Billy Barker
(also available as an Ebook)
by Greydon Moore
“I’m blown away by the vision of the author” -Bob Hunter, Vancouver Sun
People tell me their jaws drop in astonishment when they first read “Billy Barker”. The Vancouver Sun dedicated a full 1/3 of an editorial page to it on first publication in 1967.
Some readers think of “Billy Barker” as a novel. Some as a play. Some students of Simon Fraser University planned it as a movie until government slashed funding. In 1996 a ‘well thumbed’ original copy of “Billy Barker” was listed on a San Francisco book seller’s internet site for $49.00 US, and sold at once. This is the first re-printing of this classic counterculture Canadian story.
I have presented my writing with stage appearances in front of throngs of 50,000 and more at be-ins and rock festivals from 1968 to 1971. My creative writing (poetry) recordings with music collaboration were played at times daily on air on top FM stations on the west and east coasts of North America. Onstage as filler between acts at the John Lennon Peace Festival at Varsity Stadium in downtown Toronto in 1969,l stepped out alone on stage to bedlam of an overflowing throng. Moments after my brief poetic passage, not another voice could be heard. At the height of his fame, Marshal McLuhan invited me to ‘conduct a few of his seminars for him’ at Coach House at the University of Toronto. I declined that to finish an elaborate effort, involving work from many west coast artists collaged around a long poem called ‘The Proton People’ which went up, the moment finished, in a four wall walk around in Vancouver’s art gallery.
In the early 90s my user-friendly anti-virus ‘Virus Alert” (Look Software), written with my twin brother, achieved Editor’s Choice in PC Magazine (European edition). In the later 1990s I created the largest privately-owned and administered online astronomy site, analyzing and interpreting astronomy objects and galaxies, featuring images publicly available from major telescopes. In unheard of traffic for non-government astronomy, Cosmicastronomy.com is averaging more than two million files viewed per year. (Not hits, or unique visitors, the stats are of those who actually read). Always at work on one or another project and venue, I have never taken time off nor ever taken a holiday away from creative pursuits.
The Barker story was a hiccup captured in time in the latter 60s back when times were changing rapidly and many were confused about their fundamental purposes. The same flux is underway again, however, this time planetary survival is the keynote.
The story of Billy Barker will help lost individuals realize how easy it is to wallow in the old oceans of the Piscean Age based on lesser motives of ambition and greed, fueled by dementing carnal purposes. Reading between the lines exposes an eon’s cross-section of strong negatives illuminated by strong positives. What does this mean? open the book and read any paragraph. See for yourself. Enjoy!