Last week I made a photogravure of a still from my thesis film with the help of Randy. I’ll post some photos of the prints when I get a chance. The image has been making me think a lot about murder ballades. I’m trying to come up with a project to put my energy into until I leave for Dublin in mid July, and then for while I’m back until Prague in September.

I think a series of “murder ballade” images would be interesting- it would relate to a few themes, chiefly to music. But also to the theme of death, in this case explicitly murder. But they are often murder for love. I’m becoming more in more interested in finding a way to tie music into art, rather than have one serve the other. I’d like to do some research into murder ballades and their folk origins. Only a rough notion now, but I envision something that re-contextualizes some more modern imagery by placing it alongside symbolic imagery common to the ballades.

I’ve been thumbing through a few anthologies of english and american poems by Norton, and also am reading Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and a biography on Johnny Cash. Listening to a lot of Nick Cave lately.

Kentridge is doing an opera on Lulu, here’s a silent film by Pabst-