Tag: Eric Harris

Hello your tumblr is perfect! Love the way you express yourself keep it up. What do you think the boys did or said to one another before committing suicide? I always wonder if they walked around the library one last time ..I think you answered this before but I wonder if they told Eachother something ..

I think when they got back to the library the last time, they walked in, maybe paused briefly at the security scanners near the entrance doors and quickly assessed that everyone had left. At this point, the fascination was no longer about their kills scattered about the library. The thrill had evaporated and they were in a disillusioned funk over the overall failure of NBK.   So, no, I don’t think they  walked around in the library gloating or even just to linger and survey the damage.  They were sick of it and the walls were closing in. The thought of getting caught and arrested would be a fate worse than death.  The attention was now on the presence of the cops and the sense of being surrounded. The library exit door leading out to where the south-west entrance is located was now propped open from the students that had fled form the library and emergency vehicles were milling about just outside. Cops were there too – some keeping an eye on that door. This caught the boys’ notice as they walked further on towards the front of the library. I seem to recall from the 11K that it was eerie because one of the boys (from the description it sounded like Dylan) was seen visibly standing off in the distance from that door looking back at the cops just outside. The Lost Boy looking rather like a ghost in the smokey haze of the library staring outside the open doorway. They were face-to-face for moments and I believe some fire was exchanged in a cursory way by the boys at the cops.  Since nothing else had gone as planned, the only focus at this point had become about ‘killing cops’ so they progressed to the noises outside the main windows to get a good view of all the attention they had literally surrounded by cars, cops, swat, media, helicopters. The two exchanged fire with the vulnerable cops and ambulances on the ground trying to shuttle wounded into safety with cops simultaneously firing back up at them.  The concerted battle was the boys’ last ‘hurrah’ – their vendetta against “the authority” which also served the purpose of attempting to attain their planned death wish: to be killed by cops. At some point in the brief showdown, they must have realized it was futile. They were rapidly running out of ammo and realized that even the fantasy they’d envisioned with someone else taking their lives was not to be in the cards. At this point, the two turned from the window and had begun to quickly survey a decent enough spot within their sights for them to end their lives. They were now weary, disillusioned and desperate to take care of the problem. The back corner of the library would do.   

There wasn’t time to think; simply do what needed to be done. They strode over to their designated graveyard with resigned purpose. The only way to do this properly and without hesitation was to do it as quick as possible. Seems Eric would have been single minded in purpose, like a soldier, all business-like. Dylan would’ve been considering how he wanted to go and which personal affects he would remove off of himself. While Dylan was doing all of this, Eric was busying himself, already getting down into position and adjusting Arlene. Any exchange of words would have been hasty and not overly considered. Too much delay and hesitation would make things more difficult. The deed needed to be done, the sooner the better, especially for Eric who likely had a haunted look on his face because he quickly had to come to terms with suicide by his own hand in addition to the failure of NBK.. By contrast,  Dylan would’ve been quietly methodical, calm if not lethargic in movement. He had waited for this moment for a long time and he was mindful having fantasy-rehearsed his death several different ways before. Dylan prepared for his suicide in an almost ritual-like way by removing certain items and putting them into a small pile by himself. Somewhere in there, Dylan decided to light a Molotov which only partially exploded on the table nearby.  Yet, another failure.. Eric looked up at Dylan and the exchange might have been a nod of:  “Nice knowing you man, see you on the flip side.” And just as Dylan looked away for a split second to remove something, he would’ve been stunned by how abruptly his friend had managed to have done it, pulled the trigger: the deafening sound of the shotgun, the splattering of Eric’s brains hitting the ceiling and the blood projectiling everywhere, including on his own clothes and arm. Just in that split second, he had experienced Eric’s death peripherally while in the midst of shedding his belongings. He may have thought Eric could have waited for them to go out together, instead that was not to be the reality just as none of it had gone the way they thought it would that day.  Dylan was then literally all alone and just the thought of that in and of itself was more than enough motivation to shakily position his TEC a hair’s breath from his skull and blow himself away from his miserable existence as well. I would imagine that he’d have closed his eyes and took one last tremulous breathe while holding the vision of the Halcyons within his mind’s eye, where freedom and bliss awaited him.“ I didn’t like life too much & I know I’ll be happier wherever the fuck I go. So I’m gone. …”

And, well, that’s approximately how I envision it?  The moment they are back up in the library that last time would’ve been a very haunting, disillusioning, hardcore-gritty experience for them. It was Them versus The World which was closing in on them like a vice. Think Star Wars trash compactor.  No time to look around to admire their (rather meager) destructive handiwork they were responsible for and no time to say thoughtful “hey bro, you were the best man. I love you, dude” sentiments. Just them stuck in the library looking back at NBK as the biggest flop of their lives only to further define them as losers. Even the very last molotov that Dylan threw on the table seemed to say “nope, you two are made of fail.”   You would’ve thought Dylan might’ve wanted to pull the trigger first since he was eager for death or that Eric and Dylan would’ve waited for one another to be ready, to do it idealistically together as Bros in Arms – but instead, the colossal failure of NBK was enough to make a suddenly extremely self-loathing Eric want to blow his brains first and asap, leaving Dylan to go it alone.  The enormous sense of aloneness in that moment for Dylan would’ve topped all others in his life. 

This was much more long-winded than I intended.  Hope it helped satisfy your question and then some! And thank you so much for the kind words. 🙂  

It’s time for another episode of.. The (lost) Basement Tapes moments.. ;)

Last week as we recall, REB n’ VoDkA were..

Touring Harris’ bedroom, where outside they have buried some of their ammunition in what they call “the whiskey bunker,” the two point out semi-automatic weapons and Harris’ beloved G.I. Joe action figures.

 
“I’ve always loved them..”  says Eric.

Dylan complains that the manufacturer should make 
“at least one moveable part” in G.I. Joes. 

Dylan mentions the “bunker” and attempts to video tape out the west window of Eric’s room but it is dark outside and you cannot see anything other than the GLARE on the window.

Dylan states there is a patch of ground where it is buried under the dirt. 

“You can’t see it, it’s buried there. That’s why it’s called a bunker..”  

So apparently when E and D entered the library, a girl heard one say to the other, “Are you still with me? We’re still gonna do this, right?”. I’ve wondered who was the one to say it and i wondered your opinion on who it was? (I love your blog so much btw)

Lisa Kreutz’ (page 62 of the 11k) account: The boys entered the library and started yelling then and one said something about blowing up the library. She heard an explosion inside the library then and she heard one of the gunmen say that they hated the school and that the school had messed them up. Then the shooting began inside the library, setting the fire alarm off. The girls pulled the chairs in closer to the table to hide behind but that didn’t stop the bullets when [Dylan Klebold] began to shoot under their table. Lisa’s right wrist was grazed by a stray bullet. She heard the “Do you believe in God?” exchange between Valeen Schnurr, which occurred about the same time that [Dylan] fired again under the table where Lisa was still hiding. She was hit several times, sustaining multiple gunshot wounds to shoulder, hand and both arms. She lay bleeding in the library for 2 1/2 hours, unable to move due to the severity of her injuries, before she was rescued by officials on scene. She was the last survivor to be pulled from the library.

