(lyrics ©1979/83/90 Gary Whitman; performed and arranged by CITADEL®)

I'm sitting here
Without a care for life
Alone
Lost
In Despair
I need the golden leaves of home

Please lead me there
To find the peace of mind
The flowing Nimrodel
(The glowing Citadel)
I feel like half my life's
been spent in hell!
(I will not spend my life
inside a cell!)

How do you fair, Lothlorien?
I shall be there
when this fire swallows the things I love
No more nightmares, Lothlorien
Will I know where
to look for you amongst the untrue?

At last on my way,
The Dark Forces cover up the day
I've heard them say,
"Sauron (Zalar) has brought decay to you."
This can't be true

How do you fair, Lothlorien?
I shall be there
unless this fire swallows the things I love
No more nightdares, Lothlorien
Will I know where
to sail for you amidst the deep blue?

Time is on my side
Escape tonight at high tide
Brave the icesea ride
Beware the reef spikes
the fog will hide!

[reprinted with permission]

Comments
Artist Comment: "Original songs are born through many unique situations of inspiration. After composing hundreds of songs, those most memorable to me are songs I hear in a dream while sleeping. Shortly after obsessively finishing The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and deeply imbibing in RUSH albums, I awoke one night to the sound of a choir singing the melody of the chorus to Lothlorien in my dream. I turned on the lamp, grabbed the notepad and mini-recorder that is always by my bed, and hummed the basic idea onto the tape. I could hear the phonetic of the word Lothlorien matching the harmonic of the chordal structure, so I wrote down some gibberish and included that Tolkien pronoun before going back to sleep. In the weeks following, the song nearly completed itself in my 4-track studio. This song proved to be one of the band's most requested by our listeners, nearly always paired up with Dungeons of War. With the countless movements, challenging interludes, effects and fun tempo changes, it was also a favorite among the various musicians who played with the band at one time or another. For this reason, there were at least five different interpretations of the song released over the years, each with a different drummer. Eventually, lyric revisions were made to fit the song into the Citadel of Cynosure story arc, such as; Sauron was replaced with Zalar (the dark lord in our Cynosure story); and the title was changed to Escaping Nepthon, for copyright purposes so as not infringe upon J.R.R.'s authorship; 'the flowing Nimrodel' was changed to 'the glowing Citadel' - still the word Lothlorien had to be retained because I could find no other phonetic match with as good a harmonic parallel to the chorus chords. Many Citadel listeners have asked about the Tolkien reference in our storyline and after this explanation, I add that I believe Tolkien references can be as universal as other pronouns one finds in sources outside the pronoun's native origin. Common examples of this may be the use of the proprietary title 'Star Wars' as a term describing an unrelated national defense system, the constant use of 'beam me up Scotty' throughout various media, or the countless references to Earthly film, music and literature that Capt. John Crichton uses in Farscape. I firmly believe my own Tolkien experiences are typical of the influence this brilliant writer had on our society as a whole. I am deeply indebted to J.R.R. for birthing in me such a wonderfully complex fantasy-sci-fi passion - the whole of my being is daily affected by influences such as his. It is one of my basic life goals to spread this type of inspiration to others and Lothlorien is a place that I would love to journey to one day with my daughter. I must admit that I will always believe Middle Earth is real; somewhere/everywhere, inside/outside of those of us who defend fantasy and quantum physics equally seriously in the same sentence! Citadel is most honored when our songs inspire others to hunt out and discover these treasures as we did, and if you haven't read The Lord of the Rings, stop whatever you're doing for the next week and do it NOW! "Resistance is futile" if you desire to "Live long & prosper!"" [G. Whitman]

Reissues
The Citadel of Cynosure & Other Tales (CD 1991)
Vintage Vinyls (CD 2001)