Lisa: I want to start off by discussing your lifelong search for Truth and the reason for our existence. In all of your research and from your experiences, what have you come to believe is closest to the Truth? From Numerology to Astrology, to all the world religions, to a belief in Nature being a goddess (as in Anafae), which, do you feel, is most correct, and which is furthest from the truth?

Monica Richards: What is most correct is to be happy, be yourself, find and do what you love, find your heart, love those around you the best you can. Keep an open mind and be open to new possibilities. Don't judge another by anything but their own character and actions, not their sex or skin color. What is furthest from the Truth is the pitfalls of human socialization and elitism, Patriarchal Monotheism, rules and regulations against love and peace, close-mindedness, bigotry, thinking you have the answers, not allowing for your own happiness because of religion or cultural tradition, allowing other creatures and people to suffer for vanity, wealth, or political reasons.

L: You mention old souls in your music and personal musings on your site. What is your view of reincarnation? (I’m assuming you believe in it.) I’ve heard differing ideas on reincarnation – some believe we can only reincarnate as humans, while others believe we can come back as animals and vice versa; others feel only humans, not animals, can reincarnate. What’s your stance? And what do you think is the purpose of coming back to this world time and time again?

MR: I can't give that an answer in words, it's beyond words, you just know when someone is an Old Soul. They have a wisdom, they are eerily plugged into things. I don't know if there are actual guidelines to reincarnation, it just happens the way it happens. One person can be obsessed with the Civil War while another must follow wherever the sea turtle goes, it's extremely random.

L: So we have nuclear weaponry, the outright exploitation of natural resources, wars that are religiously based, the destruction of the environment via sprawl and development, impoverished nations contrasted by wealthy, wasteful countries, and sport hunting and animal abuse. Do you see any hope in the world, especially when you learn about chemtrails and Terminator Seeds? I have to be honest, I don’t see much hope for our planet…

MR: I feel despair, but then if I turn off the news and look into my own life, my loved ones, the animals I care for, if I can grow my own food and show others how to, if I can spread the word and help at least those I touch to get back to simpler things, then I can have hope.

L: After learning about the nuclear bomb tests conducted in the U.S. in the 1950s without consideration to the effects of the fallout on the environment and human and animal populations, I lost all trust I had left in government. Now you’ve opened my eyes to something similar – which has been going on for what, at least a decade without our knowing? – and that is chemtrails, the release of chemicals into the atmosphere for reasons we can only speculate. You’ve taken photos of the chemtrails above your home in CA. Can you tell us how you came to find out about them and what you think they are?

MR: I saw a series of strange X's in the sky over Los Angeles and asked William, and he told me. William knew what they were and that they were becoming a growing concern to many, that there was secrecy about them, that my own father - a war pilot - said they weren't contrails. And if you look them up on Google, they're in the sky globally. Why? What do they tell the pilots who dispense them? At the same time, I don't see the population dwindling, so I don't think it's secret population control, so it's really up in the air - literally - as to what they are. Mosquito control, allergy tests, or some way to stop Global Warming, these are some ideas.

L: I love the fact that you mentioned in one of your personal musings that human babies are helpless and need years of teaching before they can survive on their own, which is in sharp contrast to other animal species, which instinctively know what to do at birth. Taking that idea a step further, when I read about people starving in some parts of Africa, for example, I wonder where our species went wrong – where is the innate knowledge needed to survive? Why can’t these people find or cultivate viable food sources instead of mashing up some leaves and water and calling it soup? (And I’m not being facetious.)

MR: Currently, I think much knowledge like that is lost when tribal people are herded into camps and forced to wear Western hand-me-downs and worship Western religion. I watched a documentary years ago of a little girl in an African tribe living on the land, traveling with the seasons and herds of animals, true to her ancient ways and culture. And then they went back 30 years later and she was in a camp fighting over food rations, forced into a culture that decided her life choices, what she ate and did. When you have no more access to that which can make you self-empowered, you are helpless. This is how tribes are dominated and conquered, it's been going on for aeons and makes us the strange, contradictory creatures we are today.

L: Please tell the readers about the work you do at Animal Acres Sanctuary. What kinds of animals do you encounter there, and how and why are they brought to the sanctuary?

MR: William and I work in animal rescue, we volunteer at Animal Acres (www.animalacres.org), which is the new sanctuary for factory farmed animals run by Lorri Bauston, who opened the original Farm Sanctuary. We do health care, clean barns, feed animals, build fences, and learn about the thoughts and feelings of each kind of farm animal. Many are rescues, some came from Katrina, some are donated by facilities that are closing, some are rescued from illegal operations. They help educate visitors to the farm as to what is really going on in our food system. We see firsthand how these animals suffer from being genetically modified; the 'meat' chickens grow unnaturally about 5 times larger than the 'egg' chickens, who are very tiny and have few feathers from being kept in battery cages. The pigs suffer foot and leg problems from growing 400 lbs in the first year of their lives. This is all so against Nature, which is the entire point of my album - we must get back to the cycle of Life, our modern culture has ripped us from it, and politics and money keep us from getting back there...

