Martin Bladh’s DES: The Theatre of Death (its shorter version DES, was published by Paraphilia Studies, 2013) is a Gesamtkunstwerk based on the artist’s intimate obsession with the serial killer Dennis Nilsen (1945-2018). Over the last fifteen years Bladh has investigated the uncanny likeness in Nilsen’s romantic fantasy world to that of his own, and by using the killer as a persona – a Hyde Double – aimed to uncover new depths and unlock unknown extremes within himself.
Dennis Nilsen, in his confessions, referred to his victims as masterpieces akin to great sculptures; beauty revealed through murder, his hands transmuting living, breathing matter into deathly aesthetic perfection. The way Nilsen directed his puppet theatre was in many ways similar to the carefully controlled and arranged nudes of Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s actions, or the erotically charged mise-en-scènes Hans Bellmer staged for his doll.
This relation between criminal and artistic expression – the artist’s yearning for the outlaw, the criminal world of ‘forbidden’ desires, and the criminal’s need to express himself in an artistic, often theatrical way – has attracted Bladh for decades. The amorphous relationship between the executioner and his victim is a constantly recurring leitmotif in Bladh’s work, and in Nilsen’s Theatre of Death he finds the most sublime rendering of this discourse:
‘…an anonymous arena of necro-aesthetic devotion where the actor/director casts himself in the role of the victim – but, at the same time, also as the “potential” killer’s intended victim; a murder which was to be executed by the scenario’s originator, the killer himself.’
This new, extended version of DES:The Theatre of Death collects together Bladh’s own correspondence with the real-life killer, intimate collaborations with Shane Levene (the son of Nilsen’s fourteenth victim Graham Allen) psychogeography, creative writing, staged photographic series, performance documentation and scores.
Note: DES: The Theatre of Death should not be confused with or connected to the ITV series Des (2020).
Hardcover, 288 pages, 240x200mm
978-1-8382803-6-9
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/desthetheatreofdeath/
***
PROLOGUE: 2013 (extract)
The art of acting is a pathological search for reinvention – it takes the form of a romantic quest for the miraculous and the impossible. The mask that I wear takes me to faraway places where I never would have ventured if I hadn’t chosen to put it on. My mask allows me to inhabit a certain persona, to find mutual references in the “other” with whom I now feel a new kinship. A certain exaggeration, masquerade, even dandyism, is often useful to help get me to where I want to be.
This game is obsessive, and it sometimes comes close to psychosis; Artaud being the most prominent victim of this art while writing his book on Heliogabalus, and the mask that I wear might just be his vision of a theatre of cruelty.
I’m attracted to the tension between the perpetrator and the victim; both parts are of equal importance to me. When I put myself in a situation which I find degrading or even repugnant, I wear the mask of the victim. When I make use of authentic voices from real life victims, put them in a new context where they are forced to act as characters in a peepshow, staged and directed by me, I take on the mask of the perpetrator.
Dennis Nilsen’s aesthetically charged fantasies strike me as the most workable representations of this paradox. Impersonating a corpse – his own and that of his victim – in front of the mirror, recalls Baudelaire’s poetic sublimation, “I am the wound and the knife.” In these performances, Nilsen becomes the murder victim but it is his victim and he is the killer.
Nilsen’s shadow stalked me for years, demanding I wear his mask and make him my subject. Through this piece, which I called DES, I set out to have a mute dialogue with this stranger, make him my double and submerge myself in his world. Nilsen was to be my dark looking-glass reflection and the mirror would be the primary arena of our sadomasochistic theatre; our corpses, the universal vessels of necro-aesthetic fulfilment and devotion.
SAD SKETCHES
(photography Mikael Oretoft, extract)
***
DEAR MR: NILSEN
(Dennis Nilsen’s letters to Martin Bladh, extract)
Dear Martin,
Thank you for your interesting letter (unfortunately not dated).
The money you sent in “for stamps etc” was ‘confiscated’ and not credited to my spending account because my jailers spuriously claim that you are not a ‘real’ correspondent. In my Collins Concise Dictionary the meaning of the word “Correspondent” is precisely described thus: “a person who communicates by letter.” I suppose in the closed world of unequal power the meaning of a word is what the commanding bully says it is at any given time… and for the convenience of his prejudices. Sometimes one feels it hard to believe that the UK is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights.
