How Things Were... and How They Are.

I have in my possession an antique melodeon. It was hand-built by my great-great-grandfather. It doesn't work, the vacuum bellows are in need of repair. Someday I hope to find someone who can fix it. But I have something that is directly connected to my own roots, my family, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it… I run my hands along the cherry wood that he sanded and stained. I can play with on the keys that he carved. It is an heirloom.

When I was a teenager, one of the things I loved about getting a new album was that it came with a big cover, often with a lyric sheet, and I would just sit and read over the lyrics and look over the artwork while listening to the music. It was an overall experience. It was a journey. Many from my 80's generation and older are just like me, but I do also know that some young people (and I HATE using that term, but, eh... I'm the older generation now, no denying that) are wondering what that was like. These records, some of them I have now 20+ years later, and the smell of them, holding them, it takes me back to those times. I love that...

We are locked into this high-tech, lightning-fast age and it gets faster every year…  which devalues all aspects of creation and Art as it now can be turned into digital media: visual arts, music, books and films. Younger generations grew up with and therefore always expect instant gratification. That also makes for a feeling of being uncentered and out of balance. The faceless world of the internet allows for no knowledge of action or reaction to what one does on the computer. Apathy prevails. 

I know that people will be able to download my next album free, and torrent sites will pretend that they are "promoting" my music, but really... once someone downloads it, the chances are nil that they will then actually buy it once they get it free. And what hurts Underground musicians is that our music is hard to find anyway, you have to really search to buy our music, I get that. So people just hit the button and download, then they have it and it's done. 

This is really affecting us, causing us to now to be forced to cancel tours, stop recording, or take years longer... because the source of our small supplemental income is now drying up. It's always cost to be an Underground musician, but now it is costing so much more... We used to sell a couple thousand of each release. Now it is a couple hundred. It affects us deeper than you know, especially when each downloader thinks "I'm just one person, my download won't matter." Times that by a few thousand, and there you go.

Here are some facts about what Underground bands get paid, and why it is so important to support them:

• If you buy something directly from a band's website, and you spend $10, they get the whole $10, minus only the processing fees from either the credit card company or Paypal. 

• If you purchase something from iTunes, the band gets about 67 cents for each dollar you spend. 

• If you purchase a CD from someplace like Amazon, they get about 45 cents for each dollar you spend. 

• If you download something from a torrent site, they (WE - as musicians), of course, get $0.

Possibly, there will be some sort of a Renaissance towards slowing things down. To spend some time in Nature, to enjoy your food, to take time out to read an actual book, or just lie in the grass.  With the insane amount of audio and visual input overload at every turn - the idea of waiting for anything seems so strange. So I ask you to take a little walk with me to an earlier time, when you wait patently for a new release, and you sit down, put the music on, and take the journey with me!

This is why I decided to go for a serious hard-cover book for NAIADES, so that fans will really have something solid to own, to hold, to keep forever, and years down the line, they can return to read and read again. I am doing this by the very seat of my pants, with the hopes that fans will really understand the value of my choice of music and art.

Love and thanks to Patty Hele, and kaRIN and Statik of Collide, who began this conversation with me...

Downloads die off with old computers and ipods, but Art is indeed forever. 

NAIADES

I love researching! It fully enthralls me to get to the source of things. It also gives me so much inspiration and is so fascinating as I move through the mythology as well as the work itself...

NAIADES were associated with fresh water, as the Oceanids were with saltwater. Naiades presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks.

But the NEREIDES were fifty Haliad Nymphs or goddesses of the sea. They were the patrons of sailors and fishermen, who came to the aid of men in distress, and goddesses who had in their care the sea's rich bounty. Individually they also represented various facets of the sea, from salty brine, to foam, sand, rocky shores, waves and currents, in addition to the various skills possessed by seamen. To the left is a Greek vase, depicting Nereides.

So like the ethereal piece, 'Naiades', that I had opening my last two shows, (and will also open my Los Angeles show) I have also create a piece called 'Nereides', which is much deeper and a bit more ominous...

I'm also very excited about the new album as far as the music! Though the first InfraWarrior album, which really was centered around electro-tribal work - for the most part, though... songs like "Into My Own", "We Are the One" and "The Turnaway" were quite different.

Paul Mercer and his producer Bruce Bennett are working on a gutwrenching classical song entitled "LureinLay". There is also a purely tribal drums and vocal piece entitled "Scylla and Charybdis" where I really have fun with multiple vocals. I even have a couple near punk rock-like tunes due to Steve Niles' help. Steve was in Gray Matter back in the day, one of the first Dischord bands, so he's been writing riffs with me. We knew each other when we were just kids in the punk rock scene, and I love how things have come back full circle for us! Just finished recording a song called "Pride" which I am quite proud of!

And then the song "EndBegin" which I listed the lyrics in my last post, the end is something I am so proud of! Mutliple chant vocals that intertwine, with tribal shouts that caused our dogs to bark throughout the house thinking I was hurt. Hilarious!

Info on the album artwork to come! I have big plans, and hope to report soon on them!

Full Immersion into NAIADES

I am eagerly awaiting the finished painting by artist Chrissie Zullo of the album cover, and working away on the full album now as well as the booklet artwork. Bits and pieces of lyrics may show up, as well as fun mermaid imagery that I've been playing with. Here are the working lyrics to a new song "EndBegin"...

Through the cracks in the wall I'm going back to Nature

Through the holes in the floor my roots search for the waters

Along crumbling brick I'm building back my forest

Over collapsed walls I'm stretching myself homeward

As the sidewalks break I'm dropping down my anchors

Along rusting wires I'm stretching out my fingers

From the rotting beams I'm reaching towards the answer

Upon broken glass I may walk forever

The trees are burning and the wars unseen

What we know and what we believe

The walls are blurring and the lines between

What we know and what we believe

Leave the endless noise I'm going back to silence

On the crumbling bridge I cross back to the mountains

Through the blood red sea I'll sink into the alters

Through the cracks in the wall I'm going back to Nature

Leave a bounty of fruit at the base of the cinders

Through the holes in the floor my roots search for the waters

When the oceans die, your tears will fill the rivers.

Beating a song into shape.

Words bristle and ignite themselves

Backwards and upside-down before a pen can be found -

Claiming a strange reward in shattering bursts

That flame and die all too soon

To recreate such catastrophe.

I have left Life fall cold a plunging necessity somewhere behind me,

As I retrace its electricity...

Like a weed that triumphs charred ruin,

I suppose Nature springs from me then.

Blowing its brilliance through my lungs

Blazing its secrets forth

Changing colors against the frost

While I capture it thus -

Imperfectly -

Letting it cool past my fingertips,

Shaping it numb and trimming it to proper form -

Elementally agreeable

And trained to speak.

Sea Change...

I have to admit, I'm having a great time making jewelry, searching through boxes of my old stuff, resurrecting pieces I wore with costumes... and finding all sorts of new things to create. It's a zen thing for me, I am finding.

"My silence killed my writing skills..."

It's been a strange time. Restoration of my old pieces seems to restore me personally... It touches upon everything I am doing now. Transformation into a solo artist, choosing my own distinct vision, with the help, support and love of those around me...

Though my new album title, "Naiades" was decided upon, I have had a hard time articulating why I have chosen to go back to the waters... but my inner-voice told me to flow with this. