Late March-Early April 1999 (Evidence item #333)

Days ago I was reading acolumbinesite's Basement Tapes section:

Quote :

The tape stops again and when it starts, Eric Harris is alone in a moving car. The camera seems to be mounted on the car's dashboard. It's dark out and there are raindrops on the window. At one point he passes a street sign that reads "Federal". There's music playing loudly, making it hard at times to understand what Eric is saying. At one point he mentions "The Black Jack Crew" [Eric and Dylan worked at Blackjack Pizza], specifically mentioning "Jason" and "Chris".

Eric: "You guys are very cool. Sorry, dudes. I had to do what I had to do."

Eric also makes mention of "Angel", "Phil", and "Bob".

Eric: "Bob is one of the coolest guys I've ever met in my life, except for being an alcoholic." Eric says he's going to miss Bob. "It's a weird feeling knowing you're going to be dead in two and a half weeks."

Eric says he can't decide "if we should do it before or after prom". At the end of this section of the tape Harris says he wishes he could have re-visited Michigan and "old friends". He falls silent then and appears to start crying, wiping a tear from the left side of his face. He shuts the camera off.

In this tape, soon-to-be 18 year old Eric feels a sense of great loss remembering his old friends in Michigan, which perhaps was a particularly happy time for him. Today almost all of the victims in the tragedy would've been in that aging late 30, early 40 bracket in which suddenly there is a tremendous bittersweet, poignant feeling about wanting to go back in time to the "good old days". Thomas Wolfe once said: "You simply cannot go home again".
I can't help thinking to myself what incurable impulse left them with no other choice...

I wonder if Eric told Dylan that he taped himself alone too and if Dylan just didn't feel like doing the same thing because he felt he had nothing to say. It wouldn't surprise me.

munchkinphone wrote:

I wonder if Eric told Dylan that he taped himself alone too and if Dylan just didn't feel like doing the same thing because he felt he had nothing to say. It wouldn't surprise me.

I feel like between the two of them Dylan was gone long before Eric. I don’t think he had anything to say.

Screamingophelia wrote:

munchkinphone wrote:

I wonder if Eric told Dylan that he taped himself alone too and if Dylan just didn't feel like doing the same thing because he felt he had nothing to say. It wouldn't surprise me.

I feel like between the two of them Dylan was gone long  before Eric. I don’t think he had anything to say.

Well Dylan already said a lot on his private journals, sad thing is you can see all the potential these guys had: Eric's logs in his web journals about their fireworks "missions" they had are pretty well articulated and you can just sense his creativity (which could've lead him to a video-game writer/designer perhaps?). Sue Klebold mentioned that during Dylan's teenage years, his passion for learning was gone. If those potentials could've somehow overcome their emotional irritations...

munchkinphone wrote:

I wonder if Eric told Dylan that he taped himself alone too and if Dylan just didn't feel like doing the same thing because he felt he had nothing to say. It wouldn't surprise me. 

I'd like to think that Eric never mentioned the tape to Dylan, that the tape was to himself and to whomever was going to watch it.

That's the thing, they both could have had bright futures and they both had potential, but they didn't see a future for themselves. They were each as suicidal as the other. Or did they not want to let the other down? Why did they *have* to do it?

And it also surprises me how many different sides to Eric there were, through his writings, the videos, what other people thought of him, yet he's only ever labelled as the angry psychopath.

InsomniaticDreams wrote:

That's the thing, they both could have had bright futures and they both had potential, but they didn't see a future for themselves. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again here; it's not that they didn't see a future for themselves, it's that they saw that future as not worth aspiring to.

QuestionMark wrote:

InsomniaticDreams wrote:

That's the thing, they both could have had bright futures and they both had potential, but they didn't see a future for themselves. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again here; it's not that they didn't see a future for themselves, it's that they saw that future as not worth aspiring to.

I agree with you. There's a good thread on this subject.
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