Short description:
Exile of the Moon is the story of Judas, from his childhood to adulthood, as he struggles to make sense of the events that happen in his life. Judas narrates his own story leading to the final chapter, which is the song from which every other melody is derived. It is deeply connected with my own life and recovery from suicidal depression, and the writing of this story and music were part of that recovery process.

Long description:
Exile of the Moon started as a poem that was carried away in the harddrive of a computer that was stolen while I moved out of a college dormitory. It reemerged two years later in a ballad I wrote from the perspective of a protagonist reflecting on his life in the moments before he dies in a nuclear explosion. I wanted to imagine this character’s life, but the connection between the poem and the ballad wasn’t made until two years after that, under extreme life-circumstances. Events revolving around the violent attempted suicide of my then-girlfriend, which ultimately led to my own suicidal depression, hospitalization and subsequent long process of recovery, forced me to rebuild myself from the most basic of places. In the months that followed, one of the ways I processed through the multitudes of questions I found myself pondering -- about self, guilt, spirituality, the nature of the universe, etc. -- was to frame it all within the context of the story of this character Judas’ life. Looking at all of those very difficult questions and painful experiences from the detached perspective of a third-person narrative allowed me to consider all of it in a contained space outside of my head. The study and practice of meditation had become the main place where I confronted the thoughts and feelings that I was dealing with, attempting to reconcile with my present and come to a deeper relationship with myself. Creating the story of Judas’ life was an extension of that practice, and the process of composition became intentionally analogous to the work I was doing in my meditation: allowing the reality of my life to exist and accepting those elements that are outside of my control. Judas’ journey is largely an internal struggle with pieces of his life that he finds impossible to reconcile, and his understanding of himself and his place in the universe evolves with his understanding of the nature of the universe as both an elegant system pointing to some greater design and purpose, and as the inexplicable and unpredictable chaos that tends to disregard our plans. With that in mind, I wrote the entirety of the album as absolutely painstakingly detailed as possible, from its conception to the composition of individual musical parts. I wrote more than two hundred pages of handwritten notes, starting first by identifying and expanding on the themes I wanted to explore, then by writing the outline for the timeline and chapters of the character’s life, the characters and events. Next, I outlined specific details of the scenes, setting and dialogue before writing each part as narrative poetry. Then I condensed that poetry into what could be used as text for music and began to analyze the inherent structure of the lyrics in order to develop the musical concepts that would express the content of the story. I imagined each piece musically from the text and wrote the arrangements, ensembles and musical directions before writing any music notation. Each instrument, each part, and texture represents some aspect of the characters, setting or event, and the players were specifically chosen to “act” those parts. Once I had the plan for the music, I composed the pieces by manipulating small fragments of the melody of the original ballad I wrote, which would be the final piece on the album in its original form. The melodies are leitmotifs, directly connected to the themes, and Judas’ evolution is centrally connected to how I attempted to present those melodies over the course of the album. I’ve described all of this to convey to you the amount of time and effort I spent in intentionally designing every aspect of the story and music, so that you will better understand the next step. At its core, the creation of this album was an exercise in allowing something that was so important to me, that I had spent so much time and effort on, to be taken out of my hands and become whatever the final product would be. With that in mind, I gave every person involved full freedom to play or do whatever they felt most achieved the purpose of the album. They all knew what their part was, what my personal story was, and what the purpose of the album was, and I told each of them the same thing: “If you feel like the best way to accomplish the goal of this album is to shit on my desk, I will place the microphone.” I gathered the sounds and gave them away to be produced, mixed, and mastered. Letting the product become what it became, accepting that product, forgiving my own mistakes and exploring my own feelings through all of it is what the album was for. It was never intended to be anything someone else would like, and it is the most sincere thing I have created in my life as an artist. Everyone involved really bought into the concept and created the final product, which in its collaborative nature is the most full representation of my recovery process that you can find. Depression itself was something I started out fighting on my own, partially because nobody else could see it. But in allowing others to see my world, and in allowing them to be a part of the way I told my story, it helped bring me away from the isolation of depression. Around the same time that I began to piece this narrative together, I rewrote the Exile of the Moon poem from the fragments of verses I could remember and the experiences I was having. While the poem is not directly connected to the events of the story of the album, the purpose and perspective of the two are identical. I chose to call the protagonist Judas because of a long-held internal conflict I’ve had since childhood regarding the guilt of Judas’ actions described in the passion of Jesus in the tradition of Christianity. I’ve heard different perspectives on the matter, and mine is that he played his role exactly as was designed from the beginning. And I think that’s some bullshit.

---

Exile of the Moon (poem) - Shawn Knabel

From my high funeral pyre,
Built on the dictates of my existence,
I watched the sails and colors of the world
As they shifted in time and red dye.

