Posts

Fake Countries, Abstract Nations and Putin's acting with "Imputiny"

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warning:  strong language and radical ideas.  Free speech, in other words. Today's events drove me to write a rare blog post.  This is a protest against the war that started today, but it's also a protest against all wars, and a protest against the system which creates the conditions for war, and ultimately, against those who have told us for decades that this is the way it is, and this is the way it will always be.  I won't let today pass without saying NO to this war.  Stop it.  Stop it right now. Vladimir Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine is a horrifying act of mass murder.  40 soldiers died in the first morning alone.  If any other man went out in the morning and killed 40 people, in any other place, time or context, it would be seen as an outrageous and horrifying crime.  This is definitely that.  And yet President Biden said "we will hold Russia accountable."  Why would we hold Russia accountable?  It is Putin who should be held accountable.  Thi
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The Species That Knew Too Much - part 1

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Hello.  " The Species That Knew Too Much " is my 2019 concept album addressing various topics, the main one being that our species is in danger of extinction because of climate change and a confluence of other existential threats. Elites and political leaders are "fiddling while Rome burns", meaning they are neglecting their responsibilities to address this global emergency. One of the underlying artistic premises for the album is to explore worst-case scenarios, e.g., asking questions like, "what if we can't get it together in time, and what if we do actually go extinct?"  Another general idea is that all the old conflicts - around nationalism, religion, race, gender, identity etc - will obviously be rendered irrelevant if we go extinct as a species.  At that point it won't matter how well you control migration, how high is your wall, how big is your button, or what colour flag you're waving. Sometime in 2018 I became aware of  Extinction
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New album from David Barrows in 2019

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Hi, it's been a long time since I posted on my personal blog.  But now with the impending release of my new album, it's time to start writing again. The coming weeks will see a series of blog posts related to the new album.  Like I did for my last album, I'll make one post which acts as a kind of "table of contents" and an overview of the new record, then I'll create an individual post about each song. This is simply an introduction and a kind of test to ensure this blog is still functioning.  More soon. dB
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On Gun Violence in America - #guncontrol NOW

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Hi.  It's been awhile (a couple years in fact) since I last posted to this blog.  The latest mass shooting in the U.S. made me want to speak out. If you look at the U.S. defense budget for 2017 , it shows a figure of over $500 billion.  Do you feel safe?  How does all that money protect American citizens, when they can be mowed down by a lone gunman at a country music gig?  Maybe it's not really the citizens that money is meant to protect.  Maybe it's the system. It's quick and easy to find articles such as this and this , following such an event, about how Democrats' efforts to enact common sense gun control laws are thwarted by the NRA and the Republicans who are beholden to them. But that is symptomatic of a more general problem - things are the way they are, we're told, and this is the way it's always going to be.  And we, the average citizens, can't do much about it, because after all, we're just average citizens.  We're busy.  We'
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The Dead Man's Cake blogs - index

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Hi.  My name is David Barrows, an American musician and computer geek, living in London. When I was six years old, my mother committed suicide.  Many years later I made a music CD where I try to come to terms with this tragic event, and the issue of suicide in general, which I entitled Dead Man's Cake.  I also later blogged about it on this blog site, in a series of posts I call the "Dead Man's Cake blogs." This page is an index to the entire series: The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #1 . The "Dead Man's Cake" Blogs, issue #2 . The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #3 . The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #4 . The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #5 . The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #6 . The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #7 . The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #8 . Incidentally I was moved today to create this page and
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The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #8

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It's time to wrap up this blog series.  My CD Dead Man's Cake was released in early 2012, and it's now nearly 2 years later.  It may seem like I haven't done much with the record but I'm still working on a live act, a kind of "one man band with a laptop" thing where I can render the tunes properly in a live environment. I think it's a good record and I'd be grateful if you'd buy it; either the physical CD, which is a lovely object, or find it on iTunes, Spotify, etc.  It's essentially a creative work written to deal with a traumatic event, an attempt to create beauty from pain, as I've discussed previously. Part of the proceeds go to mental health charities including the UK charity Sane . Please see the previous related posts at the home page of this blog . This post is about Tracks 5 - 11 of Dead Man's Cake. "Don't Dwell On It David", track 5, refers to something my Dad used to say, after my Mom committed s
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The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #7

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"Dead Man's Cake" is the title track (track 4) from my 2012 CD "Dead Man's Cake" .  It describes the tragic event of my mother Judy's suicide, but unlike track 3, " Judy's Mind ", the song Dead Man's Cake presents a different sort of perspective. The basic facts are that my mother, Judith Friedman Barrows, who, like my father, wrote for Hollywood television shows in the 1960s, on the night of August 19th, 1970, drove to Mt. Sinai Cemetery in North Hollywood where her father was buried, and committed suicide by taking an overdose of pills. "Dead Man's Cake" is a metaphor for the pills, but it's also a metaphor for suicide generally.  I wrote the piece as a cautionary tale against suicide.  The chorus of the song says, "Don't you eat that Dead Man's Cake.  If you're thinking about taking your life, don't do it." (Incidentally, if you are thinking about it, I say, don't do it.  Instead
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