I enjoy this song, and frequently I cannot get the refrain out of my head. The problem is that when I look at the lyrics that are readily available, I find all sorts of problems that other listeners have also noticed. I copied and posted with the lyrics comments others have made, especially singling out the “heat is hot” clause, a marvelous tautology! Another factor regarding the lyrics is the comment that reveals the widespread popularity of the song on the one hand and apparently what passes as a witty rejoinder on the other: “Why didn’t he just name the horse?” There is a placard making the rounds on the internet along with a number of other placards and postings that asks just that, as if everyone would know or recognize the reference.
In lieu of the criticism of the lyrics qua lyrics, and my own sense that without the rather wonderful music there would be no lasting value to the lyrics as poetry, I thought it might be interesting to explore the lyrics to see from the inside, so to speak, what they revealed. Thus what follows is primarily a stanza by stanza commentary of sorts, starting with the first two, which seem to belong together. I would also like to rule out the consideration that the horse in question is heroin. While allegory is one of the legitimate levels of analysis or interpretation, I would not begin with that mode and would rather begin with the literal level and see what emerges from that perspective.
1 & 2
On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound
I will refer to the “I” in the verse as the narrator, and, of course, the first thing revealed is that we have a traditional metaphor: the verses are going to deal with “the journey,” though we have no indication as of yet as to where or why; all we know is that the narrator in “the first part of the journey…was looking at all the life,” which consisted of “plants, birds, rocks” and the non-specific “things,” as if it were too difficult to find other things to name besides the topography of amorphous “sand,” as well as “hills,” and then the oddly included “rings,” which appear to have been selected primarily because it rhymes with “things.”
If this were a carefully constructed verse, which it doesn’t seem to be, the rings would be made more specific immediately: High school class rings? Wedding rings? Rings from a Crackerjack box? Engagement rings? The two things to notice thus far are that the narrator is speaking in the past tense—journey presumably completed; therefore, what might it mean? Does the narrator know or is he retelling in order to discover the meaning? And second, the details are remarkably subjective; if the narrator knows the specifics about the plants—daffodils, cactus, saguaro, roses, etc. ?—he isn’t telling; he is, so to speak, keeping it to himself [“he” seems more appropriate for the narrator than “she,” given that we know who wrote the lyrics—Dewey Bunnell; the narrative also feels masculine, not that a man couldn’t create a believable woman, or a woman a believable man.]
When something specific does enter into the telling, it is stated as though the details of the first stanza are almost irrelevant: “The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz / and…”. Before there were “things”; now he uses the very specific verb “met,” almost as if there were a metaphysical dimension to this encounter with the fly as in Buber’s “real life is meeting.” Here, however, the buzz, which is somewhat ambiguous, as in flies buzz when they fly, or buzz is a reaction you get from drinking a beer or taking a drug. This fly comes “with a buzz” which is immediately followed by “And,” so that we don’t linger on the fly but move on to the second thing he met, “the sky with no clouds.” Fly/sky are not only joined by the coordinate conjunction but also by the internal rhyme. Since I was an English teacher my mind holds a number of poetic quotes, images and references, such as Emily Dickinson’s short poem, “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” Clouds are rather wonderful but here there are no clouds in the sky, only the fly with its buzz. It is almost as if the narrator is reducing this world to its lowest common denominator in each case. There are no clouds in the sky, the “heat was hot,” yes, “and the ground was dry,” yes, that more or less follows from the hot heat, “but,” another coordinate conjunction, “But the air was full of sound.” Again, the narrator doesn’t tell us the nature of the sound—a rhyme with ground links the two though the conjunction suggests a contrast, as though the dryness of the ground stood over against the fullness of the sound in the air. Why? We don’t know because the narrator doesn’t tell us. We have moved from the “looking at” of the first stanza to the “meeting of” in the second. Since virtually everything in the verse at this point is subjective, it looks to me as though the verse itself is a celebration of the subjectivity inherent in our culture. There is no objective right or wrong; reality is whatever you choose it to be. The wonderful refrain clinches that interpretation:
3 & 4
I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...
After two days in the desert sun
My skin began to turn red
And after three days in the desert fun
I was looking at a river bed
And the story it told of a river that flowed
Made me sad to think it was dead
Adam, the first human being, in the garden was given the task of naming the animals, thus cooperating with God in the process of creation. Presumably naming and essence go together so that Adam calls them what they are. Here, however, the point is just the opposite and in a purely subjective world the “horse” has already, in a sense, been named. It is “horse!” What the placard people appear to have missed is the nature of the tense: “I’ve been through the desert,” the wasteland, “on a horse with no name.” The experience is over; “when I was there riding him, he had no name, so I cannot honestly say now that he had a name; nor can I now give him a name. That time is over and done. The horse had no name, dammit!” The closest we get to objective reality in the verse is the fly, the empty sky, the hot heat, the dry ground and the horse.
