RE: RAT COLUMBINE

[Lorddada9@aol.com]

My name is David Sinclair and I am a new member to the RAT Conference by way 
of Josh Furst -- if you're out there big guy, return my damn mail!

I have read all of the mail that has poured in over the last couple of days 
concerning the events in Colorado, and the bring back a lot of memories for 
me. I went to high school in Florida during the early part of the 90's, and 
my school days were filled with both the constant threat of violence and the 
reality of violence from my fellow class mates. Bloody fights were constant. 
The kid next to me in my freshman American Civics class was knifed in the leg 
during class. Another kid I remember killed two other class mates with a 
shotgun over a drug deal gone bad. Even before I was of age to go, there was 
a shooting in the cafeteria of a local high school where a kid shot and 
killed a vice principal. On top of all of that, we regularly had bomb threats 
called into our schools at least twice a year as early a sixth grade. These 
were average, public schools mind you.

So, whenever I hear about these in school shootings I cannot help but be 
puzzled by most people's apparent shock over these incidents. This is the 
reality that most kids face on a daily basis when they go to school -- or at 
least, from my experience of school, this was the reality my buddies and me 
recognized as part of our school days: that at any moment, and without 
warning, shit could go down. Of course, my experience of high school may be 
the exceptional one, but when I was going to school in the state of Florida, 
the county where I lived, which was the fastest growing county in the nation 
at the time, conducted regular studies that showed violence in their schools 
were on the rise. So I could only imagine that a region of the U.S. that had 
the fastest population growth, with people moving there from all over the 
U.S., that also had a significant increase in violent behavior in its 
schools, could at least suggest the possibility of a nation trend.

And I firmly believe that the recent wave of school shootings confirms the 
validity of that trend.

So why is this happening? There is a multiplicity of answers that, more than 
likely, are all correct. But to be quite frank, when I heard of this most 
recent shooting, I recalled the words of Malcom X who remarked on the JFK 
assassination, "... the chickens have come home to roost." We live in a 
violent, rotten society completely devoid of a unifying Culture (except for 
the potential hip-hop seems to offer). Most children, and especially the very 
spiritually sensitive ones (i.e., "artistic"), sense this on an intuitive 
level and then begin to feel alienated, and rightly so, from the institutions 
which are constantly shoved down their throats as the things that are 
supposed to give their lives meaning. On top of that, we have to what has 
already been referred to in the RAT discussions as the Millennial void, that 
were are going to reach December and its going to be "Two thousand Zero Zero 
Party over Oops Out of Time." If you ever wanted to find a formula to instill 
sociopathic behavior, anxiety, and/or apathy in a large segment of the youth 
population, you're already soaking in it.

These kids are going through a process of disillusionment-- because they can 
no longer believe in the illusions with which their elders encumber their 
souls. They are pissed beyond belief, filled with grief at the hopelessness 
of their situation, and frustrated that they have no outlet to express what 
they are feeling. It is a horrible condition in which to find one's self. 
Couple that with the reality that most children also feel the same things at 
home, for most parents don't even take the time to really care for their kids.

Don't believe me? Why not go to a punk show or a Marylin Manson concert and 
watch all of the kids cheer, or read some of the graffiti and tag behind your 
local Seven-Eleven. These kids feel a sense of emptiness. They cannot for the 
life of them figure out how to have a sense of purpose in their lives. They 
lash out the ideas and institutions that they believe are oppressing them.

I understand, and I agree with them.

But destruction can only take a person so far. What they are going through is 
an emotional and spiritual process, destruction is only the first step. These 
kids in Colorado and elsewhere, they are extreme examples of this process. 
They have been failed by those who were supposed to care for them, and what 
we saw a few days ago is the result. They believed they had no other option 
but to embrace the nihilism they saw and felt around them. They did not see 
that nihilism, like all isms, is only a beginning...

What we are all experiencing due to the events in Colorado is a huge 
questioning of our morals. America, as we know it, has been falling apart 
since we tried to establish ourselves as an economic empire after W.W.II; 
now, the process of our collapse is speeded up by the actions of such 
children who kill, the coming war in the Balkans, and all of the overtones 
culminating into what Mr. Bey has referred to as our choice between 
Millennium or Apocalypse.

Yes, what we need is a new aesthetic, but what we desperately need more than 
anything else is a new Art! Soon, we are going to be confronted with a choice 
between relatively new ways of living, and that is going to call for a 
something even more profound than just the relationship between performer and 
audience... it is going to call for an entirely new cognizance and 
methodology for what we now call art.
The growing disillusionment among the youth cannot be ignore; it signals 
upheavals on our horizons and across every sector of our lives.

What these kids don't need is the same trash about family and community fed 
to them from the same view point in different, nicer, neo-liberal 
terminology. The problem goes much deeper than that, and such a solution will 
only leave many of them feeling unsatisfied. We need to suggest to them a 
life with the potential of fulfillment and real spiritual (not religious) 
consequence. What's more, we need to offer to them the opportunity to engage 
in such a life.

Some of you have said that we are the mythmakers. Then you will understand 
when I speak about the journey of Sir. Perceval. This is their journey too, 
finding an authentic experience of meaning in a world deadened by 
institutions and formality. But we should not just give them myths, for a 
myth, although informative, is something that mediates the experience of 
life; we should, as artists, be giving these kids the real thing.

That is the undiscovered country of the new Art.