I generally gravitate to the music first before the lyrics. But as a writer, I still marvel at well-spun verses and choruses. This month, I’m joining the music Twitter community in #SeptSongLyricChallenge

Day 11

Look, this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I myself have never been much of a prog rock fanatic. The early Rush catalog and a couple of select Pink Floyd albums is about as far as I’ll go. One of the best from A Farewell To Kings is Xanadu. For the first five minutes, there isn’t a single lyric. Just instrumental sounds that evoke both nature and another dimension. But when the Neil Peart’s words finally come in, he blows us away. I never read the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which inspired the song. But I think Peart’s lyrics bring a certain sense of poetry itself in painting a picture of the attainment of immortality.

“I had heard the whispered tales of immortality. The deepest mystery from an ancient book, I took a clue. I scaled the frozen mountain tops of eastern lands unknown. Time and man alone. Searching for the lost, Xanadu.”