When the shooters entered the library she heard one say: “Are you still with me? We’re still gonna do this, right?” 

Which time the shooters entered the library- that is, when her mind recalls she heard this –  is key.  

Which boy said this really is hinged on when Lisa Kreutz actually heard the alleged question and whether her recall of precisely when she heard this is correct.  If Lisa had heard one of them say this at the start of the library massacre, while the boys were first approaching the library doors, then I believe that Eric was asking Dylan for reassurance that he was still on board with the ‘make it up as we go along Plan B’ – to continue on with their KMFDM agenda to shoot, kill, maim classmates trapped in the library. This would’ve been before Eric had broke his nose and so he would’ve still been very enthusiastic and pumped up, thirsty for kills and revenge, in addition to the mere taste of it they got outside with some potshots at students on the school grounds.   Upon entering the school, they’d stalled and dicked around in the hallway by shooting and throwing pipe bombs at lockers and walls and randomly shooting at fleeing students in an ineffective free-for-all manner. The two even separated a good bit of time. Dylan killed no one in the hall, Eric killed Dave Sanders.  So, Eric was ready to head into that library and take revenge up close and in a personal way.  Was Dylan ready for this?  Eric had to be sure he was ready for the next level of destruction that was left up to them to accomplish since the bombs hadn’t yet gone off, and might never.

Since, Lisa was heavily wounded and remained in the library somewhere near  an unconscious Patrick Ireland the entire time after all the other students fled, her recall may have been hazy as to when exactly this alleged question was posed. It’s quite possible that it occurred when the boys returned for the very last time to the library.  By then, their mindset had become more distracted and aimless after failing to make the bombs go off in the Commons.  The blood lust against classmates had fizzled and committing suicide was rapidly becoming forefront in their minds since the cops were now closing in.  If the alleged discussion had occurred the second time, the last time, they ventured to the library, I believe Dylan would have asked Eric for reassurance that he too was committed to the act of suicide because this is what Dylan wanted most of all out of that entire day.  Oh sure, the rest was the ‘have fun!’ journey but the end was his destination he so longed for.  

I do believe that Eric may have been hesitant to commit suicide at some point or another, since he was seen to be remorseful on the Basement tape videos made two and a half weeks before the incident, and in their final testament video, Eric was seen to be saying how much he would miss his boss, Bob, at Blackjack, how he would miss some special people, how he wished he could go back to Michigan and see some old friends first, and how he knew his parents would be so hurtful, and his statement of “to everyone I love, I’m sorry about all this” or something to that similar affect. Dylan, on the other hand, was on a suicide mission from the very beginning, and made his suicide a key point in NBK, more than a year prior to the incident. Eric had also wrote that he and Dylan could escape after the incident, and destroy as much as possible, move to Mexico or an island where Americans couldn’t find them, or hijack and crash a plane into New York City afterwards. His alternative exits may have been wildly far fetched fantasy but it equates to a certain amount of disbelief and hesitation that NBK was a revenge mission which could only end unequivocally in suicide – either romantically by cop as he envisioned – or by their own hand.  At the point they made their way back up to the library, Eric would have had to rapidly come to the terms that he would have to do the job for himself in their failed mission.  Even though Eric knew that he wouldn’t live after the incident, and that he eventually would go ahead and commit suicide, he didn’t make his own suicide a key part of the event, something that was absolutely necessary, while Dylan did.  It’s not likely that Dylan would have been the one to have ideas of backing out since it was his utmost goal to complete NBK for the reward of freedom that awaited him.

Anyway, that’s my take! Glad you enjoy E-C. 🙂 

It Couldn’t Be Dylan

“Have you seen the paper, Dad?” he asked Jay Holliday. “Jess is on the front page.”

Holliday went downstairs and picked up his Denver Rocky Mountain News. On the cover was the same photo Derek had seen in North Dakota: 18-year-old Jessica Holliday, her hands clutching her head, her mouth open in a silent wail. HEARTBREAK read the headline, a word that barely expressed the emotion written on Jessica’s face.

Her anguished image showed up on front pages in every corner of the world – along with magazine covers, the Internet, television. The camera caught a pretty face so distorted by despair that only family and friends knew for certain who it was. And only Jessica herself knew what she had been thinking and feeling just then.

But that didn’t stop the rest of the world from claiming Jessica’s pain as its own.

“That picture tells the whole story,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy Holliday. “I can’t look at it without crying.”

Jessica’s photo seemed to move everyone except Jessica herself. For her, the events of April 20 seemed unreal, and they still do.

It felt unreal when the killers walked through Columbine ‘s library, laughing and shooting, while she hid under a table and prayed.

Because Jessica Holliday is not just the girl in the picture; she’s the girl in the middle. 

She knew the killers, and she knew their victims. They were nice guys. And they murdered her best friend

Jessica had seen Dylan Klebold with the gun before she ducked under the table, and it was difficult for her to reconcile that image with the quiet kid she knew.

“It couldn’t be Dylan,” she thought, even though she knew it was.

Dylan had been in her government class the semester before. He sat right in front of her, so they talked, mostly about homework. He would pass papers back.   It couldn’t have been Dylan.

Later, she told her parents how she thought about standing up and telling Eric and Dylan to stop, as if reason might have been bullet-proof. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her, because they both knew her.

Jessica told her mother she felt like a coward because she didn’t do anything to save her friends. But now she has accepted the fact that there was nothing she could have done.

“Nobody could have stopped them. Nobody,” Jessica said with certainty. “They didn’t have a reason for shooting somebody. They just shot. I think no matter what anybody would have done, if someone had stood up and tried to stop them, that person would have gotten shot.”

When the killers reached Jessica’s table, they had to reload. She heard them talking about cutting someone with a knife, what that would be like.Jessica, dressed in shorts, became painfully aware of her bare legs jutting out from under the table. Would they cut her? she wondered.

Instead, they left to get more ammunition.

She told her story with feeling, but no tears. Her voice resonated with love for Lauren but no hint of bitterness toward Eric and Dylan.

“I don’t have any hate,” Jessica said. “I feel sorry for the boys, because they hated life so much that they had to destroy others. I feel sorry for them. Because they couldn’t enjoy life, like me and Lauren could.”

“I can’t hate them. Because I knew them, both of them.

"But I don’t want to ever think about them again. Because they killed my best friend. My best friend, who knew every little part of my life. They took her.”

Jessica doesn’t like the photo of herself. As many times as she has seen it, she still doesn’t feel its power, even though she knows it has touched millions. It just rubs her the wrong way.

