RE: RAT COLUMBINE

[Sharon MacMenamin <saoirse9@yahoo.com>]

David Sinclair,

Thank you.  Thank you so very, very much.  

I am sitting in West LA, RIGHT NOW as I type, with my entire block
cordoned off behind a yellow police line.  For last couple of hours,
here @ my corporate day job (which makes it possible for me to do
Equity Waiver RAT theatre TONIGHT), we've been waiting to find out why
we're under siege by the LAPD, helicopters, an ambulance, the fire
department & the ubiquitous members of the news media...turns out that
the bank robbery across the street that just went down was perpetrated
by the "down & out Westside Bank Robber", believed to be responsible
for 11 heists since the New Year...guy hijacked a yellow taxi, got as
far as the end of the block, shots were fired, he's in custody, but
nothing nor no one can seem to move on this section of Wilshire
Boulevard...

After the events of this week (& the last 24 hours in LA: this is the
second hikjacking of a taxi & the obligatory police stand-off), I
wouldn't be surprised to see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
heading 'round the corner onto Wilshire Boulevard...

But your smart observations have come the closest to making any kind of
"sense" that I've seen/heard in the wake of the events in Colorado on
Tuesday.  Not that "sense" can necessarily be made of those actions,
but you've tapped into the emptiness (for want of a better word) that
many of our species have been feeling/sensing for a while now...

A new art.  Let it begin now.  I hope to read your postings on this
listserve again, soon.  Welcome.

Sharon MacMenamin
Sacred Fools Theatre
HelLay, California

--- Lorddada9@aol.com wrote:
> 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.
> 

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