I first encountered a blue lotus when a friend, Neil Sieling (an avid Egyptologist) gave a group of us a guided walk-through of the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum here in New York. According to Neil the Ancient Egyptians had a special feeling for the flower and portraits of goddesses and royal women inhaling the blue lotus date to the beginning of Egyptian history. Not only did it symbolize the rising and setting of the sun—and thereby the consistency of nature, it also had an aroma that was said to be mildly transporting and putting the petals into wine enhanced the feeling. The idea of a blue lotus that operated on a variety of levels intrigued me, and I wrote a highly structured piece and named it for the flower. Most of the other tracks on this CD could be called petals of that same flower, as they spin out of the basic structural ideas presented more formally in "Blue Lotus." For more information see: http://brucearnold.com User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.