"Si! Sa! “Asa Nisi Masa”’s superlative Shining-via-Fellini syllables render the band’s vision of our de- and reconstruction. I mean, I don’t put much stock in Jung’s concept of anima (or animus), but then I don’t put much stock in gender. I also don’t think the Shining are using “anima” in the Jungian sense; Fellini used Jung in 8 1/2 when Guido’s cousin tells him the phrase “asa nisi masa” is magical and leads to treasure. The pig Latin-ish morphemes “-sa,” “-si,” and “-sa” encode Jung’s technical term to child-code foolery; Norwegian geek-squad the Shining use the reference (I think) not because of the psychoanalytic implications of men unable to access their feminine sides, but because the structural modification of this theoretically loaded term into meaningless, magical words encapsulates the way the band views music: importance disguised with inanity, erudition breathed through giggling lips, lucidity rearticulated as gibberish. It’s also a bridge between the past and present (Fellini has two magicians pull the phrase from an adult Guido’s mind as a way to link temporal states in his film); it’s a bridge between different spaces; it’s the way Dumbledore inevitably recalls Gandalf, but also the way Gandalf will inevitably recall Dumbledore for kids who met them the opposite way; it means that animus “boy” and anima “girl” (or any other category) might exist, but none of us exist that simply, animated only as girls or boys (or any other category)." Mark Abraham @ cokemachineglow
"Si! Sa! “Asa Nisi Masa”’s superlative Shining-via-Fellini syllables render the band’s vision of our de- and reconstruction. I mean, I don’t put much stock in Jung’s concept of anima (or animus), but then I don’t put much stock in gender. I also don’t think the Shining are using “anima” in the Jungian sense; Fellini used Jung in 8 1/2 when Guido’s cousin tells him the phrase “asa nisi masa” is magical and leads to treasure. The pig Latin-ish morphemes “-sa,” “-si,” and “-sa” encode Jung’s technical term to child-code foolery; Norwegian geek-squad the Shining use the reference (I think) not because of the psychoanalytic implications of men unable to access their feminine sides, but because the structural modification of this theoretically loaded term into meaningless, magical words encapsulates the way the band views music: importance disguised with inanity, erudition breathed through giggling lips, lucidity rearticulated as gibberish. It’s also a bridge between the past and present (Fellini has two magicians pull the phrase from an adult Guido’s mind as a way to link temporal states in his film); it’s a bridge between different spaces; it’s the way Dumbledore inevitably recalls Gandalf, but also the way Gandalf will inevitably recall Dumbledore for kids who met them the opposite way; it means that animus “boy” and anima “girl” (or any other category) might exist, but none of us exist that simply, animated only as girls or boys (or any other category)." Mark Abraham @ cokemachineglow