written and recorded by Diane Barbarash 2022
beats produced by Wurlishmouk

The world from a child’s eye is born from a multitude of emotions and realities. When I was 4 years old, I lived in Montreal with my parents and my younger brother. Although my grandparents lived down the road, I have no memory of them ever visiting us, which later I saw as part of our dysfunctional makeup. My mother, a Jewish convert, felt rejected by my father’s parents for not being “a real Jew”, but this also affirmed her overall victim status. The tension in my home locked us into isolation. The constant battle between my parents was once eclipsed by the fire in the oven, but the downstairs lady who would bang her broom on her ceiling at all hours seemed to unite us. I remember watching all of this from outside of my body. The one thing I knew for sure was that if I was good, very good, all of this could resolve somehow into some vision of peace.

My new song Let It Go is a message to a friend struggling with addiction. Within the writing of it I was also able to address my own battle of believing I must be perfect to be loved.

Let It Go

Young souls are fragile little birds, the kind whose beauty you surrender to but cannot ever touch. 

Venice Winnifred Holly was my mother, born in Portsmouth County, England. Moving to Canada was, as I understood it, a way to escape the sadness and trauma of her childhood. Having already legally changed her name to Ann Rosslyn Munro and expertly losing the British accent (except when the subject of the Queen came up) she was succeeding in that regard. When she married my father she converted to Judaism and was given a Hebrew name, Miriam. Suffice to say Venice Winnifred Holly quickly became a distant memory.

Several years after my parents’ divorce, Ann became Sharon, a name she had previously hand-picked for her second born, my brother, before he showed his face to the world. Apparently when the nurse brought him to her, my mother became furious and rejected him on the spot. She had given birth to a girl (Sharon) and the hospital had erroneously switched babies. Her disappointment mixed with whatever drugs she was on no doubt contributed to this debacle. And so it went, my father demanding a meeting with the doctors, and then the blood tests, until it was finally confirmed that yes indeed this poor baby was legitimately her son, my brother. One week later and right before the bris, my Jewish grandmother insisted that David take his middle name as his first, but by then my mother had properly claimed him and put her foot down about that. So David was David and Sharon was filed away.

My mother was also wildly imaginative and heavily invested in her vision of a romantic happy ending that would one day be delivered. To that effect my father was deemed a huge derailment, along with the few boyfriends that followed. Until she met the married one, who lasted 7 years. Michael had convinced her that he was a well-travelled government spy and had pictures of himself in Africa and South America to prove it. He had made her promise to keep his secret, which she did, until she confessed it all to me in a hushed kitchen conversation. There was no one else in the apartment at the time, but you had to be careful. I tried to reason with her, but she believed him and probably everything else he spun, even after he stole all her cash, gold bars, and watches.

My mother was unique. She was frustratingly difficult, at times very funny, and the sky was her home. And on certain days, I swear I see her in its wash of promise.

Bright Star

written and produced by Diane Barbarash
beats by Vince Paper$

My new song, Exhale On, was written for a friend struggling with addiction. When I’m writing any song there’s always a thread of part of me running though. Maybe you’ll see a part of yourself in it too.

I grew up middle class poor, meaning there was never any money for extras. We had a house and all the basics. My clothes were usually end-of-season sale items, and food was simple. Requests were often followed by my mother reiterating that my father hid all our money in insurance policies, while my father stayed away from home as much as possible to avoid conflict. But when my parents divorced, I got things. I got horseback riding lessons, brand new clothes, and even a trip to Disneyland. I wouldn’t say all this changed how I felt on the inside, but I became keenly aware of the benefits of the situation. 

From a really young age I begged for a guitar. My plan was to be a rock star, and to that end I would scribble down cheesy David Cassidy-style pop songs and practiced my best moves to Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog. I was pretty serious. But all my begging fell on deaf ears until after The Divorce, when on my thirteenth birthday I was presented with a classical guitar! Unfortunately, this was not the rock goddess axe I had imagined; this one was small and dressed with nylon strings. My heart sank, followed by guilt for feeling disappointed. The guitar is from me, my mother said proudly, and the lessons will be paid for by your father. Well, this rare show of parental unity was way too much pressure, so with that, any protest I could have conjured up died on the spot and I just accepted my lame fate. However, to my amazement I fell in love with classical music and technique. In fact, the more I immersed myself in compositions by Albeniz, Bach, and Tchaikovsky, the more I wanted nothing more but to be proficient in those beautiful sonatas. They opened my ears, got me out of bed, and gave me focus, at least for a time. 

After three years I became somewhat unruly wild and angry,  and so the need to express myself more contemporarily with an acoustic or electric became obvious and urgent. I had just turned sixteen and the train was going fast. I moved out on my own, joined a Free School and began to write and perform my original songs at local Toronto cafes by night. 

I think gratitude is a learned thing. It’s not that I didn’t understand the efforts my parents made to support me, but to get past all the complicated issues of childhood well, that took time. Now, I look at everything as a gift.

Exhale On

written and produced by Diane Barbarash
clawhammer banjo – Diane Barbarash
violin – Cameron Wilson

Black Moon

Take Me Home

written and produced by Diane Barbarash
synth by Quentin

Lost In The Wild

NOVEMBER BLUE
written and produced by Diane Barbarash
cello by Michael Averill

Although still dark out, dawn had begun to paint glimpses of light blues and purples, and a few stars still held onto their everlasting rays. Christmas lights twinkled sweetly from the distant trees, and a light snowfall was falling steady, enough so that Berni’s big paws made tracks as she ran to and fro to catch her ball. It was a stunningly quiet winter morning in the park. And then I heard something. It was from The Inside. READ THE FULL STORY: www.dianebarbarash.bandcamp.com

November Blue Nov 19, 2022

Last New Year’s Eve I found myself engaged in one of Allison’s poetry books and in a moment of pure inspiration I reached for my guitar, and the first song fell out. It was just a chorus taken from a few lines but I knew instantly that something beyond me was about to follow. And so it was, for the following 8 months I continued to compose with Allison’s blessing, songs from her visually stunning poems.

Produced by Diane Barbarash
Vocals and guitar by Diane Barbarash
Lyrics by Allison Grayhurst
Lyrical compositions and additions by Diane Barbarash
Musical composition and arrangement by Diane Barbarash
© 2017 Diane Barbarash and Allison Grayhurst, SOCAN All Rights Reserved

engineered by Michael Nowak at Saga Recording Studios
mixed by Rob Fernandes at Monarch Studios
mastered by Brock McFarlane at CPS Mastering

Diane Barbarash

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