Mother of Exile
Finding $D confession: violence easier than talk, couldn't conquer my own soul: a silent mother of exiles, then I love you stacked until it breaks.
Listen: SpotifyApple MusicBandcamp
ISRC TCADF1797729 (soundexchange)
Track eight on Finding $D, Luke solo; every song on the LP was written, recorded, mixed, and mastered in a single day. It closes the LP’s run of lyric tracks before two instrumentals, and it’s the debut’s most bare confession, no mask at all.
The verses admit a double failure, of language and of self: I found violence / easier to hit than talk alone, then I couldn’t even conquer my own soul. Survival comes without redemption (I’m not dying / I couldn’t bear to end with nothing done), and the title lands as a silent mother of exiles. The phrase Mother of Exiles is Emma Lazarus’s name for the Statue of Liberty in The New Colossus, the sonnet of Give me your tired, your poor. Here the welcome is inverted into silence, exile with no one to greet it.
The song never resolves. The chorus alternates singular and plural (exile vs exiles, preserved from DistroKid), and the bridge is six plain I love yous with no object named, tenderness right after the admission of violence. It ends still chanting exiles. Same dread register as My Friend, Scoobert and Damned, tuned here to confession and survival. The title returns on $WAMI$ as a lore remix; this is the 2017 origin take.
Written, performed, mixed, and mastered by Luke Francis Walton.
Lyrics
I found violence Easier to hit than talk alone Oh no I'm not lying I couldn't even conquer my own soul Oh no But I'm not dying I couldn't bear to end with nothing done A silent mother of exiles A mother of exile A mother of exiles A mother of exile A mother of exiles A mother of exiles A mother of exiles A mother of exiles And I'm not lying I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you A silent mother of exiles A mother of exiles A mother of exiles A mother of exiles