I watched an improvisation at the beginning of the Sun Ra concert in the mid 80s in New York in a small theatrical space adjacent to the Chelsea Hotel. It started with two wind players one on flute and the other on a blown folk instrument I know not the name. They established a heart beat pulse and played intervals on every other beat but sometimes stayed a whole measure. Then I realized it was when they played unisons that they stayed longer. This seemed so smart, using the pulse play only the chance intervals that come your way, but if randomly you get a pre-agreed interval, stay a while longer before resuming the story.
There is a word in Hebrew “baruch” which means “blessed is” or “holy is” and then you add the thing that is blessed/ holy subject matter in the sentence following baruch. I never thought about it growing up, just noticed it’s sort of omnipresent among sentences in the Torah or the Talmud. I went with the flow, I said the prayers, I lit the candles, baruch this, baruch that. But as people discussed different religions, I never had a sufficient explanation for Judaism, one that made sense for me. As a kid I was told our team believes there’s one God. I got behind that, as kids get behind whatever they’re told their team stands for. But nobody can prove the different expressions of Brahman or the Holy Trinity or Zeus’s powers to turn lovers into cows. It was reading Allen Ginsberg that made me realize what I had in common with the things I grew up learning and yet never noticed before. It was the baruchs all over the place. I found it funny at first, reading Howl with his holy, holy, holy and then I realized oh shit, he’s saying baruch, baruch, baruch and he’s adding sex and madness and pain. He’s saying all of us fuckers should stop and realize that.
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy!Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!