As you may have guessed, I have no rapport with my managing jailers who see their active role as a punitively retributive one, with long-term prisoners, and will do everything they can to see the one’s good and positively creative efforts made while in prison, and see to it that not a whiff of ‘critical acclaim’ comes their way… through crude censorship of their work. In my time inside I’ve had an anthology of my poetry, Configuration, banned; recordings of the performance of my musical compositions… banned, my autobiographies… banned, and a lot of my regular correspondence… banned, with often gross obstruction and interference with my confidential legal correspondence.
[…]
I do not want to heap praise onto Mr Masters’ book, “KFC” [Killing for Company] because it is a book about ‘a murderer’ only, and not about a man who killed many times. He selects/edits what he wants to portray his version of me, and where MY autobiographies have not been allowed to see the light of day… a ban which BM supports in defence of the continuation of HIS version as being, somehow, authentically ‘supreme’ in its selective distortion and ignoring of much primary testimony.
Well, he’s entitled to his view, and I would never want to take that away from him, but he has been campaigning forefront of denying me my witnessed and deeply considered version of my own life… by publicly calling for a ban on my autobiographies, written after Killing for Company was published and acclaimed as the ‘defining work’ on my life.
[…]
I am fascinated by what you write about your feelings in childhood and for learning about your apparent retreat inside the controlling, non-rejective, sanctuary of your own inner ‘fantasy life’ where you could feel and create the power of accomplishment and high self-esteem not otherwise felt in the outside and riskily dangerous world of other people and their commanding priorities.
[…]
When, in the mid 1990s, the government (in the form of the Home Secretary) publicly assigned certain Lifer prisoners to a “Whole Life Tariff” (meaning that they would have to spend all of their lives in prison)… being now officially classified as ‘irredeemable monsters’ we, as a group, were openly relegated to the profile of virtual ‘non-persons,’ where all efforts were made to see that anything positive that we achieved thereafter would not potentially be known and subject to any kind of ‘critical acclaim’ which would distract from our received official image. ‘Monsters’ do not have the human faculty to create writings, music, or poetry… so, in the 1990s, an anthology of my poetry, Configuration, was banned, my autobiographies were banned, and recordings of my musical compositions were banned… as ‘not being in the public interest.’
Our names are frequently invoked by politicians and the ‘yellow press’ as ‘icons of evil’ when the frequent occasional expediency arrives in the “talking tough on criminals”… connected with one or other contemporary crime and punishment issue.
So, in my ‘little concrete box’ here in East Yorkshire, I exist, as a concept… rather than as a man… covered in a blanket of prohibitions against my normal freedom of artistic EXPRESSION.
[And yours because they set up an overpoweringly proscriptive system of regulations to prevent me from experiencing YOUR work… by their backward machinations.]
I don’t really want to get into a long detailed ‘discussion’ about Brian Masters, having covered the subject copiously in my six volumes of autobiography and will have to say that he had no understanding of the emotional/psychological ‘inners’ of drive and motives at the long-formed roots of myself, Jeffrey Dahmer, Mishima or anyone else.
“The altar of Jeffrey Dahmer” and Mishima’s “mysticism clearly born of a disturbed erotic religiosity…” and, what he concludes about me in KFC “his invulnerability to the squalor of human remains, that makes him unrecognisable,” or “Men like Nilsen elude classification, their unfathomable depravity resists conclusive analysis” are pompous literary conceits to cover his ignorance of the motor and motives… delivered pompously and ‘ironically’ in the Chapter entitled “Answers” which just, more or less, strings together other men’s theories and observations gleaned from myriad text books. BM is a good sponge of a swot… soaking up all he reads and throwing in everything but the kitchen sink.
In short he neither knows nor understands, but hides behind his hugely constructed ‘academic’ camouflage net of ignorance on Dahmer, Mishima, and me et al.
[…]
Looking at all sorts of ‘familiar strangers’ cases of life and actions, there is a commonality of overt physical and emotional “ritual” pertaining to the inner-core imaginative-but-real potency-generating (to levels of high selfesteeming satisfaction) rushing to a running ‘peak frisson’ inside the secret fantasy lives of the self-empathy needs of the activated subject.