“It was weird to see myself. I didn’t like it, and I still don’t like it,” she said. “I was so sad that day, and so confused. And then here it is, right there. All the stuff I was going through, and everybody could see it.”

(full article here)

The Girl in the Picture 

By Lisa Levitt  – Rocky Mountain News StaffWriter

On April 20, Jessica Holliday became he face of the Columbine tragedy to millions around the world. This is herstory. 

She is a very private person whosevery public moment of grief made her the poster child for unspeakabletragedy. 

The flood of unwelcome fame beganthe morning after the deaths at Columbine High School. First came the early
morning call from her brother, Derek, in Bismarck, N.D. 

“Have you seen the paper,
Dad?” he asked Jay Holliday. “Jess is on the front page." 

Holliday went downstairs and picked
up his Denver Rocky Mountain News. On the cover was the same photo Derek had
seen in North Dakota: 18-year-old Jessica Holliday, her hands clutching her
head, her mouth open in a silent wail. HEARTBREAK read the headline, a word
that barely expressed the emotion written on Jessica’s face. 

Her anguished image showed up on
front pages in every corner of the world – along with magazine covers, the
Internet, television. The camera caught a pretty face so distorted by despair
that only family and friends knew for certain who it was. And only Jessica
herself knew what she had been thinking and feeling just then. 

But that didn’t stop the rest of the
world from claiming Jessica’s pain as its own. 

"That picture tells the whole
story,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy Holliday. “I can’t look at it
without crying." 

Jessica’s photo seemed to move
everyone except Jessica herself. For her, the events of April 20 seemed unreal,
and they still do. 

It felt unreal when the killers
walked through Columbine ‘s library, laughing and shooting, while she hid under
a table and prayed. It felt unreal when she went back into the library weeks
later, and saw her best friend’s blood on the floor. 

"Even to this day, I like to
pretend that I was out to lunch or at home,” she said. “Or that it
happened at some other school. But not our school." 

Because Jessica Holliday is not just
the girl in the picture; she’s the girl in the middle. She knew the killers,
and she knew their victims. 

They were nice guys. And they murdered
her best friend. 

They sat at the same table, the one
nearest the entrance, every day at lunch time: Val Schnurr, Lisa Kreutz, Jeanna
Parks, Jessica Holliday, Lauren Townsend. All good friends and seniors, excited
about graduation and college. 

On that Tuesday, Jessica was sitting
where she always sat, across from her best friend, Lauren. So far, it had been
a great day. Jessica was wearing a new outfit. She was looking forward to
starting a new job. She and Lauren had spent the whole hour before together;
Jessica was counting on Lauren’s help with her physics. 

Another friend, Amber Huntington,
caught Jessica’s attention, so she left her usual seat to walk to the back of
the room to talk. And that’s where she was when she heard the first
shots. 

Firecrackers, Jessica thought, or
hammers. A senior prank. She didn’t really believe the teacher who came in
yelling about guys with guns. 

And then everyone began ducking
under tables, and Jessica started to run back to her table, back to
Lauren. 

And at that moment, Amber grabbed
Jessica’s hand and pulled her under the nearest table. “She probably saved my
life,” Jessica said. 

Amber hadn’t wanted to go to school
that day. And all morning, she had felt a powerful need to see Jessica, talk to
Jessica. When the shooting began, Amber immediately reached for her
friend. 

"I was scared,” Amber
said, “and I wanted Jessica to stay with me." 

Back at Jessica’s table, her other
friends had become targets: Val. Jeanna. Lisa. 

Lauren. 

Under their table, Jessica and Amber
held hands and prayed, through the gunfire, through the screams. Through the
killers’ laughter. 

"In that moment, all you can do
is pray that they won’t shoot you, pray that you won’t die,” Jessica said.
“You’re not ready to die.” 

Jessica had seen Dylan Klebold with
the gun before she ducked under the table, and it was difficult for her to
reconcile that image with the quiet kid she knew. 

“It couldn’t be Dylan,”
she thought, even though she knew it was. 
Dylan had been in her government
class the semester before. He sat right in front of her, so they talked, mostly
about homework. He would pass papers back. It couldn’t have been Dylan. 

Later, she found out that the other
boy was Eric Harris. That was just as hard to believe. 

Eric’s older brother, Kevin, was her
brother Derek’s best friend. Kevin was a great guy, like another brother to
her. Eric had eaten dinner at her house once. 

Later, when it was over, Kevin
Harris came to see her. 

“Are you OK?” he asked.
And then, “Was it really my brother?" 

And Jessica said yes, but she
wouldn’t say more. She felt sorry for Kevin, for all he suffered. But that
couldn’t change what Eric had done. 

Later, she told her parents how she
thought about standing up and telling Eric and Dylan to stop, as if reason
might have been bullet-proof. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her, because they
both knew her. 

Later, Jessica told her mother she
felt like a coward because she didn’t do anything to save her friends. But now
she has accepted the fact that there was nothing she could have done. 

"Nobody could have stopped
them. Nobody,” Jessica said with certainty. “They didn’t have a
reason for shooting somebody. They just shot. I think no matter what anybody
would have done, if someone had stood up and tried to stop them, that person
would have gotten shot." 

When the killers reached Jessica’s
table, they had to reload. She heard them talking about cutting someone with a
knife, what that would be like. 

Jessica, dressed in shorts, became
painfully aware of her bare legs jutting out from under the table. Would they
cut her? she wondered. 

Instead, they left to get more
ammunition. 

The survivors of the library spilled
out from under their tables and began to run. 

"And I didn’t want to run.
Because I thought they were going to come back and just shoot us all. So for a
second, I froze,” Jessica said. “Then the people at my table left and
ran, and I finally got up." 

And while Jessica ran, she thought
about being shot in the back. 

When she got outside, she saw Val,
who was alone and wounded, so Jessica held her. And then Jeanna was there, and
she had been shot, too. Surrounded by her friends, bleeding. 

But no Lauren. 

"Where’s Lauren?” she
asked Diwata Perez, who had been sitting at their table up front. 

“We tried to wake her up,”
Diwata said. “Her eyes were closed. Maybe she passed out." 

And at that moment, Jessica knew
what had happened to Lauren. 

"Lauren is the strong one,
she’s the survivor. She’s the one who would bail me out of anything,” Jessica
said. 

“So I knew she was
dead." 

The bullet that killed Lauren broke
Jessica’s heart. 

They became friends in their
first-grade class, once-in-a-lifetime kind of friends. They went on a church
retreat every winter during high school, where they’d talk about God and their
feelings and their lives. 

"We’d talk about our way-down
secrets that we wouldn’t tell anybody else,” Jessica said. “Lauren
had problems, but she’d never really let anybody know. She talked to me about
it. But she never had a bad day. She had quiet days. But not bad
days." 

Lauren was always there: Coming over
late to help Jessica with her math homework. Picking out Jessica’s prom dress
with five days to go. Always ready to listen. 

