ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997 TAG: 9702140022
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Betty Strother
SOURCE: BETTY STROTHER EDITORIAL WRITER
SHE SEES her reflection in the water, the clear blue water. Her vision looks at her in confusion and reaches up for her arm, which rests on a stone. She sits silently waiting to enter the other's world, beyond the rubble in the bottom of the river.
"Is this girl going to commit suicide?" I ask, looking at the young writer hunched in the overstuffed chair in her family's living room. She is guarded, wrapping her black leather jacket tight around her and folding her arms, sitting primly, knees together, only her toes resting on the floor. She's wearing black slacks and black, strapped shoes with the clunky soles and heels that girls these days favor.
She is 16, and so serious.
"I'm surprised you got that," she says, her eyes widening ever so slightly. Yes, this free verse is about suicide, but not about herself. She wouldn't want anyone to think the poem reflects her own feelings. She imagined the water, imagined the girl, and looked through her eyes at a different world.
She seems pleased. Someone read her "stuff," and actually got it.
Nicole Small-Neff is a sophomore at William Byrd High School in Vinton and takes commercial art at the Arnold R. Burton Technology Center in Salem. She lives in a townhouse with her mom, stepdad and little brother, writes songs and plays rhythm guitar, and dreams one day of writing professionally, "like Stephen King, where they say: `Over five years, you have to write us three novels.'''
Now, she writes for pleasure, for school and for contests, hoping to win money for college. She won first place in a statewide contest sponsored by the Virginia Career Development Association for her poem "Times Change." It contrasts the work world of olden days - like when I was 16 (``They needed no education,/Ignorance spread across the nation ... '') - to the world kids are entering now (``We've jumped into the fast lane,/Thriving on knowledge,/Attending college ... ''). She got certificates from the county and state. No cash, yet. She's planning to enter an essay contest that offers a $1,000 bond for first place.
Nicole's an Army kid, most recently from Wichita, Kan., but from all over the country. When her stepfather got out of the Army a couple of years ago, they moved here. "We had my brother close his eyes and point to a place on the map. He landed on a place right near Roanoke, I think it might have been Salem. We drove here to check it out, drove all the way back to get our stuff, then drove back here."
"It's really pretty here. I like the mountains, and I like having the beach right next to the mountains."
As for school, "There's a lot of stereotyping. The group that I am in is probably the smallest group in school. We're thought of as punks and rejects, and most kids probably think we're dumb, which is sad," because there's a lot of talent among her friends, she says.
Her view, that the students "a little on the artistic side" should get more recognition, that schools should do more to cultivate the arts, may make her part of a tiny minority, but it puts her in rare company. Last month, Itzhak Perlman, one of the greatest violinists of this century, expressed similar views in a speech before the National Press Club.
He was appealing for better music education, but his observations could apply to any of the arts: ``Good music education can teach children some of the most basic and important skills, and give them great pleasure at the same time. For example, music can teach children to feel, to listen and to observe. And it also teaches them to express and to communicate. Maybe most importantly and distinctly, music education shows children how to form the connections between their intellect and their emotional self. These skills are valuable in and of themselves and in how they affect the child's other learning skills."
Nicole Small-Neff and Itzhak Perlman probably share few tastes. Nicole writes alternative music, but only because "my voice isn't built for the kind of music I like." Which is? "I like the heavy metal." Perlman mentioned in his speech, "I'm not too much of a fan of what they call heavy metal or something a bit raucous. I just can't - I don't feel it. I don't condemn it, I just don't feel it, you know, it's not in my - I cannot get - warm up to it. ... But I like all sorts of music. I'm not - I'm not going to say don't listen to anything. That's the wrong thing to say."
Nicole may look a bit the rebel, and her music may be as far from a Mozart concerto as can be imagined. But she seems a pretty sensible kid, actually. (``I know it'd probably be best if I went to college, got a job in commercial art as a graphic artist, and on the side wrote books and music.") While she dreams of writing science fiction and fantasy, she dreams, too, of owning a house in a nice part of town, where the kids she plans to have won't be labeled as bad based on their street address.
And the master and the student are in perfect harmony on at least one basic: the importance of the arts in education. Bravo!
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