The early emotional development of all such individuals became stunted in childhood (due, not so much to single personal traumas experienced, but a prolonged denial of emotionally expressive links in a basically unchanging social climate of unrewarding interpersonal relationships… unremittingly) which resulted in an ‘imprinting’ of self-containing emotional retreat into “Self” resulting in the non-growth of parts of the developing brain… with lack of empathy consequences. However, the artistic ‘up-side’ of this is that the lonely child needs to hone and refine the imagination in the constant creation and recreation of his inner world in which he can feel real feelings of power, status, and high accomplishment.
All human extremes of art and action springs from this common root.
***
DES: THE NILSEN CHARACTER (extract)
In the original prologue to the 2013 edition of this book, I wrote about the risk of falling prey to an alter ego, when you immerse yourself too deeply into your subject’s personality. I stated, obviously having myself in mind, that “The art of acting is a pathological search for reinvention,” by putting myself into dangerous situations where the obsession might lead to psychosis, I emerge triumphantly as a man of experience, a greater artist. As the prime example of this discourse, I used Antonin Artaud’s identification with, and transformation into, the depraved boy emperor Heliogabalus. In response to a letter from Jean Paulhan, where the latter questions the authenticity behind Artaud’s cum-biography Heliogabalus – or, the Crowned Anarchist (1934), the aggravated author/actor answers: “Whether he’s ‘true’ or not, the figure of Heliogabalus is alive, right through to his depths, I believe, whether those depths are those of the historical figure Heliogabalus or those of a figure who is myself.” Artaud, like myself, was primarily interested in typecasting his subject into his own aesthetic vision of him, and then typecast himself into that figure. He wanted to use Heliogabalus as a cruel, mythological powerhouse to boost his own personality and give extra vehemence to his Theatre of Cruelty:
I am Heliogabalus, the mad Roman emperor … The revolution will come soon. The world must be destroyed. It is corrupt and full of ugliness. It is full of mummies, I tell you. Roman decadence. Death. I wanted a theatre that would be like a shock treatment, galvanize, shock people into feeling.
Even if my correspondence with Dennis had been insightful and in many ways revealing, it considerably dampened my initial romanticism. Dennis turned out to be more terrestrial than expected, more of a lecturing schoolteacher than the romantic “Killer Artist” that I had envisioned. The consequences of this realisation would propel me into a new direction that departed from my original intention: if Dennis wasn’t me, I had to become Dennis. Like Artaud’s Heliogabalus, I wanted to typecast Dennis into a Character, which was a distorted reflection of myself: my alter ego, my Hyde Double. I tried to channel my creative outlet through my idealised version of what I wanted him to be, and by doing so I abandoned Dennis the man for Des, an artificial Nilsen Character. Didn’t Mishima once say that if you play a role convincingly enough you will end up becoming that character? If my initial idea were to use Dennis as an instrument to dissect and uncover an intimate pathological condition, the sole purpose of this new kind of method acting was to unlock unknown extremes. Dennis had gone from being a tool of inspiration to a contagion which clung to me obsessively. This roleplay ties my endeavours to the theatre, but it’s not a play, a series of choreographed mise-en-scènes, or a multifaceted piece of dramatic rhetoric, as much as it is a Theatre of the Mind: a Gesamtkunstwerk of an obsession.
***
I’LL BE THE MIRROR
(Martin Bladh in correspondence with Shane Levene, extract)
Your father Archibald Graham Allen, 28 years old, was killed by the infamous serial killer Dennis Andrew Nilsen one evening in late 1982.
Yes, my father disappeared in September of 1982 after a huge argument with my mother. The exact date is unclear as my mother did not think much of it at the time and also suffered from chronic alcoholism. But it was certainly in September of 1982 and that is also very likely the same night he was picked up by Nilsen as there was never another sighting of him. My own last image of my father is him standing on the windowsill, his arms stretched out (holding on) and screaming obscenities through the glass at my mother after she refused to let him in or lend him money to score heroin. He was bleeding from some earlier fight and hung up against the window he looked like he was being crucified. It sounds very cinematic, but that’s just how it unrolled…kinda like an excruciating last image.
How old were you at that time and what did you make of his sudden disappearance? It took a while before the truth was revealed.