L: Steve Irwin’s death this past September was devastating. It seems as though only those who are doing good in the world are taken away too soon. There’s a theory that says those people die young because they get tired and want to go Home once they’ve done their work here. I was wondering if you agree.

MR: One might say cancer is a choice, it's all beyond our understanding. We can all go at any time. Those who are doing their best to help benefit the world know that more than others. Many good people have lived a long life, but those who get hit young, it just hurts all the more.

L: In Anafae, you build upon the concept of a Mother God, AKA Mother Nature incarnate. As you state in Book 1, this goddess had been revered throughout history by many cultures, and each gave her a unique name. Do you think that the Virgin Mary of Christianity is the same? When Mary appeared to humans and said to them, “I am Mother,” do you think that that was Anafae?

MR: Absolutely. Mary is definitely from a much older Goddess myth; I think that Graves said her name once meant grandmother. A virgin that gives birth is ages old. Before humans knew that men were part of birth, they thought women grew pregnant through being blessed by the gods or goddesses. And for conquered Pagan cultures forced to worship Catholicism, they very much gravitated to the Mother Mary and child imagery, as it is the Seasonal Year, very ingrained in our collective psyche.

Rob: In the book, Anafae is also referred to as “Spring” and her time to return is after a complete annihilation of the human race and total desolation of the planet. Since Winter comes before Spring, is it something you intentionally wanted people to connect? Is the unnamed “Winter” in Anafae a metaphor for a “Nuclear Winter?”

MR: I chose not to make it nuclear, as that would have been an easy way as to why all humans died. I wanted to show that the crash came from their own disregard for their actions. Winter is also Destroyer - Anafae has visited destruction upon the planet and needs a reason to move forward. The Winter face is often an ancient crone, but she is also associated with Destroyer, young and still vibrant, but a warrior, such Queen Maab. So in this, I toyed with the idea that she is stuck as destroyer until she finds a worthy champion (suitor/lover) to create Spring once again.

L: What are some of the things you do, that you suggest our readers should also do, in order to reduce our impact on pollution and waste?

MR: Oh boy, this is a 2 parter! First, we got our certification in Permaculture over the Summer, which is a common sense way of living your life along natural ecologies, working with Nature to reduce your waste and create more beneficial intake. We're starting to turn our home into an Eco-house. Baby steps, growing a veggie garden, compost toilet, water catchment - it's all about working with Nature. We have a bucket in our kitchen sink that we fill up a few times a day with grey water when we wash dishes, our hands, anything we do in the sink, which we throw into a larger bucket outside with wood chips and coffee grounds to break down the soap, then we water the garden with it. We are building compost piles, spreading our old cardboard and newspaper in the garden for mulch. It's all about finding new ways for waste to be used in beneficial ways. We use less plastic in the home, we look for cardboard alternatives, and products that are natural, biodegradable, and not tested on animals. We have a distiller, so we can use tap water, distill it, pour it into glass bottles and take that around rather than buying bottled water. One can 
start simply by flushing the toilet every other time they urinate, this will cut the useless waste of gallons of water. This is what we are doing for now. We'll be looking at land in the next few months, it'll be raw land most likely, which we'll need to read carefully before building - where the Sun hits, wind, underwater springs, that kind of thing! But it's actually much easier than most people think. I'm starting to put tips in my Musings, and will probably build a site to show people how to do this! The second part is this - we personally are Vegan, but we don't push this way of life. Cutting down some of your meat intake, or switching to organic farmed meat, will help reduce an enormous part of the problem on our planet. The standard factory-farmed meat industry is very sick from hormones, drugs, and bioengineering done to animals to produce more quickly, and the medical industry is profiting by selling prescriptions for symptoms of every terrible illness that is striking Americans from meat and other genetically modified foods, such as obesity, heart disease, cancer, depression, to name a few. These industries are also a major part of what is destroying the environment and creatures of this planet, as well as causing starvation in poor 
nations, as poor farmers must grow crops of grain and soybeans to export to cattle industry. (But the fact is, only the rich can afford to eat the beef.) Instead of growing the healthy foods for themselves to eat, they are caught in the web of horror the Western world has created. What many people do not know is that the production of meat is also significantly increasing global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, substantially contributing to "global scorching." On top of that, cattle ranchers are making mincemeat out of Brazil's Amazon rainforests by cutting them down to grow export feed, so we are cutting down the very trees that can fight global warming. Sounds almost retarded, but that's the human race, eh? Yet, if enough humans get more informed, the demand will dwindle and positive changes can be made.