They were bound together by their
love of music – both played the piano and the clarinet – and by more difficult
things, like the health problems suffered by Jessica’s mother, Kathy, and
Lauren’s mother, Dawn. 

"We talked really in-depth on
the winter retreat,” Jessica said. “Sometimes about God, but mostly
about what we were going through in life right now, what it’s like. Me and
Lauren, sometimes we don’t have easy lives. And we talked about
that." 

They drew strength from each other –
and Lauren drew pictures for Jessica. Jessica saved them all. Sleeping Beauty.
Jasmine. Jessica as Pocahontas. “We always sang Jesus Christ Superstar, and
we’d dance to it. And so she drew Jesus on the cross for me.” 

On the back, Lauren wrote, “May He
always be with you.” 

A week before she died, Lauren gave
Jessica her last drawing. 

"She had smudged it,”
Jessica said. “And I remember her saying, ‘I had a picture for you, but I
ruined it. So I’ll redraw it for you.’ She never did. And finally I said,
‘Lauren, can I have that picture you smudged?’ 

So Lauren gave it to her. Her last
drawing: an unfinished angel. 

It was a day after the shootings
before Jessica knew for sure what her heart already had told her: that Lauren
was dead. She felt anger then, and a survivor’s guilt. 

“If anything, I should have
been the one to die, and not Lauren,” Jessica said. “For the first
couple of days after, I thought, if I would have stayed at our table, I would
have gotten shot and not Lauren – Lauren would have been safe. Or if I was
there, my angel that was with me would have been with my whole table, and my
whole table would have been OK." 

Lauren’s parents asked to see her,
and she didn’t know what she would say to them. 

"Her mother wanted to know
exactly what had happened,” Jessica said. “And I told her most of it.
But not all of it." 

She told them about things she and
Lauren had done together that they never knew about. She told them about
Lauren’s drawings, which she gave them for an art show. She took Lauren’s
yearbook and had all her best friends sign it, and then brought it back to
Lauren’s parents. 

At Lauren’s funeral, and the Red
Rocks memorial, Jessica stood in front of friends and family and strangers and
brought to life the Lauren she knew, the smart, funny, down-to-earth girl who
had a thing for space aliens and was perpetually late. A person everybody
loved. A person without an enemy in the world. 

"Your best friend doesn’t
die,” Jessica said. “Even to this day, I don’t believe it. I think
maybe I could go call her, and she’ll be home. 

"And I’ll say, ‘What’s
up?’" 

Jessica doesn’t like the photo of
herself. As many times as she has seen it, she still doesn’t feel its power,
even though she knows it has touched millions. It just rubs her the wrong
way. 

"It was weird to see myself. I
didn’t like it, and I still don’t like it,” she said. “I was so sad
that day, and so confused. And then here it is, right there. All the stuff I
was going through, and everybody could see it.” 

What people see now is a young woman
looking forward. In the fall, Jessica plans to go to Mesa State College. She
isn’t sure what she’ll study. But April 20 gave her a new perspective on her
future. 

“I want to live more like
Lauren – try to get along with everybody, try to work harder. She’s my
hero,” Jessica said. “I want to do something to help people. So that
every day is like a new day, you know?" 

Jessica still struggles to get past
that one day. She returned to the library with the other survivors, thinking
that it would help her accept Lauren’s death. But it didn’t help at all. 

She saw the bullet holes and the
blood. It was like a movie set, like dye splashed on the floor. All of it,
still so unreal, obscured by a heavy curtain of denial that Jessica has yet to
pull back. 

She told her story with feeling, but
no tears. Her voice resonated with love for Lauren but no hint of bitterness
toward Eric and Dylan. 

"I don’t have any hate,”
Jessica said. “I feel sorry for the boys, because they hated life so much
that they had to destroy others. I feel sorry for them. Because they couldn’t
enjoy life, like me and Lauren could." 

"I can’t hate them. Because I
knew them, both of them. 

"But I don’t want to ever think
about them again. Because they killed my best friend. My best friend, who knew
every little part of my life. They took her." 

Jessica’s parents worry about her.
“She’s strong, so strong,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy. “But she hasn’t dealt
with all of this yet. She hasn’t cried. I cry all the time. But she hasn’t
cried.” 

She wasn’t crying in that photo,
either, Jessica insisted. People seemed to think they could look at her face
and know her thoughts in that terrible second. Life magazine printed the
picture with a caption that said Jessica was reacting to the news that her best
friend was dead. 

That wasn’t it. 

"I was praying,” she said.
“And I was asking, ‘What just happened? Why our school? Why is everybody
hurting?’ I was thinking about Lauren, and I was asking why? Why? 

“It was a moment with
God." 

Related Links:
Jessica Hollidays 11K account  
Dylan straddling Jessica’s leg

Do you think anything could of made Eric and/or Dylan not want to do Columbine anymore? Stuff like; the Marines accepting Eric, or one/both of them being in a relationship that they care about, or the bullies suddenly apologizing to them, etc

Certainly, yes.  Anything simple and ordinary could’ve reengaged either of the two to begin to care one iota again, to feel reconnected and valuable enough on the planet to change their course of destiny like the switch of a train’s tracks from a crash course over a cliff’s end onto another route that sprawls onward towards a sunny horizon.  Once one of the two cared enough, I do believe the deadly dyad dynamic would’ve fizzled and come to a halt. I do not think the two separately had the momento and strength to do what they did as in their alliance. It was a symbiotic relationship.

Do you think people that murder have any punishment for that in death?? Like it doesn’t sound fair but what do ya think, if you’re interested in such a topic

Once we move on to the spirtual plane, we shed the notions of earthly human judgment and punishment. The spiritual plane is neutral and your existence as a spirit is only about learning from experiences and the choices you make. Everyone that passes on goes through what is known as a “life review”. Think of it like a 360 rapid powerpoint preesntation which flashes instaneously within your spiritual mind: every single experience, feeling, thought, decision you’ve made is flashed within you. You recall and experience that moment as if it were vividly happening to you in a matter of human seconds. Additionally, every single experience, feeling, thought of others you’ve engaged with in your life is also something you personally experience from the other person’s own perspective and vantage point. You see fully how you affected and influenced them, how you made them feel in both positive and negative ways. It’s a multidimentional experience of instant enlightenment of the choices you’ve made for yourself and the cause and effect of having an influence on others life choices. Dylan and Eric, Ted Bundy, Hitler are no exception. They would have all had life reviews along with the rest of us. Dylan and Eric would’ve felt what is was like to be the bullies, the jocks, that bullied in them in school and they also got to feel and experience what it felt like for every single victim of theirs: all the sheer terror, immense fear, pain and suffering they caused the victims by choosing to make such an ignorant, selfish, fear-based choice. They would fully understand it all better having seen the complete picture. The school of your earthly life has come to an end and all the good, loving, horrible and hateful fear-based choices they have made is reflected on and processed by each spirit. From there, they begin the next evolution of their soul’s journey by deciding which set of lessons they would like to experience and process within the spiritual realm. Spirits often go into a state of rest and reflection on their last life, especially if it was a very heavy, karmatic life they led. The only punishment a murderer could experience is the punishment they may feel that they deserve. In other words, they may cross over and prohibit themselves from moving on to the next spirit levels because they are stuck in a state of self generated punishment of their own making because they do not yet forgive themselves or feel worthy enough to ascend yet. So, no, when you pass on and move to the spiritual realms, it is not about punishment for anyone – only about enlightenment, growth, love and forgiveness.

