Murder Great and Small, or It's a Mad, Bad World

Here’s The Young Poisoner’s handbook. Not literally. It’s the film, based on the
poisoner, Graham Young. I came across a biographical study of him when I was
still 17. He was first convicted in ’72. at the age of 14 I think. I was at
school of course, much the sane age. Same age. My head full of Bowie and girls
and future rock stardom and his full of hatred and murder and poisons and
chemistry. Then again, Bowie sings ..'And my head's full of murders', in
'Janine,' so maybe we're all not so diffenrent, you included. Colin Wilson was
interested in chemistry (and murder). So was I, if in a less hands on way. I took
chemistry at school instead of art - 2nd year, then when we had an exam, I
couldn’t see the board the questions had been written on, the lazy bastard, and
wrote what I guessed might be some answers in a kamikaze way on a strip of card I
rolled around my wrist.
Then the teacher, Mr Nichol–he’d hardly be a pupil–vanished into his private
little alcove in the back and out of sight, and I lost the nerve to even glance at
my wrist, which was wholly impractical in any case as nothing of what I might copy
would match the answers if I couldn’t see them. I’d known there was nothing to be
done well beforehand. Obviously I hadn’t thought this through and Nichol's
vanishing act stymied it. Did he have a little spyhole in there of some kind?
Some trick with mirrors? I was left to doodle in the jotter exercise bookpad to
be seen doing anything at all; if I was seen doing anything at all. (A stream of
consciousness little piece of sorts there, or as someone once said, I swallwoed a
thesaurus.)
It seemed to come naturally under the circumstances. Call it an early precursor
of this to,foolery. But don’t imagine it’s some lost piece of early inspiration;
I don’t. But there is an odd twist. Isn’t there always. And this isn’t it. I
handed the pad in – The Day My Pad Went Mad – John Cooper Clark – and forgot to
think any more about it. When I was next in his class, I’m sure there was a
coolness I failed to pick up on, but the next part was unmistakable enough when he
sat down opposite me on the other side of the big science desks they used. A
clearly ominous act, otherwise he’d be sitting at his own desk. That and
ludicrously grim expression he fostered in the almost godlike complacency of his
interpretation of the situation., as he launched in to his tirade, forgotten in
the mists of inconsequentiality now, but that 'never had he in his life had he
seen, read, experienced…' Whatever. Whatever it was it was a pretty big deal.
As always, it was taken entirely personally. What I’d done was an expression of
the most incomprehensible arrogance…etc., whatever. I only cottoned on to what
the hell he was talking about when the name David Bowie came up, and the penny
dropped as they say. We’ll be coming back to that expression, however lost in
that vague mist of mad memory. The memory of mad others. That’s right;
everybody’s mad but me. I know whereof I speak with these paternalistic pricks.
GET OUT! It was over. Bowie had come up in the verbal doodle, the stream of c,
and Bowie was the anti-Christ of the inconsequential; certainly for this pseudo-
scientific mediocrity.
I mulled around in the corridors for a bit and went along to see Bryning. I
liked him. Now I could see how I got along in his art class after all. He must
have been surprised I chose his class at all.
Maybe I’d hurt Nichol's feelings. He had once pretended to use me as his
assistant for a short experiment, calling me Professor Hogg. This brought a
laugh. I thought it was funny myself. Most of the “masters” at Logie Secondary
had a menacing demeanour of severity and underlying violence. Earlier, he once
referred in passing, to “people of our calibre.” I was impressed by that, partly
because I wasn’t sure if he was including me, and also because I wondered by what
criteria he judged us, exactly, The sneaking inkling his world might be more
circumscribed for all its self-importance and because of it, and more of my
universe, than he might assume - or ever guess. But I digress. Years later, when
I was 23 the prime narcissist came along with me to see Stephen Fry and Hugh
Laurie at The Assembly Rooms – An Evening With – that kind of thing, and one of
the sketches they did was when the suited and quite schoolmasterish Fry is mildly
ranting about “What is this, nonsense, David Bowie…” Etc. Quite surreal, I saw
it again some years ago on cable channel, Paramount Comedy. They like to play
these driven executive types, who spout ludicrous and illogical similes. Funny
stuff, for all its limitations. I’m a humorist myself. Seriousness just keeps
creeping in. As for the oddness of this, the sense of feeling like an actor in
some play you haven’t been consulted on, this brings us back to Husserl’s “Life-
worlds” as discussed in CW’s Craft of the Novel. Throw in a tad of Rupert
Sheldrake’s Morphogenetic Fields on wheels and see if we can take it for a spin.
Whoops.