L: InfraWarrior is an extraordinary album. Some of the song lyrics are reminiscent of Faith & The Muse lyrics. For example, in “Fell To Regret,” you ask, “Is this a new dark age? Are these the blackest days?” but in “Sredni Vashtar” off The Burning Season, you say, “This is not a darker age; just the turning of the wheel.” Well, which is it?! ::wink:: I know, I’m probably just neurotic and looking into detail too much.

MR: No, it's on purpose, but it is Statement VS Question. For The Burning Season, which was written right after 9/11, I looked back and said, “We are no worse than we were even a hundred years ago as far as human violence,” so the words are a statement. Then the Religious Right over the last few years since have gone backwards as far as women's rights, and with the rise of Human Trafficking and sexual slavery, I am now *asking* if this IS a Darker Age?

L: Also, in “The Turnaway” off InfraWarrior (which, by the way, has had me crying by the end of it quite a few times, when you talk about seeing the person you lost again), you say something like, “It seems she was about to speak of better times,” and in Faith & The Muse’s “In Dreams of Mine,” you sing “It seems she was about to speak of other worlds and times.” Again, is there some sort of connection between these songs, or am I looking into it too deeply?

MR: I tend to go back to lyrics I have written and bring them about if they are once again poignant. "In Dreams of Mine" and "The Turnaway" are about powerful dreams about powerful females in my life - "The Turnaway" was an actual dream I had about my mother (most likely, though I never looked at her face), which I wrote down as soon as I woke up and those words just came as they are. I did the recording with a serious frog in my throat, and I lose it on that last line, as it hits me often about the loss of my mother.

L: I know that the bulk of this interview has been philosophical, so let’s focus on your music for a bit. First off, when are you coming out to the east coast to perform!? I’ve been dying to see you live for years!

MR: Not sure. Touring and dealing with clubs, and nowadays only about 50 - 100 people come out, and as soon as we get back we hear, "Oh, I missed you, will you tour again?" - and the financial loss and being away from home is making it less and less possible. I plan to leave it for special events. If a good festival happens and I can afford to get the band out, it's possible, who knows? But F&TM will be at Convergence in Portland next May, and that will be the ONLY show, so come out for that one!

R: Your album has a few songs with a very tribal element to them. Tribal music is known to date back to the earliest civilizations, which were also the basis for many of the “Mother Earth” ideas that people have held throughout history. Is there a connection between the music on InfraWarrior and Anafae? Of course, there are some lyrics that seem to be taken almost verbatim from the text of the book, but outside of that, is there a stronger relationship between the two works?

MR: It's pretty much all me, so they are related, but it's not anything like the two are connected any more than that... I was writing both at the same time, so a lyric here and there went back and forth. They are such different mediums, but I think it will connect to people in different ways.

R: Music has always been society’s scapegoat (among other things!). Your music isn’t nearly as negative as some of the really harsh stuff out there in the Punk, Metal, and Rap worlds, but it can be dark nonetheless. What do you think about the way that music is vilified by politicians, religious watchdog organizations, and special interest groups? While music like yours can sound dark and sinister, you have one of the most positive messages I’ve heard in a long time. Many of the bands that go for shock value will also readily admit that they don’t hold the same values that they sing about in their personal lives. For instance, Tom Araya from Slayer is a practicing Catholic (who woulda thought?). Do you see any clear way to get the message across that, although the music can be dark, angsty, and yes, at certain times promote a type of therapeutic rage (i.e. mosh pits), it can also be a positive outlet for those emotions that would otherwise result in possibly more tragic events?

MR: Not really. People make music for many different reasons, and people who listen to music also have many different reasons. But those who will become violent just need a catalyst, it's not just music. The Bible itself is most often the reason - such as, why one mother kills her 5 children - but you don't see it as getting maligned; in that arena, they say the person was nuts or they misunderstood the words. Almost all Celtic songs speak of pain, loneliness, and suffering. Is that Dark or is that the Truth of the heart that others can connect to? I think many people get release from music, and I have been told many, many times that my songs have gotten someone through something terrible. You have to be true in a song, and I think fans know when you're talking about something for shock value to sell to 15-year-old boys or when you're speaking from the heart. You know, Beyonce has a new video where she's screaming and hollering angrily and I thought, "Okay, maybe she has something to say here," and then I watched it and saw it was another "I can't let my man go" piece of crap. That is what is acceptable, harmless, and corporate in music today, thus I would rather be part of the misunderstood Underground.

L: Finally, is there anything you’d like to mention that wasn’t already discussed in the interview?

MR: Thank you for such a great interview!