At the time my father disappeared I was seven. Due to my family set-up and the unhealthy drug and alcohol fuelled relationship between my mother and father, no-one (at first) thought too much of the disappearance. And it wasn’t the first time he’d disappeared. My parents’ relationship was a very stormy and violent one, and my father being a heroin addict was always disappearing for days or weeks without trace. Also, due to my father’s drug problems I was living with my half brother and sister at my stepfather’s and so for me there was no great change in my life. In fact, I hardly remember the period at all. What I do remember is my mother and stepfather (like the entire country) being completely gripped by the story that broke in 1983 of human remains being discovered in a house in North London. Of course, no-one for a minute thought that our lives and futures would in any way be affected by the story.
My real birth would come one year later when I was awoken to life by the scream of my mother – she had been informed that my father’s skull had been discovered and identified amongst other remains found in the ‘House of Horrors’. My memories really start there… my life started there. It was the first part of the equation which adds up to who I am today.
So, this terrible news had a devastating effect upon you and your family. I think you referred to the whole incident as “surviving the Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Could you give me some of your reflections on the immediate aftermath?
The news had a devastating effect upon my mother, certainly, and her reaction to that news had a terrible effect upon me. Also, and it’s very important, it was only after the murder that my mother came completely clean and admitted I was Graham Allen’s child. It had always been rumoured, but until that point it didn’t matter either way. Now he was dead, things drastically changed. I was all that remained of my father – all my mother had left of him – and so suddenly I became an important piece in the game: a pawn which had been promoted. So, the murder/death itself didn’t affect me, but the consequences of my mother’s reaction to it did. She took the full wallop of the blast, and I got showered by the shrapnel – ten whole years of it.
To deal with the unimaginable pain of losing her lover my mother sought oblivion and became a chronic alcoholic. When not even 40% proof alcohol could soothe her she then became seriously self-destructive and suicidal. On three separate occasions she was hospitalized in intensive care and came very close to succeeding in finding the emergency exit she sought. My mother also became extremely sexually promiscuous and easy, I think searching the world for a man who no longer existed. That spilled over into my life, and so I grew up around alcoholism and physical and sexual abuse. But I don’t blame Nilsen, nor the murder, for that. I don’t blame anything but the human instinct to soothe pain – an abstract instinct which doesn’t have an excuse of its own. From what I see blame never resolves anything, it normally just leads back to Hitler (or some over-curious amoeba sitting out in the sun for too long!) So there was an aftermath from the murder, but in that sense Nilsen is also an ‘aftermath’ of something. His acts and actions were also a natural response to things in his own life.
Yes, I did once mention “surviving the Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but was referring more to surviving my childhood, although with many scars and missing parts. But I always see gain in loss, and so ultimately I lost a conventional upbringing and gained a more perverse one, though I think given the choice I would have chosen that anyway. What intelligent, creative person would ever want to be ‘conventional’?
***
I’LL BE THE MIRROR REVISITED… (extract)
The room is a black rectangle. In the middle of the room lies a mattress with a white pillow and sheets. On the floor on the right side of the mattress stand/lies a basin filled with water, a sponge, a towel and a black pillowcase. On the wall, facing the head of the mattress hangs a rectangle-shaped mirror. In the right upper corner of the room next to the mirror stands a stereo set. On top of the stereo set stand/lies a bottle of talcum powder, a box with eyeshadow, a scalpel, and a Polaroid camera.
1. Shane enters the room through the audience, he is wearing black trousers and socks and a white t-shirt. He walks over to the mirror and the stereo and puts on Track 1 (radio news report about Dennis Nilsen from 1983). He looks at his reflection in the mirror for a couple of seconds and starts to undress (everything but the socks). He picks up the scalpel which lies on top of the stereo set and cuts the name SED into his chest and watches the blood trickle. He picks up the Polaroid camera and takes a picture of his reflection in the mirror; he shakes the photograph in his hand and attaches it to the wall next to the mirror with a paperclip. He walks over to the mattress and lies down on his back.
I feel like I am an extra in the world. I walk out with my head slightly lowered, walk around to the mirror and remove my top and then my trousers and naked I begin to cut the word SED into my chest. The scalpel is blunt and it is not easy to break the skin. I am hurried to get this small performance piece over with, after I just lay down and shut my eyes and am passive until the end. I manage to cut the words into me and spit down myself to try and get more blood flow. I walk around to the mattress and in just my socks I lay down in front of the small crowd. I am at Martin’s mercy and artistic expression now: I have put my life and body in his hands. I close my eyes and strangely all feels totally calm.
