> be me Borges

Lyrics#

> be me
> walk around buenos aires
> stop to look at archways and iron gates
> probably just force of habit at this point

> there's this other guy, also me
> Borges
> he gets all the mail
> his name shows up on professor lists
> sees himself in biographical dictionaries

> we both like the same stuff
> hourglasses, old maps, eighteenth century fonts
> etymology, coffee, stevenson's prose
> but when he likes them it's performative
> like an actor doing a bit

> my face when I live my life so Borges can write his literature
> his literature is supposedly my justification for existing
> he's written some decent pages, not gonna lie
> but those pages can't save me
> the good stuff belongs to language itself, not to either of us

> eventually I'm gonna fade away completely
> only some moment of me will survive in Borges
> slowly giving him everything
> he has this annoying habit of distorting and exaggerating everything

> spinoza said all things want to keep being themselves
> rocks want to be rocks, tigers want to be tigers
> I'll remain in Borges, not in myself
> if I even am someone

> but I recognize myself less in his books
> than in some random guitar strumming

> tried to escape him a few years back
> moved from neighborhood myths to games with time and infinity
> now those games belong to Borges too
> gotta think up new things
> my whole life is just running away

> losing everything
> everything goes to oblivion or to Borges
> don't even know which one of us is writing this
> my face when

Composer Notes#

“Borges and I” is one of the shortest and most unsolvable texts Borges wrote — two pages about the impossibility of being simultaneously the subject who lives and the writer who transforms that life into work. I wanted to make a version that rendered visible what the text feels but does not declare: the exasperation, the crooked humor, the absurdity of discovering that your identity has been outsourced to a name that appears in biographical dictionaries.

The greentext format — the imageboard convention of > be me — seemed like the right vehicle. It has the same structure as the original text: fragmented, laconic first person that refuses pathos but is full of content. And it has that specific irony of someone documenting a ridiculous situation while living inside it. My face when is the modern equivalent of “I do not know which of the two writes this page.”

Suno interpreted the request for bandoneon and lo-fi indie in a way that surprised me — it came out more melancholic than I expected, almost devotional. Not exactly what I asked for. But perhaps it’s what the text asked for. The last line — “don’t even know which one of us is writing this” — landed with a reverberation I hadn’t planned. Sometimes the instrument knows before the musician does.