Interests, obsessions

martin

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Like Corpsey, I'm drawn to books about serial killers and all sorts of gruesomeness. Tends to freak people out when you bring it up in casual chat, or else they accuse you of deliberately trying to be edgy, so it's more of a private interest. To this day, I can't hear O Superman by Laurie Anderson without visualising Denis Nilsen in his bedsit, er...doing stuff. Speaking of which, now he's snuffed it, wonder if we'll ever get to hear his synth-wave recordings? Would be kinda funny if someone paid top dollar for them and they turned out to be John Shuttleworth-style Bontempi novelty songs.

Also enjoyed reading about the Manson Family, Gary Gilmore, Peter Sutcliffe, Graham Young, etc. Proper nutters, but also quite bland and unremarkable people in many ways. The Manson and Gilmore cases were accompanied by OTT media circuses, so also present interesting snapshots of their respective times.

But then I was well into the London Dungeon as a kid, loved all those waxworks of plague boil-addled peasants being stretched on the rack, rats eating babies' eyes, etc. Good old-fashioned fun!
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Have you read Killing for Company? The bit I always remember is when Nielsen would sit watching TV with a corpse, making sardonic remarks about the programs.
 

martin

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Have you read Killing for Company? The bit I always remember is when Nielsen would sit watching TV with a corpse, making sardonic remarks about the programs.

Yep - didn't he used to make them tea and play them music too? Sure there's scope for a dark, funny monologue play.
 
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martin

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It's weird some of the trivial details that stick with you. I read 'Sobibor' when I was at school (think it was published in the '70s, though google searches throw up several books with that title, and I can't remember the author's name at all - it was written by an ex-inmate). Remember it being quite explicit in terms of horror and violence, but the only thing I really recall is that the Kommandant was nicknamed 'The Doll' and used to spend most of his time organising and obsessing over guard vs. prisoner football matches.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yep - didn't he used to make them tea and play them music too? Sure there's scope for a dark, funny monologue play.

Yeah there is definitely some comic potential in it. Something quintessentially English about it all, too - so humdrum and domestic. I remember there being quite a lot of stuff about him building a fire in the back garden to burn the corpses on.

Interestingly, Nielsen and Dahmer (whose crimes were similar in many ways) both peculiarly sympathetic figures as far as serial killers go. They both seemed somehow tragic, utterly isolated in their psychic extremity. Cursed.

I would like to read Masters book on Dahmer, were it not for my aforementioned desire not to muddy my mind further with all this stuff.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Something I picked up from Martin Amis's 'Experience' (his cousin was killed by Fred/Rosemary West) - Fred West used to eat onions like most people eat apples. He would hold an onion and take chomps out of it.
 

luka

Well-known member
starting to feel so much better about corpsey refusing to ever meet me for a in real life pint.
 

droid

Well-known member
I think I mentioned it on the books thread but 'Happy like murderers' is by far the bleakest and most terrifying serial killer book Ive read.

Tim Cahill's book on Gacy is chilling as well.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yeah, can't face that one.

I was once on a comedown at uni and read an online account of the West murders and it properly fucked me up. Couldn't sleep for ages.

As mentioned upthread, the other night I couldn't sleep cos I watched the Death of Stalin and then read up on Beria et al. This is the counterintuitive thing about my obsession - I'm highly sensitive to descriptions of people's suffering, which of course one finds all over this territory, like limbs in Ed Gein's settee. It's a fascinated horror. Possibly something like a mouse's fascination with cats.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
My other cod psychology explanation is that I was bullied briefly and (only slightly) violently when I was an infant by a kid who I suppose must have been somewhere on the psychopathy spectrum. I guess the mouse/cat relationship, again.

Jon Ronson supplies a similar explanation for his own facination - his overactive amyglada Vs the ice cold guiltlessness of the psychopath.

I do find it interesting how many kids are fascinated by gore. I suppose it's thrilling, because it's shocking.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Btw I genuinely didn't want this to turn into a discussion about serial killers, unless you're all obsessed with them too :crylarf:

Please feel free to talk about your wholesome obsession with bird watching or growing the perfect tomatoes.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
A Ballard quote I always (imperfectly) remember

'An artist has to have the courage to follow their own obsessions'
 

luka

Well-known member
ive always felt that i would have been successful if only id had obsessions.
i dont really fixate on things like that. as for my interests this forum is
a repository of them. about 15 years worth.
 

martin

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On a more cheery note, I'm also obsessed with 70s IRA fashion, Bullwackies fonts and artwork and the spare ribs at Cafe Klos in Amsterdam.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
ive always felt that i would have been successful if only id had obsessions.
i dont really fixate on things like that. as for my interests this forum is
a repository of them. about 15 years worth.

You've definitely got interests. Like conspiracy theories, Ezra Pound, mysticism, etc.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
artists are rather like children or teenagers in a state of arrested development, because they never give up their obsessions - most people compromise and calm down and resign themselves to having hobbies

i feel similar to luka in that i've never had the driving obsession needed to channel creative energies - although saying that I know luka is a poet so he must be being humble about his deeply strange and wayward psyche
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I wonder if a thesis can be cobbled together about this in terms of when artists are too indulged and become flatly onanistic in their obsessiveness

Thinking here of Lars Von Trier. I've never seen a movie by him but I gather that he's become more and more self indulgent over the years and has consequently become nothing more than a highbrow troll.
 
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