Thank you. I remember the day I heard about the Columbine HS shooting. I believe these guys timed it for Hitler's birthday? I had taken a day off sick and was in my apartment. Then the news hit either the computer or an updated NY Times online. I don't know how to say this without making myself sound like an arrest candidate: I didn't quite sympathize with Harris & Klebold, but I surely empathized. Having been bullied to death in school when I was a fatboy kid, I can't stop counting the revenges I contemplated. I can still remember names, although thank Heaven the names are just names by now (pretty much). Where is the line? I am grateful today that I really WAS isolated, because if I'd found a companion in misery, who knows what might have happened? Also, nice Jewish boys didn't play with guns when I was a very un-nice Jewish boy wearing a mask, so laying hands on an arsenal would've been a problem.
Michael Moore was the one who got a rifle for opening a bank account in Colorado, yes?
My interest, if it is one, is in what makes people like Lepine lose it, "it" being any sense of perspective, distance from themselves, identification with anyone BUT themselves. It's really "Why did I become that way?" I suspect that the ungluing of Lepine and of Harris/Klebold before him, was a protracted process. The "Kolumbine Kidz" are particularly interesting because they operated as a pair, whereas I suspect most shooters starting with Charles Whitman worked alone. This reminds me of getting cats to do anything as a group.
Klebold and Harris would be a wonderful subject for Quentin Tarantino.
Ken
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Knut Mork Skagen <[log in to unmask]>
> Ken,
>
> The other week I saw a performance by a friend of mine, Kate Pendry,
> which as the "thin red line" pulling it all together featured the
> story of Marc Lépine's shooting of 14 students at the École
> Polytechnique in Montreal some 17 years ago.
>
> As I went out from the theater into the night, I had half an hour to
> kill before meeting up with Kate after the show, and out of boredom I
> checked the news on my mobile. The main headline was, you guessed it,
> "School shooting in Montreal." It was chilling; it had all happened
> more or less while we were watching her show, as if the performance
> had somehow conjured a new creature into being.
>
> This poetry may be imperfect, but it has a growling force to it, which
> -- like Lépine in the performance -- goes way beyond the simple
> invocation of scary names.
>
> I hope you continue despite (or perhaps because of) being at a loss!
>
> Turn up the goddamn heat!
>
> --Knut
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