It was my blood I saw
Flooding those canyons and craters
That resembled my own.
And in my solitude
I wept for the comings and goings
Of God.

I saw myself pulling,
Ripping away at the land and sea,
Wishing only to free myself from
The combative dance
That held me ever falling toward
That terrible love I could never reach.

For it was my own effort that kept me
Turning faster away
Toward the big quiet of the dark.
Out there, my exile may find new trajectories,
Perhaps to be bent to the will
Of ever greater dances.

However so,
I must imagine my place
In this vast reality
To be a heavenly body
Of planetary substance,
A fragment of one whole.

My exile is my freedom,
And my struggle my revolution.

---

Part 1 - The Story of the Exile of the Moon

I remember the last time my father told his story.
His hands fell loudly as he told
Of the Exile of the Moon.

I leapt from his knee and fell,
Laughing and angry and prideful,
As my father told
Of the Exile of the Moon.

He laughed as he opened another bottle.
And his story grew larger
Than I’d ever heard before.

Mother emerged from convening with God,
Her face frowning in frozen thought.
She told him of my crimes.
I was hungry…
Stole what I could carry.
Her part was clean.
The booze seemed to spit at my mother,
And the door slammed as he fell into the street,
Laughing and angry and prideful.

I wondered on the Exile of the Moon.

Between the two,
The gravity’s deeper between the two.
Am I the cause?
Between the two,
The gravity’s deeper between the two.
I don’t like to fall between the two.

---

Part 2 - Pub Politics

Pub politics,
A gathering of contradictions,
Aimed at settling problems
In two distinct ways.
The personal, amicable,
The heretical solutions,
Gathered and tossed among the enemies
Of the state.

Treasonous statements
Excite the corner frequencies
Of the tiny room,
In their infinite loop.
The worker’s revolution
Securely soaks into the stone and booze
After closing time,
Insulated for now.

My father had not told
A story, old or new,
And my mother seemed to miss it,
Though she’d spent so little laughter before.
She seemed to resent my presence,
Almost as much as his absence,
But I hated him more.

I hated him most when he left for the war.
He swore he had no choice,
Selected for service, another man’s war,
The only way home through a foreign campaign,
Far away…
I didn’t care.

He wasn’t a revolutionary,
Just a gathering of contradictions.
A man looking for a way out.
The charming, the amicable,
That man had left years ago,
The enemy to a foreign poor man now.
The infinite loop is broken,
Still soaked in booze.
His priorities remained
Where they always were:
Thoroughly with himself.

Mother wasn’t angry,
She was sad…
Though they seemed closer now,
As if they finally understood
Each other.


He called one day,
Wanting to speak to me.
I wouldn’t.
Phone calls from the dead
Ring less hauntingly than from the living.
I laughed in my anger and pride,
How haunting
When the dead and living are the same.
Officially missing,
But surely gone.

---

Part 3 - For You, For Me

She claimed she wasn’t ashamed of me,
But she wasn’t kind to herself.
Day to day, she wasn’t kind at all.
Did she resent that I missed that call?
I did.

The years that followed seemed to multiply her age.
I saw lines carved in her face,
Brokenness.
She seemed gentler now, softer and warmer,
As if her heart finally was returning home.

She wanted my forgiveness
For never holding it together.
“What kind of mother was I?
Afraid to commit a sin?
Afraid for you father?
I’m afraid I have failed.”
But I apologized too.

She despaired that the will of her god
Had revealed itself so.
But she asked for his forgiveness as well.
Her faith seemed to grow with her kindness,
Which made little sense to me.
But she was there.


I split my devotion
Between my mother and my lover.
Two years with Maria,
Too much devotion to her,
Who seemed right at the time.
She wanted what’s best for us.
Her resolve grew each time we fought,
Which made little sense to me.

She resented my resistance.
Wasn’t I prepared to start our family?
What kind of man was I?
Afraid to commit my life?
Afraid to be my father?
I apologized to her.

Day to day, she was sweet with me,
Her dissatisfaction flanked by faith in me
To meet on her path,
Which made little sense to me.
Years seemed to subtract from her age,
Her youth revealed in its place.

She was the wrong love,
Which was difficult to see.
She was the wrong love,
But my mother was there.

---

Part 4 - The Machine

A machinist’s work is to understand,
At least well enough to function.
Schematics were lost to time,
So I met the machines on their terms.

But my part was equally crucial
As each gear, each belt, each bolt,
All metal and rubber,
And the air around us.

The noise, the smell,
The blackness on my hands,
Covered every moving piece
And marked my union with them.

I understood my role,
And the role of each interconnected part.
I can still trace every step in the design.

Function was everything,
As everything had its function.
The product of it all meant little to me.
I just found comfort in the orchestration of it all.

---

Part 5 --- The Tumbling of Leaves

The air felt lighter.
The wind blew first north,
But the next moment west,
Or anywhere at all.