2. Martin enters the room through the audience, he is wearing black trousers and a white t-shirt. He walks up to the stereo and puts on Track 2 (Martin Bladh – Dream Scenario 1). He walks over to the mattress, straddles Shane, picks up the sponge, dips it into the water and starts to wash Shane’s body from top to toe. When finished he picks up the towel and dries Shane’s skin. When Martin is finished, he picks up the Polaroid camera and takes a picture of Shane, he shakes the photograph in his hand, walks over to the mirror and attaches the picture with a paperclip to the wall next to it. Martin stares at his mirror reflection for a few seconds.
My eyes are closed. I can feel the room, the bated breath, the intense concentration at the bizarre spectacle which is taking place in front of people’s eyes. It is not bizarre in its extremity but in the knowledge of all the contradictions and oddity of the situation. I can hear the Nilsen radio broadcast and I feel like I felt when I used to lay in bed with my mother and the night radio would talk on, just voices coming out of nowhere and piped into a nightmarish reality. I am sad in those moments. From rehearsals I know the different parts of the act, know that I am safe and have life until a certain moment. I can see my mother and she doesn’t want to live.
3. Martin puts on Track 3 (Carl Stottor interview). He walks over to the mattress and starts to powder Shane’s body from top to toe with the talcum powder, he then blackens Shane’s lips and the spaces under his eyes with the eyeshadow. Martin picks up the camera and takes a picture of Shane, he shakes the photograph in his hand, walks over to the mirror and attaches the picture with a paperclip to the wall next to it. Martin stares at his mirror reflection for a few seconds.
4. Martin puts on Track 4 (Martin Bladh – Dream Scenario 2). He walks over to the mattress, kneels in front of Shane and arranges his body according to three different Sad Sketches position numbers: 8, 12 and 13; after each position, he takes a photograph with the Polaroid camera and shakes the photos in his hand. He then walks over to the mirror and attaches the pictures with paperclips to the wall next to it. Martin stares at his mirror reflection for several seconds.
Martin is on top of me for the first time. He feels hot, sexually awakened but not over me, over his theatre. I can hear and feel his breath. I’m not sure if it’s really Martin or Nilsen. When he moves me around into the sad sketch positions it is with a loving forcefulness, like he has that right and enjoys that right and no force of nature will ever prevent him from having me in the position he wants. I hear him taking photos of me and when he comes back the next time I can smell he is made up, that this is the death scene and soon all will be black.
5. Martin puts on Track 5 (Dennis Nilsen, TV interview 1993). He walks over to the mattress and puts the black pillowcase over Shane’s head (Shane stops breathing), he walks back to the mirror and starts to apply talcum powder to his face and throat, then blackens his lips and the spaces beneath his eyes with eyeshadow. Meanwhile, Shane is pissing himself over the mattress. Martin picks up the camera and takes a picture of himself in the mirror, he shakes the photograph in his hand and attaches the picture with a paperclip to the wall next to the mirror. Martin stares at his mirror reflection for several seconds.
Martin covers my head with the black hangman’s pillowcase. I open my eyes for a brief instant and can see the vague form of Martin atop of me and a light coming from behind him. I close my eyes again; it feels more comfortable, like really peaceful. I have never been so close to death in my life and I just lay there and accept it and maybe wouldn’t mind too much if it came. I enjoy life because I am within it and have no choice, but maybe there would be a peacefulness aside from gulping air that would not be too bad either, maybe the city should have my soul this way and there can be an empty seat on the Eurostar tomorrow and an empty apartment in another city in Europe, that I will never be compelled to write when it is the last thing I ever want to do. I wonder what it will feel like to have the jugular sliced open, how my mind will react… if I’ll just give in and allow Martin to subdue me as I bleed out on stage and lose consciousness.
And then Martin is close and I can hear him.
6. Martin puts on Track 6 (Scott Walker – The War is Over). He walks over to the mattress and lies down on top of Shane, embracing him until the music is over.