This may be unjust for me to think. I get upset when the public fights about putting memorial crosses for Dylan and Eric. It’s hypocritical. I mourn not only for the victims but the two HUMANS who were driven to the point of killing. Your opinion?

So, you mean to say that you’re upset that memorials/crosses for Dylan and Eric have never been a consideration over the past sixteen years? I think after the wooden crosses were erected right after Columbine happened, it was a very unusual occurence in this country to have the crosses of the perpetrators side-by-side with their own victims. It was almost like an experiment to see how people would react and it was definitely an extreme controversial mix of reactions. The thing about Dylan and Eric is that while the minority of us that know this case well can honor, respect and morn the fact that they were mistreated and this whole horrible thing began with these two being bullied and ostracized, it also ended with Dylan and Eric becoming the very thing they disliked about Columbine. The two morphed into bullies and more importantly, not only bullied and mocked back, they murderered kids. They arbitratrially ended the lives of classmates they didn’t even know and had no personal vendetta against. We also should’nt forget the enormity of their insidious plans since they initially hoped to kill 250-500 students at their school with bombs, some of which would’ve been their own friends. So, while they were initially started out as victims they ended up turning into bullying perpetrators. The Littleton public, America and by extenision the world, only remembers the last insidious course of action these two boys took. In a way, it is an act of internal terrorism of sorts – their rebellion against the school and organized society. Revenge and retailation against students in return for the bullying they received is never going to be seen as something noble or worthy of sympathy. So, realistically, given that, I don’t really expect any tax payer dollars will ever be spent to erect memories for the boys in the future. And I don’t really see this happening for any school shooters or mass murderers no matter how much bullying they may have initially endured.

Don’t get me wrong, on a personal level I understand your frustrations, and I can understand and appreciate what you’re saying. You can relate to their initial suffering so you feel/believe they are worthy of being remembered for the damaged people they became. It would be nice if the world could open its’ eyes and get the bigger picture: that Columbine was/is about all fifteen victims and the circle of/vicious cycle of suffering they shared in. Perhaps it’s a matter of it being up to us, the Columbiners, to be the ones to take the action in putting a memorial in place for the boys, instead of waiting for those that don’t have the enlightenment nor wisdom to do it for us? We would have to be the future to set the example and make a change in consciousness. Can you imagine Columbiners taking a collection to have a memorial constructed for the two in a special location of our choice? 🙂 But the problem is, I think that their memorial would likely be vandalized and destroyed no matter if we – or the public – had one erected. Dylan and Eric sought to leave this place infamously and internal infamy is exactly what they’ve received. In this society that we presently live in, it is very difficult to get people to understand that Dylan and Eric made waves to get the world’s attention for a reason. Instead, school shootings continue with regularity and the blame on Dylan and Eric is compounded. I don’t think the world is ‘there’ yet with understanding their own “monsters” which they’ve had a hand in creating let alone erecting memorials in their memory. It is what it is..for now, anyway. Columbiners have to be the ones to pave the way for the future they hope to see. 🙂

You know that picture where eric & dylan are shooting out the window at the cops , there’s smoke & people say that they can see eric & dylan it the window but it was cleared up that it wasn’t them. Do you think that she shadows are the spirits of the victims that they had just killed in the library? I dont know why but I feel like they are..

No, I think that what people are seeing or interpreting is not spirit of the victims – but instead, they are “matrixing" shapes by way of the smoke and distortion of objects through the windows   

That said, there is one clip that has always stood out as potentially.. interesting to me.  In the video clip below, you can see some unusual white formation rapidly gliding by the exposed, completely broken open portion of a window. It is a clear shot inside of the darkness of the library with no smoke or distortion in sight.  This formation travels from right-to-left of the lampshade in a fleeting manner. It appears small in height and looks almost translucent. This footage was filmed after the massacre was over and a couple of hours after the boys committed suicide.  The ‘time stamp clue’ is the smeared blood stain on the side of the window which would place this being filmed sometime after 2:30 pm, when Patrick Ireland hurdled himself out of the window and his foot hit the glass leaving a smattering print of blood there [1.27].

The movement by the lamp is intriguing because of the fashion that the wispy bit seems to glide rapidly right by. It is conceivably, rationally possible that the SWAT team was already up there checking out the crime scene – on the other hand – the wispy thing does not appear to look or move much the way a solid human form would scouting out the area. Could it be smoke hours afterward? I tend to think not because of how concentrated and uniform this foggy blip is. Given the strange way that ‘it’ moves, seems to suggest that it could potentially be ethereal spirit energy.  The victims?  The Boys? Residual imprinted energies after a traumatic event? Possibly.  It could be any number of things, really, but I do feel it’s..curious. Of course, if anyone thinks they know what this is, I would be interested to hear your take.. 😉

Review: The Killers’ Point of View – The Erlkings

Everyone loves a hero. Stories about protagonists are a staple in our society. Whether they are real or fictional, every hero needs a villain. And every protagonist needs an antagonist. Rarely do we see stories where the antagonist is the main character in the literary sense. But often when the antagonist does become the focal point, their origin story will shed a light into what made them the villain they are. In the extremely tough to swallow The Erlkings, two of America’s greatest monsters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, are given a massive spotlight into the lead up before the infamous massacre at Columbine High School.

Using papers, essays, journals, and the like of the two notorious murderers, The Erlkings is a series of vignettes that lead up to the tragic April day in 1999. Written by Nathaniel Sam Shapiro, The Erlkings thrust Harris and Klebold front and center and attempt to reveal the truths to their actions. While The Erklings may seem like an original, it is not the first big budget Columbine inspired play. Shapiro used the same exact source material that also inspired the stronger columbinus, written by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli. With an already established piece, comparisons must be made, and unfortunately for Shapiro and The Erlkings team, Karem and Paparelli did a masterful job and did it better. Both scripts rely on similar source material and short scenes in a theatrical manner. Both scripts call upon props dropping from the sky that are integral to the world of the play. But both pieces though call upon a different set of emotions. columbinus tugs at your heart. The Erlkings may do nothing but make you angry. This is not the first time murderers have been given the theater treatment. In fact Stephen Sondheim wrote an entire musical about President killers. While Assassins was also a killer showcase, the approach was ridiculously different. Sondheim and book writer John Weidman theatricalize the individuals, with the great aid of music and character. Shapiro brings us the real deal. And layered in some uncomfortable laughs. Using any ounce of humor in an incredibly dark and harrowing time of our history was a poor decision. The moments felt forced and tasteless. Sure, heavy material should have moments of light but with this subject, it doesn’t exist. Comparisons aside, the way Shapiro established his script, rather than allowing the characters to act and speak naturally, he forced them to establish the source where the following monologue was derived from almost as if to allow the audience to know these horrifying passages were not his words.

