---
title: "Mother of Exile"

meaning: "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."

year: 2017
release: "Finding $D"
releaseType: "album"

artist: "Scoobert Doobert"
artistId: "#scoobert"

credits: "Written, performed, mixed, and mastered by Luke Francis Walton."

spotify: "https://open.spotify.com/album/1RD1nblfKnDDT42FXZ0eZL"
apple: "https://music.apple.com/us/album/mother-of-exile/1506552414?i=1506552562"
bandcamp: "https://scoobertdoobert.bandcamp.com/album/finding-d-lp"

themes: ["Finding $D", "violence", "exile", "2017"]

isrc: TCADF1797729
isrcSource: soundexchange
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

draft: false

---

Track eight on [*Finding $D*](/albums/finding-d-remastered/), Luke solo; [every song on the LP](/albums/finding-d-remastered/) 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*](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/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 you*s with no object named, tenderness right after the admission of violence. It ends still chanting *exiles*. Same dread register as [*My Friend, Scoobert*](/songs/my-friend-scoobert/) and [*Damned*](/songs/damned/), tuned here to confession and survival. The title returns on [*$WAMI$*](/albums/wami/) as a lore remix; this is the 2017 origin take.

---