Painting Fakes

This week the Australian public has had to swallow the news that a violent protest at the Manus Island detention centre resulted in the death of one detainee and serious injury to a number of others.  Depending on who you believe, the death and injuries were the fault of the asylum seekers themselves (who were rioting in frustration over their conditions), of heavy handed response by security guards at the centre, or of local police or residents breaking into the camp and assaulting the protesting detainees.  The various accounts of the event are irreconcilable.  At this point, given that neither staff of the centre nor detainees are allowed to talk to the media and we can't trust anything the government says on the subject, we have no way of knowing what happened. One thing is agreed by all those telling the story.  The detainees were protesting, with some violence, about conditions in the camp.  They had, in fact, been protesting for weeks before their pr...

After reading lots of stuff about Pink Floyd over the holidays, I've spent the last couple of weeks reading about their founder and muse Syd Barrett.  His death in 2006 released a new wave of writing and re-evaluation of his life and legacy.  I've just read two quite detailed and thoroughly researched examples - Julian Palacios' Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd: Dark Globe and Rob Chapman's A Very Irregular Head: The Life of Syd Barrett.   Pink Floyd had a rapid rise to fame.  In early 1966 they were playing R&B covers at university socials.  By the end of 1967 they had a top 10 hit and successful first album, were playing concerts in USA and Europe and were at the forefront of the new wave of psychedelic music that was sweeping the Western world.  Most of this success was down to Barrett.  He played lead guitar, operated as the main singer and wrote most of the songs.  The creative vision that made them so successful was almost totally his...