Em Grosland and James Scully had an incredibly difficult task in giving life to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold respectively. The emotional journeys both actors gave to their stage counterparts were present. Grosland and Scully tapped into their stage counterparts so well it was scary. Had they not been forced to establish every single monologue, you may have not been able to tell actor from character. The five person supporting company had very little to do but support and move furniture, but Matthew Bretschneider strayed from the pack and gave an incredible performance in his varied roles.
Director Saheem Ali employed extraordinary stagecraft into this production. The Brechtian nature of his staging, with props and costumes and actors all present throughout, was an incredible device. The lighting design by Katy Atwell was stunning. The costumes by Lux Haac were fitting. The set by Doss Freel was simple, despite the seemingly borrowed dropping device. Despite all this, where Ali failed was separating reality from theatricality. Because Grosland and Scully portrayed their roles so well, you knew the endgame and hated them, garnering no potential empathy as characters. Going in, the audience knows the material is going to be dramatic, but Ali’s pre-show of lunch room bullying was too heavy. To the point where the audience was terrified to go about their own pre-show business.

Shapiro in his author’s note makes it very clear that his intention is to inform and open our minds to understand Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Even in the piece, one of Eric’s notes says not to blame anyone but them, yet the question of the piece begs can we truly forgive them and every single person who did in fact miss the signs. Shapiro makes the case that their actions are in fact human. That may be true, regardless, our hearts may still feel otherwise. Fifteen years may still be too soon to humanize the duo. The Erlkings is nothing short of ambitious. Unfortunately, the approach is far too polarizing. Controversy may not always be the worst thing in the arts. It gets people talking. And every single audience member was talking when the house lights rose.

Source

I read that just after Eric shot Kelly Flemming, he walked to another table where 2 girls were hiding under, then looked under it and called them pathetic and then walked off to carry on killing others. Why didn’t he shoot the 2 girls? Do you think he & dylan felt bad about killing girls?

Eric and Dylan didn’t have a goal to kill everyone in their sights. That was supposed to be the bombs job.  When Plan A failed, the boys improvised and played russian roulette with students who had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of their trigger.  Some they randomly killed and others they psychologically terrorized with mocking comments, leaving the student behind to wonder if at any moment, they, too, would be next to die. Eric was embodying his own brand of “Natural Selection”, picking off only some while leaving others to survive as he did with the girls at those two tables. Think of it a bit like Eric being like a tornado weaving a path of destruction in it’s desultory wake or like the Black Plague wiping out some while ignoring others. The goal for the boys wasn’t quantity of body count but damage, destruction and leaving those that managed to survivor their wrath with permanent flashbacks for years to come. Ultimate power to have the say arbitrarily who would live or who would die on their whim. I don’t think that Eric wavered about the two girls because plenty of girls were terrorized and two were killed in that area and there were also girls in other areas that got wounded. Plus, Eric shot Cassie face-to-face which doesn’t really demonstrate a case for hesitation. So, it was completely random acts of unkindness.

This post will be deleted after a couple of days.

In the footage in the cafeteria right before they go to kill themselves what do you think was going through their heads? Dylan looked really sad like he regretted it but knew that was it. I mean they had so much more people in that school they could of killed but they didn’t want to. what do you believe happened?

I doubt either of the two got any sleep the night before so if you factor that in along with the major roller coaster-like experience they just had, the two boys are majorly crashing and burning.

Dylan is very much done with his last day on earth. It was most probably he who shouted euphorically in the halls: “today is the day I die!”   The mindset to ‘have fun!’ was executed; he fulfilled his part of the mission with his friend.  Even though he nor Eric managed to get the bombs to go off, it was good enough for him that they raised hell and did a fair amount of damage. It was good enough.  The mission was complete, the end was near. He was now “in wait of his reward”  Dylan appears so utterly empty in every way possible – mentally, emotionally, physically, so much so, that his feet lumber dejectedly up the stairs one. last. time. He is nothingness at this point, empty of everything.  He is practically having an out-of-body experience and his shotgun is heavily dragging downward from his hand like a meaningless hunk of metal and wood. Dylan makes a weighted point of glancing back over his shoulder for one. last. time. to survey the Commons in the complete ruination that they were responsible for.   Then..one last time to trudge up these damnable steps, so arduous..but each step – worth it, because soon it will be..“Time to die, time to be free, time to love”   Everything about Dylan says “I didn’t like life too much, so I’m gone. Goodbye.”

For Eric, there is a major amount of disappointment and failure. The bombs..why the fuck didn’t they go off?   Eric is exhausted and nearly spent but he’s also pissed that things did not unfold as he planned. He is fighting back that feeling of absolute and utter failure. There is an unrest about him, that fighters spirit about his demeanor.  Unlike Dylan, for Eric, the mission is not yet over and done with until he has the last say. The building is surrounded and yet even that battle with the cops he hoped for hadn’t gone as planned. They were sitting ducks at this point. They could be captured at any moment. Fuck no.  Time was of the essence. Eric exudes just that bit more life left in him. You can see a slight bit of purpose as he climbs the stairs with one determined bounce in his step. His gun swings down beside him with his stride. Eric is going to make sure to end this mission and on his own terms..whatever the fuck that may be. He “is not going down without some kind of fight” – his rebel’s mantra which he lives and breaths within the last eight minutes on the earth.  Eric is direction and momentum, even in their last bit of chaotic improvisation. If suicide not by cop but by his own hand, so. be. it.  Game over when he says it is.  After that, who knows where the fuck he’ll blast himself to. Who cares. 

What does Zach look like? Can you post things Zach has said about Eric and Dylan?

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Described Dylan Klebold as a quiet, Chemical Brother’s fan, and a member of the sound crew for various school plays and other functions.  Whereas Klebold had wanted to go to college and study computer science, Heckler did not think he was smart enough.  He identified his girlfriend as Robyn Anderson, but described the relationship as more of a friendship.  He stated Klebold had a problem with alcohol, and as a result had been given the nickname, “Vodka”.  Zachary Heckler saw Dylan Klebold at the prom, but did not talk to him very much during this time. He saw Dylan and Robyn Anderson at the after prom, but again, did not spend much time with them. Zachary Heckler did a phone thing with Dylan Klebold, Sunday night, April 18, 1999. He would telephone Dylan later at night and play ”Quake” or just be on the speaker phones with him, during which time they really did not talk with each other. He recalled passing Dylan Klebold in the hallway on Monday, April 19, 1999, and then Monday night, he called Dylan at approximately 22:30. Dylan Klebold told him that he was not in the mood to talk and wanted to sleep. Zachary Heckler said this was kind of odd because Dylan normally did not get off the phone until 00:30-1:00 hours on most nights. 