But it did pull me up in sudden alertness, when the suspicion crosses ones mind
people far better known than me seem to be re-enacting aspects of ones life, if in
a different form, like the glimmerings of some racial memory, all the more surreal
for the apparent inconsequentiality of it. Call it the clash between science and
art and whatever conclusions might be drawn from it in the long run in the events
of my somewhat inconsequential little life so far, and we’re back to Shaw’s quote
as quoted by CW in the end-note to his (The) God of the Labyrinth. 'That we judge
the artist by his highest moments and the criminal by his lowest.' Artist and
criminal. There but for the grace of God… And thank God it's not me is the
unacknowledged thought. The Saint and the Psychopath – the novel Mialer never
wrote. And almost every artist, criminal, scientist, poet, and musician,
craftsman and shopkeeper, whether of the religious, scientific or New Age
persuasion has been a fundamentalist materialist of one kind or another. Every
time. Narcissists of a feather one and all. “Half in love with easeful death.”
In despair for themselves but reluctant to admit it, even to themselves.
Depressed and fearful, yet diguisung it with a specious 'lighheartedness.'
Whatever I learned at school, it came mostly from my own thoughts or what I took
to be my own thoughts, and from friends, however fucked up.
There were a few decent adults there, but the main memory is of whatever real wit
and intelligence the others possessed it was used to oppress, put down and
humiliate. Whatever they might have saw in me they experienced the urge to attack
it, whether unconsciously or no.
Nichol bided his time for his revenge, calling me out in the playground as we –
all the boys of the school – were lined up before class. His pretext was I’d been
talking. Who wasn’t? But it would’ve been pointless to object. That would only
increase his/their anger as well as the retribution. He gave me four of his best
in the playground of his trusty leather strap, and heavy and painful it was too,
but I was used to it. I heard an older kid voicing his sense of outrage and
displeasure, if quietly. That “it was ridiculous” I should receive such a
punishment at the drop of a hat. Justified to Nichol as he 'knew' the whole
story. And really only par for the course. A course in revenge and resentment.
He’d been so angry in 'his' class at the time, he probably didn’t trust his own
actions in front of the rest of them, especially the girls. God forbid he should
be seen as a bit mean. I don't know.

A good point to get back to the film. And it’s all just a movie, after all. I
just didn’t know that then, but that was then and this is now. Seeing the Fry and
Laurie sketch live and for that first time was like spotting a glitch in the movie
(The Matrix). The Truman Show. That somewhere along the line we’re being
hoodwinked in a big way. Quasi-co(s)mically, and the joke has been on us. At
least Kid Psycho in the film seems to be interested in girls as I was. His mother
seems to be mental. Positively unhinged, my dear, blaming him for the soft porn
she’s found, which seems to be her husband's. Or was 'Graham' trying to put the
blame on him? This is what happens when you write through stuff. A bit better
with painting. I was fascinated by the book on Young and read the whole thing. I
came across it in a library when I was seventeen. I recall sitting upstairs on
the bus, feeling as if I'd found my subject, or one of them. Any story, the more
darkly subversive, the better in a way can bring on a sense of purpose. And I
think I came across it before the account of Young and his macabre career in the
Crimes and Punishment partwork, also out in ’73, come to think on it. So I was at
school, meaing it was earlier. But I bought only some, and came to it later again
through coming across a pile of the mags in Dens Road Market again, in ’79 or ’80.
It may have been reissued in ’75.
There’s that tune, Nutrocker, in the background – while his mother is dying from
poisoning - based on the Tchaikovsky piece from The Nutcracker. I thought it was
fantastic when I heard it in the register class at school. We had this easygoing
temp teacher for a little while, female. Enlightened of her to play us music to
keep some of the brats docile.
He really is a psychotically warped and mediocre little fucker with his interest
in the Nazis methods for killing the Jews. All cleverness and little sanity. The
song in the film when he’s released from juvenile detention is, intentionally
ironic of course, Jethro Tull’s Living In The Past. I’ve been hearing it a lot
lately on Planet Rock. That flute-playing twerp, Ian Anderson; jumping around
like some demented pixie, all flashing eyes and Tourettes-like grimaces. But a
great tune. And Aqualung sounds quite startling.. Ill In The Head. The
soundtracks of our lives. I Kill Children. Too Drunk To Fuck. I think the band
was Athlete, but this is just a guess. I’m kidding. It’s the DK’s of course.
The Tracks Of My Tears.
A true psychopath, Thallium Boy. His family are presented as self-centred idiots.
There was a disclaimer at the beginning of the film. The authorities are both
credulous and intellectually conceited, his later co-workers, commonplace-minded
buffoons. Ring any bells? You can ring my bell any time. A Clockwork Orange.
The actor's perfect; he looks a right little ghoul with the dark shadows around
his eyes and the manic stare of repressed rage. Your friendly neighbourhood
Frankenstein as I think Young once said. Inevitably, his vanity betrays him.
Alice Cooper liked a bit of make-up ‘round the eyes. And Lou Reed and Robert
Smith. '
Trigger' from Fools And Horses plays his dad. Alright, Dave? You know it makes
sense, Rodney. This film might be darkly comic, but it’s also pretty horrific. I
suppose that’s what darkly comic means. I should know that by now. I see he was
found dead in his cell in 1990.
It was the account of German serial killer Kurten that captured my attention in
the Crimes and Punishment magazines. I’m so tired of America. Rufus Wainwright.
And Jello Biafra.