The music is playing and I know that almost anything can happen now. The killer lowers himself down on me and I can feel his body and then his hair. He is clutching on to me tightly and he is warm and sad. I know that if I die tonight it will be like this, as Martin is on top of me, growing stronger in my arterial blood as Scott Walker plays to a finish. I wait for the pain, the shock, the struggle, but it doesn’t come. Martin just holds me. And in that hold, in that warmth, is expressed more than we could ever say in words, an understanding of the crime from all sides, a respect and admiration for killer and victim and a true embrace with history. Martin ends DES by becoming DES, by really now becoming a part of the timeline of the crime and its aftermath. I keep my eyes closed and feel so great and safe in Martin’s hold. And for a moment the crowd disappears and the performance disappears and life disappears. We are both dead, laying lost in a universe of thoughts and sadness and exaltation, just two men now, crucified together by the violence of softer emotions, Martin the artist/the friend/the murderer clutching on with sexual perversion, regret, apology and love, expressing himself and his alter egos in an intense and memorable embrace. And as the small crowd clapped Martin just held on. And I was home, alive and living, left to suffer some more tomorrows, the most intense emotions coursing through my body in waves of melancholic glory.
***
THE THEATRE OF DEATH: MURDER (extract)
Des Nilsen: That single act was the most intensely concentrated moment of my whole life. Its power and focus propelled me far beyond myself. It was a violent reinforcement of the dream world made manifest in the world of the ‘other,’ in reality so to speak.
Sed Neslin: You’re referring to No. 1?
Des Nilsen: Yes, by then it had been tied up inside me for decades. My sole reason to exist was to carry out that very act at that moment. His life left the outer world to be revived in the inner sanctum of the dream world.
Sed Neslin: I believe he had a name?
Des Nilsen: If I had known him as an individual with a clear identity, I could not have laid a finger on him and the urge would have subsided, completely. It was the succeeding ritual with his passive body that I craved. The non-personal given life, paradoxically, in the third dimension. And with the essence removed, the ‘dream boy’ would enter the husk of flesh.
Sed Neslin: So he had to die?
Des Nilsen: The act of killing was never an end in itself. If I’d had access to some kind of knockout drug, then it’s unlikely that there would have been any deaths at all.
Sed Neslin: Are you saying that you didn’t take pleasure in the act, the actual moment of his death?
Des Nilsen: It was an unfortunate necessity. I never tried to prolong his suffering. I was being as humane as I could, and focused all my strength in a quick, concentrated kill. I do not like the sight of blood. I am repelled by the idea of suffering.
Sed Neslin: So there was no pleasure in the actual strangulation? No sexual motives?
Des Nilsen: Garrotting and drowning would leave the bodies intact. I couldn’t mar his beauty by cracking his skull or by covering him with ugly stab wounds. I had no wish to inflict any kind of damage to his body. I needed him unblemished. Hence the reason for using baby powder, to conceal the bruises on the neck. Then, immediately after death, I would have an erection in anticipation of the events to come.
Sed Neslin: You did have an erection prior to this murder.
Des Nilsen: It might have been pre-excitement while musing on the succeeding Ritual.
Sed Neslin: Most of them were dead drunk and must have been in a state of semi-unconsciousness, similar to that of the “knockout drug” you would have preferred. Why didn’t you just take advantage of them in this state of helplessness instead of killing them?
Des Nilsen: Well, they would obviously wake up if I put them in the bathtub and washed them, or when I tipped them over my shoulder and carried them around the apartment. If these elements were omitted the impact of the Ritual was diminished. This would be analogous to the frustration felt at coitus interrupted, of being all excited and then robbed by the climax of ‘coming off,’ or coming too early, without having satisfied the full range of pleasure expected. Then there was the obvious risk that they would ‘cry rape,’ and try to charge me with molestation when they woke up.
[…]
Sed Neslin: What’s all this melodramatic nonsense about “killing for company”?
Des Nilsen: Well, these aspects of the killings have been exploited and somewhat exaggerated, I can acknowledge that. But it was certainly one of the factors that led up to the first murder. Man knows not what alienation is until he has experienced the severity of absolute detachment I was feeling on the morning of 30 December 1978. I had nothing. I drank and became a murderer to begin the cycle.
Sed Neslin: But you sought out different kinds of company for different reasons, and as you just confessed, the reason why you killed No. 13 was completely different from the reason you killed No. 1? It was not just the Ritual you were addicted to; it was the act of killing itself.
