, Times Staff Writer

LONDON — The 6-foot stranger was found wandering in a rainstorm on the Isle of Sheppey in a dark business suit and tie. He was drenched to the bone and wouldn't speak a word.
But on a sheet of paper provided by hospital workers, he drew what looked like a flag of Sweden and an elaborate rendering of a grand piano.

Hospital workers led him to the piano in the facility's chapel, where he seemed to play flawlessly. He has been playing since, bits of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," and long, sad compositions apparently of his own making for up to four hours at a time. He protests when he is forced to stop.

Newspapers call him the "Piano Man," and nearly six weeks after he was found, the nation wonders: Who is this shy virtuoso? Is he British or a foreigner? Did he fall off a ship? Or did he try to drown himself? Is he an amnesiac? Or is he suffering mental trauma?

During the weekend, authorities launched a public appeal to try to identify him. A haunting photograph of the man, who appears to be in his 20s or 30s and is clutching a plastic folder containing sheet music, appeared in national newspapers Monday. Television news was filled with pleas for any information. Officials at a missing-persons help line said they had received more than 150 calls from people who thought they might have information.

Some newspapers compared the man to the hero of the 1996 Australian movie "Shine," about pianist David Helfgott, a child prodigy stricken by mental illness in his 20s who later recovers and returns to the concert stage.

Karen Dorey-Rees, a care manager at the Little Brook Mental Health Hospital in Dartford, where the man is a patient, said he was found on a wind-swept road in Sheppey near the mouth of the Thames about 35 miles east of London. The labels had been removed from every item of clothing the man was wearing, Dorey-Rees said, according to BBC News. He was taken at first to the Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, where doctors found no signs of physical illness or injury. To their astonishment, the man remained silent and shrank away in apparent fear of other people. That seemed to dissipate when he sat at the piano. Canon Alan Amos, the hospital chaplain, told the Guardian newspaper that music appeared to calm the troubled young man. "He likes to play what I would call mood music — quite circular in nature without defined beginnings or endings," he was quoted as saying. "Playing … seems to be the only way he can control his nerves and his tension and relax. When he is playing, he blanks everything else out. He pays attention to nothing but the music."

Dorey-Rees said the public's help was needed because any information would aid doctors in their treatment of the man. "We know nothing more about this man and are keen to identify him, as this will help us to better care for him in the future," she said. "We are just aware that he is a very vulnerable man and we would be putting him in a dangerous situation if we let him go."

Michael Camp, the social worker first assigned to the man's case, said the hospital accidentally stumbled on the stranger's musical ability. "Because there was no communication with him, we had to find ways of communicating with him. So we gave him pencils and paper hoping that he would write something," he said in an interview with the BBC. "Unfortunately he didn't write anything for us, but he did start drawing pictures, and his pictures were of keyboards and pianos." "When you see him normally he avoids eye contact with you," Camp said. "You can't get within a few yards of him without him moving away from you to the other end of the room. But on the piano he is unaware of anyone around him."

The patient has since been transferred to the psychiatric unit at Little Brook. The unit's manager, Ramanah Venkiah, said he also has access to a piano there. "He has been playing piano to a very high quality and staff say it is a real pleasure to hear it. But we don't know what his position is, because he is not cooperating at all," Venkiah told the Guardian. Adrian Lowther, communications manager for the West Kent National Health Trust, said the patient remained under observation. "He's keeping himself to himself, but he is eating and washes every day. He is still in his own clothes that he was wearing when he was found."
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That is a hell of a thing to have happen to anyone. Sure hope someone recognizes him. Hope that somehow treatment will bring him back to himself....though it sounds more as though he's protecting himself from whatever happened and just blanking it all out...with the piano his only voice. At least he's safe now. Wish him well....
Wrap.