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Yesterday I spent asleep
Woke up in my clothes in a dirty heap
Spent the night trying to make a deadline
Squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline
I have your face in an old Polaroid
Tidying the childrens clothes and toys
You smiling back at me I took the photo from the fridge
Can't remember what Emily did
Haven't been with a woman, it feels like, for years
Thought of you the whole time, your salty tears
This shitty world sometimes produces a rose
The scent of it lingers but then it just goes
Return the call to home
The worst of us are a long drawn-out confession
The best of us are geniuses of compression
You say you're not gonna leave the truth alone
I'm here 'cause I don't wanna go home
Child drinking dirty water from a riverbank
Soldier brings oranges he got out from a tank
Waiting on the waiter, he's taking a while to come
Watching the sun go down on Lebanon
Return the call to home
I got a head like a lit cigarette
Unholy clouds reflect in a minaret
So high above me, higher than everyone
Where are you in the cedars of Lebanon?
Choose your enemies carefully, 'cause they will define you
Make them interesting 'cause in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Woke up in my clothes in a dirty heap
Spent the night trying to make a deadline
Squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline
I have your face in an old Polaroid
Tidying the childrens clothes and toys
You smiling back at me I took the photo from the fridge
Can't remember what Emily did
Haven't been with a woman, it feels like, for years
Thought of you the whole time, your salty tears
This shitty world sometimes produces a rose
The scent of it lingers but then it just goes
Return the call to home
The worst of us are a long drawn-out confession
The best of us are geniuses of compression
You say you're not gonna leave the truth alone
I'm here 'cause I don't wanna go home
Child drinking dirty water from a riverbank
Soldier brings oranges he got out from a tank
Waiting on the waiter, he's taking a while to come
Watching the sun go down on Lebanon
Return the call to home
I got a head like a lit cigarette
Unholy clouds reflect in a minaret
So high above me, higher than everyone
Where are you in the cedars of Lebanon?
Choose your enemies carefully, 'cause they will define you
Make them interesting 'cause in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friends
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What does making them interesting mean? What does 'in some ways they will mind you' mean?
Student bible explains: The cedars of Lebanon were giant trees that could grow 120 feet tall and 30 feet in circumference. A voice that could break the cedars of Lebanon would be a truly powerful voice--the voice of God."
This part of the song seems to be something about Pride...."I got a head like a lit cigarette. Unholy clouds reflect a minaret" His 'visual focal point'(a minaret) is reflecting unholy clouds...and he has a hot head. The minaret reflection is calling him to prayer/confession.
I like how this man explains this song:
- Tristan M
Dec 12, 2009 at 6:16 pm
This song has some of Bono's finest lyrics. I sometimes feel that he lapses too much into abstract sentiment in other songs, but this song is concrete and realistic.
I love how there are three intertwining layers to this song: the political, the personal, and the spiritual. Everything the speaker says about one level can be applied to the others. Also, his marital crisis coincides with a political crisis and a spiritual crisis, and they are all tied together. The uniting theme is a sense of homelessness and exile; he does not feel at home in war-torn Lebanon (as depicted by the sad image of the soldier bringing a poor child an orange), with his wife ("I am here cuz I don't wanna go home"), or in the world itself ("this shitty world", "unholy clouds"). So, when the refrain implores him to "return the call to home", it is a call to return to his fellow man, his wife, and ultimately God. We all more or less face a similar sense of exile when we examine the state of our lives and the world around us.
Also, unlike many U2 songs, this song is incredibly subtle. It is implied that the speaker has been having an affair ("You say you're not gonna leave the truth alone"), and that he is overcome by guilt ("I am here cuz I don't wanna go home"). This sin and unresolved guilt is what makes him feel exiled from any sense of home; in fact, that effect is the essence of the doctrine of the Fall and original sin. Because of humanity's fallen state and original sin, we can never feel completely at home in the world or in our natural relationships, though these can all be means to knowing our ultimate home, God.
I love how perfectly this song ends the album, especially considering how the album begins. The album begins with "No Line on the Horizon", which is an optimistic and extroverted plea for transcendence. "Cedars of Lebanon" is a pessimistic and introverted plea for imminence. The speaker wants God to be imminent in the world, not just transcendent, as he reveals when he has the epiphany, "You're so high above me, higher than everyone; where are You in the cedars of Lebanon?". In other words, he feels so distanced from God. Without God to enrich the world with His meaning and presence, any worldly goodness becomes merely transient (as the example of the rose shows), the speaker can only rely on enemies, and the world does not feel like home. Relatedly, the speaker makes passing reference to the sacrament of confession in one verse ("The worst of us are a long drawn-out confession"). It may seem that he is speaking of confession in a different sense than that of the sacrament, but the guilt present in the lines that immediately follow shows that "confession" may also have the sacramental meaning. The idea of a sacrament is a natural or man-made thing imbued with Godly presence. This may be a hint to how the speaker can seek the imminence he desires.
Of course, these thoughts are all inspired by the upcoming Christmas holiday, which celebrates how the Incarnation unites imminence and transcendence.
It is amazing that we have not even scratched the surface of this song! Merry Christmas everyone!
Read more: blogcritics.org/music/article/verse-chorus-verse-u2-cedars-of/
That sounds so COLD!!
This song is not only about a soldier that misses his loved one, but it is the classic retelling of a story that happens over and over again. The last stanza sums it up nicely.
Choose your enemies carefully 'cos they will define you
Make them interesting 'cos in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friend.
Israel is literally defined by their enemies through out most of known history. Israel-Egypt, Israel-Babylon, Israel-Palestianians, Israel-Assyria, Israel-World, Israel-Hitler, Israel-Muslims (some). Yeah... That has been the basis of their existence. This song is a lesson to us all.
Just one of the many times in the Bible that cedars of Lebanon are mentioned. I don't really know what the song is about, but I thought that would be an interesting tidbit considering most of the other songs on this album have religious references.
This is my least favorite sounding song on the album because it is so bare. I know a lot of people like bare, but in this instance it just seems either undone or too filtered to me. I keep wanting to like it, but find myself skipping it when it comes on in the car on my ipod. I'm not the biggest fan of Bono doing the hungover-too many smokes-raspy talk thing, so that's probably why it doesn't do it for me.
I hate it when I really don't like a U2 song. It makes me feel disloyal or something!
I can't say I love every song they produce, but I'd say I absolutely adore at least 90% of them.
I guess it's kind of like anything else in life. You don't like everything about anything you like in life, right?
Another meaning of Cedars of Lebanon that I find the most interesting is the references of it in a lot of the "prophetic" books of the Old Testament. One scripture, I dobelieve it is in Amos, is talking about the day when an enemy of Israel's will be defeated... Speaking in an obvious metaphor, the writer/prophet says that the Cedars of Lebanon will dance for joy. This is of course because they won't have to be cut down any more by the enemy of Israel as they build houses and ships etc. The irony of this is that Israel's enemies are never defeated, of course the enemy that the prophet Amos is referencing to is taken down, Israel still has there work cut out for them.
This song, at the second to last stanza, is the most important part of the song in terms of interpreting it, and of course the last stanza is the advise that Bono gives warning to everyone in regards to enemies... there is a lesson to be learned.
The second to last stanza talks about his head being lit like a cigarette, probably sunburned, and as he looks up into the cedars, he cannot see his enemy, he sees the unholy clouds, but not the enemies above him. The only way to see them would be to cut down the trees, the oh' so important cedars which after King Solomon's reign, became one of the most prized possesions int that region for infrastructure...