Des Nilsen: I guess I became desensitised after the third or fourth one. I would never have been able to do any ‘necessity’ killings during the cycle’s first two years. But when you’ve taken as many as seven lives it gets easier as people turn to numbers. Whether these men and boys served a higher purpose as a ‘love interest’ in the dream world or if they had been brought back for the sole purpose of listening to me talking while I was drinking and watching TV didn’t matter as long as they were there. I either engaged my subject in the Ritual, or I desperately wanted to get rid of him. The reason might change, but the outcome stayed the same: they died.
Sed Neslin: Let’s get back to No. 7. I quote: “I felt sorry for him and I didn’t want him to suffer anymore.” Do you actually imply that you helped him?
Des Nilsen: I do believe some of them led horrible lives. No. 7 for certain, but I would like to add 8, 9, 11, 12, 14 and 15 to the list as well. Life is nothing precious if it’s a prolonged state of suffering. It doesn’t extenuate my actions, but in a way, these men were better off dead. They were better off than me, beyond pain, problems and sorrow, which I had to suffer daily. I did certainly care for them in my own way. I’m quite sure that some of them had never been so appreciated in their whole life, with the care and tenderness I bestowed on them. I cared for them to such a degree that I had to sacrifice their lives, and through them, ultimately, my own in an unbalanced obsession. Let’s use No. 15 as an example. A young drug addict and self-mutilator. He seemed a total symbol of failure and defeat, miserably ruined by life. What did he have to look forward to? The short life that lay ahead of him would be terrible and humiliating. All that potential, all that beauty, and all that pain that was his life. I had to stop him. It went quick, and then he was released. In this case, I still maintain that his death was an act of benevolence.
Sed Neslin: Let’s stick with No. 15. Talk about remorse.
Des Nilsen: How can I feel remorse for taking his pains into myself? I loved him more than anyone else he had ever met in his short life. The perfect image of his sleeping body will stay with me forever. Because of my intervention, for the first time, he was really feeling and looking the best he had ever done before. He was as beautiful as a renaissance sculpture.
Sed Neslin: Are you basically saying that his life made no sense and had no importance outside the prospect of being killed by you?
Des Nilsen: The dream world knows no morals. It exists beyond the confines of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ The dominating, active power of the Ritual had to yield its power and destroy the passive half who, as a human being, had no human will or worth for the Activator whose only concern was to make it into a prop, and cast it in the role as a ‘love interest.’ This desired ‘interest,’ the ideal of love, had existed for decades in my imagination. Murder was the natural development of a fantasy which finally manifested itself as real-life theatre.
STILL LIFE
(in collaboration with Karolina Urbaniak, extract)
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/
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p.s. RIP Keith Levene. And … we’re back. And (warning) very jet lagged. And the blog returns to life in its red carpet attire in order to help usher Martin Bladh’s new book about the thinking person’s serial killer Dennis Nilsen into the world. It’s a fascinating, and, of course, being an Infinity Land Press title, stunning looking book that I hope you will use the local portion of your day to window shop and ideally beyond. Thanks, folks, and big thanks to Martin for the golden opportunity. ** Dominik, Hi!!! How are you, I missed you. Trip was very successful, and I guess the reasons why will filter out as I meet the p.s.’s marks today. Love defogging my brain or at least the words that emit from it, G. ** John Newton, Hi, John. I’m so sorry to hear avoid your cousin. I hope you’ve found some relative peace of mind in the past weeks. Happy that I qualified for your dream. Oh, wow, my favorite candy? It used to be this chocolate bar called Uno that they stopped making. Now … does Pocky count? I ate a Pixie Stick recently and was amazed by how effective its taste still was. How have you been since I last saw, or, wait, read you? ** Juan, Hey, Juan! My trip was quite good, thanks, both on the film and Halloween itself fronts. I made it to 28 haunted houses/home haunts, not a record, but not bad. Your EP is out! Very awesome! I’ll head over to bandcamp and indulge heavily. My address … write an email to me, and I’ll pass it along. Everyone, Juan’s super superlative-magbnetizing musical unit lonelyisaneyesore has a new EP you can get virtually at bandcamp or buy in object form there as well. Do that, I urge you. Here. Great, can’t wait. Really good to see you! ** Bill, Hi, B! It’s the rare truly innovative candy that is still in production, it’s true. I trust you’re safely long since past your Covid bout. Yes? What’s new, pal? ** Billy, I did, thanks, Billy. I hope you had a great few weeks on your side. ** brendan, Hi, B! Oh, man, it was a work whirlwind. We got a ton accomplished, but I didn’t end up seeing any of my pals, including you. But we’re heading back to LA in late December to continue, and it should be more leisurely, and, hence, friend-flecked. Thank you for the photo-ing offer. The shoot will happen in mid-March, and I’ll keep you up, and that’d be great. ** Robert, Hi, Robert. I’ve been gone for weeks, so no big. I do have a tiny thing for certain Haribo products, as gummy goes. Not single trick-or-treater on my LA end either, and my door was right there on the street. What’s been happening with you? