Am I the only one here completely in love with The Mind's I?
No, I love it! I feel it's much more "constant" than The Gallery, and does feel like a natural progression for the band. But as stizzle said, the album is really flat: All of thre instruments sound the same, so you really have to pay attention so that one of them really stands out.
It's ironic, but I think that the deluxe editions released by CM sound much, much worse than the originals. But I guess "deluxe" doesn't mean remastered.
Okay, in the midst of writing that I plugged "The Mind's I" into Wikipedia. I may be late on discovering this, but holy-fucking-shit the default result is
this book. Aside from having the same title, the book is all about the human mind and self. Several of the essays are from a computer science standpoint (as essay be the eminent British genius, Alan Turing, for example). A bit of a biological/machine connection, which seems to be a big theme in TMI. Awesomely, there's also an essay entitled "Fiction."
Beyond that, several essays are by Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges. If, as all of the evidence suggests, Mikael had his hands on a copy of this book, he may have read Borges. If he read Borges, there's a good chance that he also read Federico Garcia Lorca (who was heavily influenced by Borges). This supports my theory that We Are the Void, if not other albums, are partially inspired by Lorca! I will write more at a later date, but I have a body of evidence to make the case. Inductively, but what else do I have?
Really, Borges? I haven't read much of him, but will do so. Now that you mention it, the resemblance is obvious.
Which is the first author of
The Mind's I? Why, Borges of course.
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Borges and I
by Jorge Luis Borges
It is to that other one, to Borges, that things happen. I walk through Buenos Aires and I pause, one could say mechanically, to gaze at a vestibule’s arch and its inner door; of Borges I receive news in the mail and I see his name in a list of professors or some biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; the other shares these preferences, but in a vain kind of way that turns them into attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to claim that our relationship is hostile; I live, I let myself live so that Borges may write his literature, and this literature justifies me. It poses no great difficulty for me to admit that he has put together some decent passages, yet these passages cannot save me, perhaps because whatsoever is good does not belong to anyone, not even to the other, but to language and tradition. In any case, I am destined to lose all that I am, definitively, and only fleeting moments of myself will be able to live on in the other. Little by little, I continue ceding to him everything, even though I am aware of his perverse tendency to falsify and magnify.
Spinoza understood that all things strive to persevere being; the stone wishes to be eternally a stone and the tiger a tiger. I will endure in Borges, not in myself (if it is that I am someone), but I recognise myself less in his books than in those of many others, or in the well-worn strum of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him by moving on from the mythologies of the slums to games with time and infinity, but those games are now Borges’ and I will have to conceive of other things. In this way, my life is a running away and I lose everything and everything is turned over to oblivion, or to the other.
I do not know which of us is writing this piece.
Borges y Yo
por Jorge Luis Borges
Al otro, a Borges, es a quien le ocurren las cosas. Yo camino por Buenos Aires y me demoro, acaso ya mecánicamente, para mirar el arco de un zaguán y la puerta cancel; de Borges tengo noticias por el correo y veo su nombre en una terna de profesores o en un diccionario biográfico. Me gustan los relojes de arena, los mapas, la tipografía del siglo XVII, las etimologías, el sabor del café y la prosa de Stevenson; el otro comparte esas preferencias, pero de un modo vanidoso que las convierte en atributos de un actor. Sería exagerado afirmar que nuestra relación es hostil; yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir para que Borges pueda tramar su literatura y esa literatura me justifica. Nada me cuesta confesar que ha logrado ciertas páginas válidas, pero esas páginas no me pueden salvar, quizá porque lo bueno ya no es de nadie, ni siquiera del otro, sino del lenguaje o la tradición. Por lo demás, yo estoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún instante de mí podrá sobrevivir en el otro. Poco a poco voy cediéndole todo, aunque me consta su perversa costumbre de falsear y magnificar. Spinoza entendió que todas las cosas quieren perseverar en su ser; la piedra eternamente quiere ser piedra y el tigre un tigre. Yo he de quedar en Borges, no en mí (si es que alguien soy), pero me reconozco menos en sus libros que en muchos otros o que en el laborioso rasgueo de una guitarra. Hace años yo traté de librarme de él y pasé de las mitologías del arrabal a los juegos con el tiempo y con lo infinito, pero esos juegos son de Borges ahora y tendré que idear otras cosas. Así mi vida es una fuga y todo lo pierdo y todo es del olvido, o del otro.
No sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página.
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Pure Argentinian genius.
