Self-medicating with music

Exactly what John Christopher Jones hopes to accomplish in music, exactly why he sits down uninvited and unpaid at pianos throughout the city and performs his haunting, mournful sounds, is unclear.

One moment he said it's for money. He is practicing to get good enough to some day sell tickets because it's difficult getting by on the $787 a month  in disability payments he has received since his schizophrenia diagnosis. The next moment he said he plays music not for the money but for his own wellness. "Playing in public brings me ... out," he said. "I'm a nervous-type person and not real sociable, and this brings me out in the open."

Whatever the reason, on a recent weekday Jones was where he often is: in the north lobby of Downtown Indianapolis' Omni Severin Hotel, with its carved, gold-painted woodwork,  crystal chandelier and grand piano. Jones wore jeans, steel-toed work boots and a Spiderman sweatshirt. He has long gray hair. He is 55. He looks as if he might be homeless and in fact has been homeless but at this time isn't. He lives in a small apartment in what looks like a converted motel on the Far Westside.

Jones sat down at the Omni's piano, lifted the fallboard, placed his fingers on the keys. His fingers are long and thin and knobby and can stretch an octave plus one note.

He began, as he always does, with something familiar, like those six notes at the start of Chicago's  "Colour My World." Then he went off New Age-ishly into something unrecognizable. "I'm taking 'Colour My World,' then making it like I want it," he said.

Typically Jones plays a song for about 10 minutes. Then he stops and starts a new song. He sometimes plays for hours.

Frank Sinatra music was in the Omni air, piped in by hotel management. Jones didn't ask that it be turned down. He's got a good thing, free piano time on a first-class instrument in a room with good acoustics. He doesn't want to mess it up making demands.

People walk past. Some stop a moment and listen. Jones does not look up. He feels fraudulent. "I'm basically conning it," he said. "I'm not confident. I feel like I'm standing on a tree limb."

Nevertheless, once he got going, he dominated Frank Sinatra.

"Piano Guy is very talented," said Tony Basile, the Omni's concierge, whose desk is within earshot of the piano. Lena Salwak, the hotel's assistant front office manager, once tried to give Piano Guy $20, but Jones declined. "He doesn't like a lot of attention," Salwak said. "He told me he plays for therapeutic reasons."

Jones also plays at Eskenazi Hospital, where several months ago while picking up a prescription  he discovered  a grand piano in the main entry hall. Next to the piano was a sign: "We encourage our guests and staff to play this piano."

The piano is not just for entertainment. Todd Harper, a hospital spokesman, cites a 2010 American Journal of Public Health article that concluded, in part, that "music can calm neural activity in the brain, which may lead to reductions in anxiety."

"Chris can fly off the handle," said Jones' mother, Rose Jones, "but he can be so happy when he plays piano."

Often people with schizophrenia come up with their own methods to "modulate symptoms," said Alan Breier, a physician at the Sandra Eskenazi Center for Brain Care Innovation and an expert on the disorder. "To exercise your talent is a beautiful thing. Is it a primary treatment? No. But it can help."

There are 15 types of schizophrenia medication, but Jones won't take any of them because he says they make him feel "sloshy," unable to concentrate. "I couldn't even watch a movie," he said.

That's a common complaint, Breier said, but it's not insurmountable. "Every medication we have has side effects," he said, "but side effects can be minimized."

For Jones, though, the past few years have been piano therapy period, and the self-medication has at least reduced Jones' tendency toward isolation. People with schizophrenia often feel uncomfortable around other people and so sometimes wall themselves off.

Jones used to play the piano at Earth House Collective, an art-centric event space in the 200 block of East Street. But that closed in 2012. In the summer of 2013 he swarmed the "Go Ahead and Play" exhibit of 20 pianos sprinkled around Downtown and in Carmel. Those instruments are long gone. He used to go to Broad Ripple and play the grand piano in the McDonald's on East 62nd Street, but that piano, too, is gone, donated to Broad Ripple High School.

Several times Jones sneaked into the small, third-floor practice rooms of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis music department and played the uprights there, but those pianos are supposed to be for music students and are hard to access without being detected. Besides, even if you get access, the rooms are sealed off so that nobody can hear you.

Jones debuted at the Omni about eight months ago. He was walking past the hotel on Georgia Street with a guitar player and occasional street corner busker named Dave. Dave spied the piano through the window. Where Jones is shy, Dave is forward. Dave cajoled Jones into going inside and playing. Almost right away Dave got himself kicked out for being too loud, Jones said, "but they let me stay."

Jones has been playing the piano since he was in grade school but never had lessons. His family had a piano in their home in Bloomington. Jones' mother  played, and his father also was musical. His father left the family to pursue a long-shot dream of becoming an opera singer, Rose Jones said, and after falling short committed suicide. Jones was 11. The Joneses were forced to sell their piano and move to Indianapolis' Southside, where Rose got a job.

She signed up Chris for a Big Brother, but the boy got into dope anyway. He grew marijuana right under his mother's nose, in flower pots on the front porch. It took the mailman to point this out.

"The way I grew up," Jones said, in a sort of summation, "I didn't 'stay in school' and all that."

Being broke is exhausting. Jones lives on the Far Westside because it's cheap. But it's also inconvenient because his life is mostly Downtown, 5 miles away. His few friends are Downtown, as are the Omni and the free meals he depends on from various benevolent groups such as the Compassion Center and Roberts Park Methodist Church. So he must ride the bus every day, which is not costly but adds up.

On Veterans Day restaurant chains such as Applebee's and Texas Roadhouse give free meals to veterans, and so a couple of weeks ago  Jones tucked into his backpack his Form 214, the government document that proves he was in the Army. His 214 indicates he had driven a truck and had been discharged for "abuse of illegal drugs" but "under honorable conditions."

Jones  later drove a truck as a civilian, briefly, and drove a cab, also briefly. He worked construction, briefly. He has never held a job long.

Breier said three out of four people with schizophrenia are unemployed because even if they take medication their cognitive impairment causes them to make poor choices.

Jones never did get around to getting a free meal on Veterans Day.

He did, however, make it to the Omni.

He played piano for two hours, 15 minutes.

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.