A leaf sat on its stem.
It rolled a foot, a mile,
From where it landed…
An adventure whimsical,
And almost noiseless.

That is where I met Elena.

There were no lines that pointed to her,
Nor did she draw any arrows
To show where to go,
But she stayed with me,
Present, curious to know
Which direction the leaf turned next,
And invited me to see the wonder in what she saw.
To share my own.

Together we walked as two,
Only in harmony because we chose so.
Only because we accepted, unapologetically,
The pitch with which we each resonated.
And forgave our dissonances,
Whatever interval divided us.

Our time together produced a new vibration,
An unexpected reverberation,
The realest sense of completion
Ever given back to me
From the coldness outside.
Brought about by the tumbling of leaves at my feet.

I could see no function,
But I understood my role.
With these two newest, freest, realest pieces of my life,
I found meaning outside machines.

I began to accept what I couldn’t control.

---

Part 6 - The World Outside

The world was changing.
I felt the shift,
Saw my neighbors, workers and friends,
All sent to the war.
Only the patriots stayed.

The heroes, the whistleblowers,
The bannermen devoted,
They alone lived without fear,
And kept the rest of us accountable.
We were safe,
As my work was important to the war,
Which was everything,
No matter how little it meant to me.

The machines stopped speaking one day,
As a voice informed me
That my son had stolen food
From a man that I knew.
Knowing it would not go to trial,
I left the machines and saw nothing but blood,
Til I reached my street.
I knew nothing but blood would appease
The man standing over my son.

Neither of us heard the other,
Reasonable, poor, fearful men.

His fist,
Then mine,
My weight,
The ground,
Glass fragments,
Larger then smaller,
Sewage and blood,
The crowd pulling us apart.

In and out of consciousness…
Elena shielded me from a pair of men,
Uniformed, purposeful, family-less men,
Then she was gone.
A shackle replaced her grasp.
My jury held none of my peers.
My crimes were grievous and clear:
Sacrificed production, the war effort compromised
By inconsequential matters.

“Misaligned priority, lack of devotion,
Officially capital offenses.”

I feared for my family.

The unnecessary, the nameless treasonous parts,
We waited to be recycled,
Repurposed for the frontlines.

“Misaligned priority, lack of devotion,
Officially capital offenses.”

---

Part 7 - The War Machine

The periphery was dark,
Filled with smoke and noise
And indistinguishable figures,
A horizon of flesh and machine,
Living and dead,
All grinding painfully.

Oil and mechanics were in short supply.
Both burned almost as soon as they arrived.
For my part I kept
As many machines turning as I could.
Much more durable than organic soldier,
They might have kept us alive longer.

Below the surface of battle,
In a trench wide enough for assembly,
I maintained equipment.
The enemy had not yet managed to reach this position,
Though a single forward trench-line
Kept that a true statement.

Close enough to hear them screaming,
Close enough to receive artillery fire,
Close enough to know it wouldn’t be long
Til my trench became the forward trenchline.

The assembly area next to mine
Was where the trench-wall gave way.
We’d been given no warning
By the forward line,
Mostly unattended bodies now.

A chemical agent spread,
And I watched through a mask
While other men rushed and collapsed.
And still I saw no enemy.

I followed my rifle’s gauge
Over the edge of the trench
And saw a friendly force
Flanking and retaking the forward trench.
The mask obscured my aim,
And I fired into the mass
Of where I assumed my enemy was,
Until a sheet of fire engulfed
The men and machines of both sides,
Flattening the trench to a ditch.

Survivors of both banners stumbled
Through the broken wall of my trench,
Some bracing each other through impacts,
Some hacking the other down,
Some with only one arm,
Some with fewer.

Blood and dirt and oil
Stained opposing uniforms
To a disgusting uniformity.

And I pulled my mask off
Just as a man tumbled over my wall.
We fell through my work station together,
And my hand found a wrench.

I struck him desperately
And heard his foreign accent beg,
But I was unable to stop
My second blow from silencing him.

Close enough to feel his body break,
Close enough to see his green eyes close,
Close enough to know
He was probably younger than me.

Both our parts were equally crucial
As each round, the mud,
The metal and burning rubber
In the air around us.

The noise, the smell,
The bloody blackness on my hands,
Covered him and everything
And marked my union with him.

The dead and living haunted this place.

I saw no difference between him and myself now.

I was sick,
Faces lost to the war around me.
We all ran.


---


Part 8 - Urgency, Fugitivity, Home


---


Fim

Blinding snow paves the roads
Of my city in the summer,
And it’s strange.
You see it rains all the time
This time of year.

Noone goes from their homes,
They’re frozen, but for the moment.
I see it rise in the sky,
One more cloud
Means to leave me contrite.

In a flash, I am all.