Gone....what this song means to me, transcribed from another website I contributed this to.

What you thought was freedom was just greed..." I can't think of a better lyric to sum up what I was feeling when I first really heard "Gone" than this.

I got into U2 during the the second half of my fall semester of my first year of college. I first got interested in them after seeing the Dallas Popmart in May, but it took until October for the me to make a personal connection to any of their songs. Like the song "Gone," that was when I discovered just how my desire for freedom and the way I was pursuing it was affecting me and others around me.

Being raised in a rural Southern Baptist town, I was a very "good" teenager, but also a very frustrated teenager that vowed to go against everything she was raised with just as soon as she left the house. "you're taking steps that make you feel dizzy...then you learn to like the way it feels" That I did...I took steps that made me VERY dizzy my first three months of freedom...drugs, drinking, sex, renouncing my beliefs...everything you could think of...my mainstays were concerts, parties and my new religion...Rock n' roll...which is why its almost scary that a rock album, looking back on things, literally turned my life around. It reminded me that I did "care" about things like faith, that I "was" hurting more than myself with my attitude and actions..and basically got me thinking about how living like its "The last Night on Earth" was NOT the way to go.

"I'll be up with the SUN, I'm not coming DOWN" Its like the hope the redemption of the song. No matter how crazy your life gets, you CAN say "goodbye, you can keep this suit of lights." For me this part has spiritual implications, I've always interpreted the SUN to mean god or possibly Jesus. "Are you still holding on?" Are you still holding on the confusion, to the ill understood freedom?..not me, .....I'm not coming down!