All Things Pass Into the Night

“Goodbye Horses,” Q Lazzarus

This track is often referred to as “The Buffalo Bill Song,” as it was featured in The Silence of the Lambs during the infamous “butterfly scene.”  Despite its association with the film, it also ranks well as a stand-alone song.  Listening to it induces a trance-like state.  The vocals beckon one to fall under the song’s siren spell.

Although Q Lazzarus is a woman, her voice is so throaty and deep that it would be easy to mistake her singing for a performance by a man.  This ambiguity serves the song well, for it widens its outlook from one that is gendered to one that is less finite in addressing its universal themes.

The lyrics of “Goodbye Horses” are extremely descriptive.  Like the best poetry, what’s not said is just as important as what is, and this recording’s real power exists in the allusions it conveys.  Longing and loss, acceptance and redemption are all thematically present, but not in the usual way.  Here, the struggle is internal rather than external.  Although there are two voices in conflict in the lyrics, the “He” and “I” are really two parts of the same person, connecting the stagnant past and its disappointments to the fluid present’s hope for the future.  With the lyric, “I must disagree, oh no sir, I must say you’re wrong | Won’t you listen to me?” the genderless present responds to the past’s omniscient claim that he has “seen it all before.”

The song is not joyous or uplifting, but it is not particularly brooding, either.  Rather, it is meditative.  The track examines the changes that occur when problems and worries cease to be constraints when viewed from another perspective.  Deeply-held beliefs can be just as helpful as they can be stifling, and searching the self for how these beliefs actually function can be both comforting and liberating.  Letting go of one’s mental and emotional chains is transformative in the song’s closing line: “Goodbye horses, I’m flying over you.”  Repeated multiple times, it is almost as if the repetition is out of disbelief and awe that this transcendent feat has finally been achieved.

Question: “Goobye Horses” is interesting because it depicts the conflict between two parts of the self, rather than between two people.  What other good songs are there that address this problem of being of two minds about an issue?