Hard to believe it was 10 years ago today that the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado occurred. Yuko and I were living in Vancouver's West End at the time watching the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia when President Clinton flashed on the screen for a brief moment of supreme absurdity to mourn the victims while forgetting to mention the civilian casualties of "Operation Noble Anvil":
What seemed like an obvious correlation between US military violence and an indiscriminate school shooting was lost on the faces of the pundits and politicians at the time.
There's a new book out, Columbine by Dave Cullen, which I'm eager to read. Cullen seems to make a strong case for media fabrication suggesting that the two murderers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not misunderstood misfits, but ice-cold psychopaths beyond the reach of anyone. In a video Harris made for his parents the day before the shootings he quoted Miranda from Shakespeare's Tempest: "Good wombs have borne bad sons."
I'm not so sure...I wrote "Peaceful Son" in the wake of the massacre, not about it explicitly, but about the issues it raised in my mind.
"When there's nothing to believe you lie 'till you turn blue
When no one listens, silence smothers you
When there's nothing to give you take what you can steal
When you're feeling numb nothing is what you feel"
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