Thursday, October 30, 2014

All things pass into the night

 Alan had a brief obsession with the song, Goodbye Horses. He would play it for me. He would describe its disgusting use in Silence of the Lambs and Clerks II. "Did you know the singer is a woman?" he would ask.


I never paid him much mind about this. The song is creepy and dated. Now, I wish I had. In the song, one man describes his hopes crushed, and states, "All things pass into the night." The singer disagrees. The symbolism of the horses reportedly comes from the Bhagavad Gita, which Alan would have been quite familiar with, having read it for class, a copy still on his bookshelf.

In its allegory, the person as a whole is represented by a group of people on a chariot pulled by a team of horses. Two armies represent good and evil on either side of the path as the charioteer guides the reins of the mind through life. Alan's chariot, he felt, had veered off course. His digressions had set him up for mugshot extortion websites, and there, displayed for everyone, was the death of his dignity.

He probably felt that it was long past due to leave the chariot of his body and the horses of his senses behind. I hope now that he now knows some peace away from those things -- that his dashed hopes and dreams no longer haunt him, that he is flying over us, released.

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