Described Eric Harris as, in addition to being a racist, feeling superior to other people, and being frustrated with problems he was having at home.  He said he had been told that Harris’ parents were very strict and did not approve of many things he was doing.  Heckler explained that during the past summer, Harris had changed his manner of dress and the type of music he listened to.  Heckler identified the German group Rammstein as being Harris’ favorite.  He also identified a video game, “Postal”, as being a game Harris often played, and noted it involved nothing but killing.  He said Harris did not have a steady girlfriend, and had asked Sabrina Cooley to attend the senior prom with him, but she had refused.  Eric Harris stop liking him (Zachary Heckler) without any reason, but Zach continued to be good friends with Dylan Klebold. Zachary Heckler stated that in February 1999, he attended a party at Robyn Anderson’s home and that Eric Harris was also at this party. Zach stated that the two of them had both been at each other’s throats for some time, but that at this party, Eric Harris approached him and asked him how he was doing. Zach continued to say that they then began talking about things and about future plans. This was the last time that Zach talked to Eric Harris, except for passing each other in the hallways at school. Zachary Heckler said the last time he saw Eric Harris was at the ”after prom” but they did not talk.

c0atimundi:

everlasting-contrast:

newszin:

The Columbine Shooters, Downstage Center

“On three,” one of the boys says. His voice reeks of determination. The bright blond spikes of his hair stand out against a long coat, pants, and heavy-duty boots, all of them black.  

“I… I… Okay,” says his partner, distraught under his own black garb.

Above them, a constellation of illuminated backpacks dangles from the ceiling, hanging over cafeteria tables ensconced in shadows.

“Eric Harris’s ‘Guns in School’ essay,” the first reads, drifting away from the scene to recall an assignment, which along with journal entries and poems the two have returned to throughout the play, moving nimbly between reality and introspection. “More and more we hear of shooting sprees and rampages on the news,” he says. “Almost any school shooting can be prevented in some way or another, we just have to spend the necessary time and money to figure out how.”

“What’d you get on it?”

“A 92.”

Moments later the shooters begin counting. The room goes dark. The audience knows what happened next.

The Erlkings, a play written by Nathaniel Sam Shapiro, depicts onstage the infamous shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who on April 20, 1999, killed 13 people and wounded more than 20 others at Columbine High School before committing suicide. Theirs was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.

The off-Broadway play, directed by Saheem Ali, is based on an FBI report—a nearly 1,000-page compendium of the boys’ own writings and other evidence—as well as additional sources, like the many home videos Harris and Klebold made. It opens Sunday at the Beckett Theatre after a week of preview performances, with Em Grosland and James Scully in the leading roles.

In his playwright’s statement, Shapiro says he began researching Columbine after the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and calls Columbine a “watershed moment” for those, like him, who were students in American schools at the time. 

“The way we talked about Adam [Lanza] took me back to Eric and Dylan: these were ‘monsters’ and ‘no one could understand how they could do something like this,’” Shapiro writes. He says he pursued the play because “we will never prevent another Columbine by distancing ourselves from those who would perpetrate such an act and by refusing, out of fear, to understand them.”

11-16-14 Erlkings 024 James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris, preparing pipe bombs in The Erlkings. Carol Rosegg

Criticism from Columbine families

When Coni Sanders first caught wind of the project from a segment on the radio, she says she was shocked.

“He’s granting the wishes of these two boys who murdered my family,” says Sanders, whose father, William “Dave” Sanders, was a business teacher and coach at the school, the only staff member killed in the shootings. “I truly feel that he should have omitted the killers’ names.” Sanders published a strongly-worded op-ed about the play in the New York Post in early November that grew out of a post she had written on Facebook.

One of Harris and Klebold’s objectives was to be remembered forever, she says, and shooters after them have followed suit in an attempt to gain fame and notoriety. So putting Harris and Klebold onstage as Shapiro has, Sanders says, is not only “giving them exactly what they wanted,” but could also glorify their actions and encourage others to do the same. In the case of the Virginia Tech shootings, she says, “the boy that killed their families idolized the boys that killed my family.”

After Columbine, Sanders became a forensic therapist, working with felons convicted of violent crimes and the mentally ill, “to better understand how Dylan and Eric got to where they are.” “I don’t see Eric and Dylan as monsters,” she says. “I see them as two boys who were broken.”

Shapiro insists that his play is meant to educate and prompt discussion rather than to glorify, and that the real-world scenario will help audiences connect to the issue. 

“I don’t think Eric and Dylan would be so proud to see this play because it shows their humiliation, it shows their vulnerability,” he says, adding that the play highlights how Columbine is a more complex story than people would like to admit.

Peter Langman, a psychologist and scholar whose research focuses on school shooters, tells Newsweek: “My concern is that it might portray Harris and Klebold somehow as disaffected contemporary youth rather than portraying them as extreme psychological outliers.” While Klebold was slipping deep into a severe depression and exhibiting signs of schizotypal personality disorder, Langman says, Harris “was a very disturbed person, a psychopath.

“This is someone who admired Hitler and the Nazis. This is someone who had fantasies of raping girls he knew. This is someone who fantasized about mutilating human bodies and enjoying it. So he was not an ordinary kid, he was not just an innocent victim of the students who teased him.” Langman, who wrote the book Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, says “Eric Harris no more represents his generation than Charles Manson represented his.”

11-16-14 Erlkings 008 James Scully as Dylan Klebold (left) and Em Grosland as Eric Harris (right). Carol Rosegg

Based on Columbine

Shapiro is certainly not the first to draw on Columbine for art, or to attract criticism for doing so. Many others have based films, books, and even a video game on the event in Colorado, which while not the first school shooting, remains etched in the nation’s collective memory for the scale of destruction Harris and Klebold wrought.

The long list of previous films related to Columbine includes Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine; the play-turned-movie Bang Bang You’re Dead; the film Elephant; and a parody movie titled Duck! The Carbine High Massacre. A video game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG! sparked outrage after it was released on April 20, 2005, exactly six years after the shootings.

Another play, columbinus, written by P.J. Paparelli and Stephen Karam for The United States Theater Project, premiered in 2005. Unlike The Erlkings, columbinus—which is a mixture of fact and fiction—focuses on the victims as well. In the rampage scene in columbinus, Harris and Klebold are turned away from the audience. “We didn’t want it to be about them,” Paparelli told the Boston Globe last fall before a 10-show run opened in Boston.

In The Erklings, Shapiro consciously decided to leave out the actual shootings.

“That’s the part we know,” says Ali, the show’s director. “The part we don’t know is what happened the year before.”

