The Death of Marat

Jenny loved "The Death of Marat". We had both seen the image in Moira Roth's 20th Century Art History class at Mills College. Jenny invested a huge amount of time pushing me around the Louvre, trying to locate the painting, a fruitless journey, as it's hanging in Brussels. I think she liked the painting because Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison recreated the image in "The Doors" movie.

It turns out others were deeply affected by the painting as well. It shows up in an R.E.M. song "We Walk." But the painting makes me think about "Sheep Go to Heaven," the great CAKE song, (a favorite band of Jenny's), quoting Samuel Beckett:
And the gravedigger puts on his forceps.

It's a later lyric in the song that captures my mood as Jenny's would-have-been-birthday approaches.

I don't wanna go to sunset strip
I don't wanna feel the emptiness