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Thanks for keeping us/me up on your move, and now you’re in your new pad at long fucking last, with a hella cozy looking living room to boot! Congrats! How’s it feeling? And, yes, RIP Rodney Graham. I was very sad to hear that bad news. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, Mr. E. Thanks for keeping the gang entertained whilst I was otherwise occupied. ** Damien Ark, Hi, D. I was at Knotts Scary Farm on Halloween, so we were in the same county at least. Really sorry to hear that your dad has to go through the surgery. My dad had quadruple bypass surgery at one point, and he recovered crazily quickly. Here’s hoping. News on your book? ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, buddy! Based on the various photos I caught on social media, your NYC trip looks to have been a wild success. But was it, horse’s mouth? Hoping for vid of your reading. Eyes peeled. How’s everything back home? ** Jamie, Hi, Jamie, really good to see you, pal! Thanks much for the Benning link! Groovy! Everyone, Jamie passes along a link to an interview with the great filmmaker James Benning if you’re into it. Here. What’s your latest and greatest? And not greatest too. ** Tim Hardy, Hi, Tim! Very nice to meet you. Thank you a lot for the offer. That sounds very interesting. I think it might be hard for me because I’m in preproduction for Zac Farley’s and my new film, and the workload is quite heavy right now, and I’m not sure I have any extra brain space. But write to me if you want: denniscooper72@outlook.com. I really appreciate you asking me in any case. Take care. ** Minet, Hi, Pedro. Welcome, and it’s awesome to meet you. I did indeed really like your piece in SCAB. Kudos! Thank you really a lot for your super kind words about my work. That means a lot, thank you. How can I see more of your work? I’d love to. I highly encourage you to hang out and comment as much as your interest level allows. It would be cool to get to know you. Big cheers back from chilly and blurry (jet lag) Paris! ** tomk, Hey, Tom, how’s it going over there, buddy? ** rigby, Riggers! My Samhain went pretty well, thanks no doubt to your encouragement towards it. How was yours? Is it possible to have a full-fledged Samhain in the UK, and, if so, how? Love, me. ** D.B. Coop, Hi, D.B. Okay, I’ll endeavour to out more attention on gay porn here. As soon as my brain reawakens, I’ll sort that out. There’s an escorts post tomorrow if that helps at all. Good to make your acquaintance. ** Rafe, Hey there, Rafe! What’s up? I’d like to work in a candy factory too, although I’m not sure in what position. Preproduction on the film is pretty exciting and pretty exhausting too. Lots of auditions and traveling around to find locations and trying to sort through candidates for various crew positions and stuff. Everything is very planned out, yeah, but then everything alters when you find your actors and the places you’ll shoot. I love working with the actors. We work almost exclusively with non-actors, so it’s more like shaping and modulating the performers so that they remain themselves but with a high focus or something. We’ve cast some amazing people so far, and I’m thrilled. We’ll start rehearsing with them in February. The dialogue is very crafted and particular, but, when we rehearse, we’ll slightly alter it sometimes so it sounds right coming out of the chosen performers’ mouths and faces. But once we start shooting, everything is locked down in terms of the dialogue, no improvising. Does that make sense? Thanks a ton for asking. ** Steve Erickson, Hi, Steve. Great to see you. Luckily, what with our film being about a home haunt, we had the good excuse to visit as many as possible to do “research”. I’m am pretty jet lagged, unfortunately, but hopefully not for long. We’ll keep working on the preproduction full time now, albeit via Zoom and phone calls for a while. We’ll go back to LA in late December for a few more weeks. Then we’ll do the final preproduction stuff starting in later February and then start shooting in mid-March. How have your weeks been? ** Okay, my brain cooperated enough to get me through that, or I hope so. You tell me. Please turn your attention to Martin Bladh’s tome, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 