Salli Garrigan was a junior at Columbine High School when Harris and Klebold opened fire. She was in the soundproof choir room when she and her classmates saw other students running outside through the windows. She managed to make it through the auditorium as the fire alarm rang and the sound of ricocheting bullets reached her ears from another part of the school. In the main hall, glass from the doors shattered in front of her before a teacher pointed her toward another route to safety.

Garrigan, who worked in theater in New York before recently moving to Washington, D.C., says on the fence about the idea of The Erlkings. She found out about the play when she saw an audition notice.

“It looks like the playwright was really touched by the Columbine shootings and wanted to write directly about it,” Garrigan tells Newsweek. “[But] since it’s from the eye of both Eric and Dylan, I feel like the play might enhance the problem even more.”

Her ambivalence, she says, is uncommon among those with a personal connection to Columbine. “There is a lot of uproar in the Columbine community,” Garrigan says, adding that “sometimes art can be therapy.”

Even Sanders concedes that theater is “a fantastic medium for people to understand and feel the emotions around [Columbine].” “I respect what [the playwright] is doing,” she says. “I just don’t respect how he’s going about it.”

11-16-14 Erlkings 003 James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris with Reynaldo Piniella (camera) and Matthew Bretschneider in The Erlkings. Carol Rosegg

The shootings problem

In the decade and a half since Columbine, the United States has seen an increase in active shooter incidents, and news of school violence is all too frequent. Just this year, there have been shootings at Reynolds High School in Oregon, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Washington, and at several more colleges and universities as well as middle and high schools.

According to Langman, most adolescents who are en route to committing a middle- or high-school shooting leave warning signs, which he refers to as “leakage.” A prospective gunman might “leak” his intentions by making direct threats, telling a friend to stay away on a certain day, or with other hints.

“It’s a matter of the people who hear or see them knowing they’re warning signs and knowing what to do about them,” Langman tells Newsweek. Langman runs training sessions for professionals in education and law enforcement on recognizing and handling warning signs.

Ultimately, Shapiro says, that’s the goal of the play as well.

“What we would like an audience to come away with is that these are preventable,” he says. “And it’s so much more powerful because of who said it, especially as he was plotting it,” referring to Harris’s ‘Guns in School’ essay, which closes the play.

The Erlkings—named for German poem Die Erlkönige, whiich Harris once made a note to himself to memorize—eschews a linear chronology for a more fluid structure. Toward the end of the first act, after Harris and Klebold’s classmates have lobbed cafeteria food and squeezed ketchup all over them, Harris once again drifts outside of the action to recite the note he would one day leave for the police.

“Don’t blame my family. They didn’t know. It’s not their fault. They brought me up just fucking fine,” he reads, telling police not to blame the school or the stores that sold him ammunition. “Just because we went on a killing spree doesn’t mean everyone else will.”

NoYesYescolumbine, shooters, downstage, centerWebWhitelistEMEAUSHeadline Image Full Height http://www.newsweek.com/columbine-shooters-downstage-center-284747

Given that the school shooting trend has become a common occurrence, this play is even more relevant than Columbinus. A bold move focusing on the shooters inner world which is of key importance in regards to the mental heal issues that are vaguely talked about each time a shooting occurs but then never seem to get addressed since we’re too busy vilifying the shooters and brushing, oopsy!, yet another one under the carpet.

“He says he pursued the play because “we will never prevent another Columbine by distancing ourselves from those who would perpetrate such an act and by refusing, out of fear, to understand them.”

^This.

I’ve never understood the logic behind the “Never say their names, never show their picture, never talk about them, never study them, never try to understand them, never try to figure out why they did it, never see them as human beings.” crowd; they might as well be saying “I don’t want to understand them even if it would help prevent shootings and save lives.”

Imagine if we treated preventable medical conditions the way we did shootings; waiting until you had a heart attack before giving you medical attention, and then only with a defibrillator rather than examining/studying/discussing the underlying issues/causes of the problem.

Also, the argument that talking about shooters or showing their pictures or saying their names is what’s going to make somebody decide to throw away their entire life and future, assemble an arsenal of killing utensils, and murder, maim and destroy as many other people as humanly possible is beyond ridiculous, and to me, says a lot about how resistant people are to trying to understand shooters and their motives.

It’s always said that people who want to commit shootings are going to do whatever it takes, that they are motivated and determined, that no amount of gun laws can stop them, but at the same time, they’re apparently so gullible and easily influenced that their motivation to overcome all these monumental obstacles and sacrifice their lives and the lives of others is because they saw James Holmes’ mugshot on CNN and want 5 minutes of “”“fame”“”?

We treat shooters like mysterious boogeymen; we say “If only he hadn’t played [insert violent video game] and listened to [insert “dark”, “subversive” music group] this never would have happened!”, and view them as inhuman, un-relatable, alien, monsters whose motives are incomprehensible. The thing is, their motives CAN be understood, if their writings were analyzed and discussed, if people were actually invested in truly understanding why they did it, they could find out, or at least come close. But a lot of people don’t actually want to understand what motivates shooters, they’re invested in their ignorance and will fight to maintain the mysterious ‘boogeymen’ illusion, as it creates an information vacuum where any postulated BS is considered equally plausible. Notice how many people still say Eric and Dylan went around asking everyone if they believe in god before shooting them, that Cassie said “yes” and Rachel said “You know I do”, despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. These people don’t want the truth, they don’t want themselves or anyone else to actually know E+D’s real motives, they get to affirm their confirmation bias, skew how the shooting was reported, manipulate and police the grieving process, wallow in self pity, and cast themselves as targeted, oppressed and righteous victims and wring out those lies tightly for years on end to get every last drop of precious BS false victimhood to spread propaganda and attract new recruits.

When the shooters are not discussed/analyzed and we don’t try to understand their motives, it makes it so anyone can put forth some pet BS explanation, and in this information vacuum, this BS is elevated in importance. People can suggest that the shooter did it because; “prayer isn’t taught in school”, “gay people can get married”, “vaccines”, “OBAMA!!11!” or any number of BS reasons that wouldn’t stick as well as they do if the truth was actually valued. (Note: if these BS postulations don’t stick and aren’t widely adopted, the next step is to throw ones hands up and flip the monopoly board over and cry “CONSPIRUHCY!!!” [It’s invariably attributed to communists or Jewish people.])

Anyway, back to my first point; *we need to recognize that shooters don’t just “snap” one day and go on a killing rampage for no reason, *that understanding shooters and their motives can help us prevent shootings, *that analyzing and discussing shooters/motives does not mean an endorsement of mass murder or glorification of murderers and that talking about shooters does not cause people to snap. Shootings can be prevented before they happen and that’s where we should focus our energy rather than just waiting until bullets start flying and trying to minimize the damage. Perhaps most important is that we need to recognize that the person who is most likely to, and most capable of preventing a shooting is the person contemplating one.

Well spoken additional commentary from c0atimundi tagged on to mine. Truth^^. So, reblogging this again..