In the subjective world of our inner self [another tautology] what is important is the way we feel about things: “It felt good to be out of the rain”; it was raining? Who knew? Not important; he knew. Besides, “In the desert you can’t remember your name”; in a subjective world, you don’t have to remember your name, for you have feelings that let you know you exist. No one else exists in the desert; in this subjective world Others are simply a source of pain. Others can hurt you by betraying you, by not returning your love, etc. La la la la la la! It’s as if the repetitious “la” is a way of stifling meaning, something a child or an immature adult might do; “I don’t want to hear your response! La la la la la! Or not.
However, no pain in the desert is not quite true, for after two days, his skin began to turn red, which must have hurt, though he chooses not to reveal that. Instead he tells that us “after three days in the desert fun”; his experience has been fun? This stanza rhymes throughout: sun/fun; told/flowed [assonance]; red/bed/dead. If the journey he had been on were a drug trip, it might have been fun, but the verses don’t say that nor even really suggest it. Instead we get another encounter that produces another emotional response: “And after three days in the desert fun/I was looking at a river bed/And the story it told of a river that flowed/Made me sad to think it was dead.” Other people are sources of pain, he was glad there were no people in the desert, but a dry river bed made him sad to think it was dead. If your subjective world is the only really real reality, so to speak, you can value whatever you choose and no one can say you are wrong, if everyone, like you, values only his or her subjective world. To say you are wrong means you have to appeal to a standard outside yourself. Where then did his journey next take him? Back to the foundational assertion that begins with a reminder: “You see” and then the delightful refrain:
You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...
From the reminder of where he’s been and what it means, more or less, we are told of a rather magical transformation:
After nine days I let the horse run free
'Cause the desert had turned to sea
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
From the three day encounter with the dry riverbed, the horse was set free because everyone knows you can’t ride a horse under the sea. Reality is frustrating that way; we always bump up against something outside ourselves that is real and that makes our responses change. If the horse had had a name, the narrator might have developed a sentimental attachment to him after nine days and thus had been sad at having to set him free. But such is not the case here. The horse had no name. The horse was present, the narrator spent nine days with him; we might conclude that the horse was more important, ontologically speaking, than the fly. The horse was useful; the fly and the empty sky, not so much. Well on our way to 2022, the modern world, Mr Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby would well have understood the narrator’s evaluation of the horse as useful but nothing to grow attached to emotionally:
‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’
[Charles Dickens, Hard Times]
The teacher, Thomas Gradgrind, has much to learn in this story, but we are well on our way to the subjectivism of the modern world found in our story, our journey, for there, our desert has changed into an ocean where, as I said, it would be impossible to ride a horse, named or not! Or has it, for the first thing we discover about the ocean is that it contained the same things as the desert: “There were plants and birds and rocks and things / There was sand and hills and rings.” This time we aren’t “looking at” them; they are just there. Either this identification is a profound metaphysical insight worthy of Andrew Marvell, or it is simply a reductio revealing that the narrator’s imagination is, for the moment, stymied. Or perhaps it is something else entirely that I simply fail to grasp, for I find that what comes next is the most arresting image in the entire set of verses; and at least worth noticing, perhaps. My critical faculty seems to have atrophied for the moment, and I can’t make up my mind about the image:
The ocean is a desert with its life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love
The first transformation is that the sea of the preceding stanza has become an ocean, but, second transformation, “the ocean is a desert”; b = a; the first ambiguity is that “its” life is underground. The “its” should refer to ocean, which makes sense on a literal level; the life of an ocean is under the surface; the “its” is ambiguous because it can also refer to desert, and much of desert life is also underground: snakes, lizards, rodents, etc. The first arresting ambiguity or the second ambiguity is the phrase, “And a perfect disguise above.” If we are following the grammar and the logic of ordinary syntax, the ocean would be the place or reality that contains “a perfect disguise above”; or if not the ocean then the desert must contain “a perfect disguise above.” Both the ocean and the desert are by definition wastelands; by any reasonable standard the “perfect disguise” then must be the city, any city, all cities. With the third line we get down, so to speak, to the narrator’s real, hidden concern in his verses: the human heart and its failure to love, for the human heart is made of “ground,” or dust or clay if we refer back to Genesis or refer simply to human experience. The music covers the ambiguities, rushes us past them, before we can think too much about them and returns us to the marvelous refrain which again begins with “You see,” as if that made everything here clear and understandable, especially given the final two lines:
You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...
If you have no name you have no real identity in an objective reality, though your body may be present there; the horse has no name and thus no real identity here, except for its usefulness perhaps; the narrator can’t remember his name and thus, finally, rather fades away into his subjective reality, void of other people, while we are left with some delightful music, the metaphysical image of cities as “the perfect disguise” for the unloving human heart and the haunting refrain of riding into the desert on a horse with no name, as well, of course, as—La la la la la la. For the moment that may suffice.
