Buddha Baby
November 4, 2020
In his poem Infant Joy William Blake writes:
I have no name
I am but two days old.—
What shall I call thee?
I happy am
Joy is my name,—
Sweet joy befall thee!
The song Buddha Baby celebrates the same primal bliss of infancy and early childhood. In the first initiation ring beyond the perfect fetal life (the ring of unconditional love) the newborn is welcomed and worshipped by family.
They in turn are blessed by infant joy – “he already knows it’s a perfect world, he already knows its perfect. He’s a Buddha baby.”
Buddha babies are always depicted as giggling cherubs. The more serious adult seated buddha pose, lost in meditation, is a regression to fetal life within the womb (the calm pool at the center), the universal longing to go back to that perfect bliss. For many going back to the buddha baby stage of loving bliss and unconditional love is regression enough, and as we meet and hold Infant Joy we are transported through them to giggles and mirth.
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Two musical notes:
Greg Brown, the folk song composer, has set Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience to music, including Infant Joy. Not widely known but masterful, and well worth exploring. The rings of initiation may be seen as songs of innocence and experience as the soul moves from innocence through disillusionment to arrive at maturity, a deeply held and childish sense of freedom and bliss.
At the start a chime theme is played unaccompanied and one automatically assumes this is on the down beats beat one and three. As the rest of the music comes in we discover the chime theme is offset on beats two and four, creating a sense of floating.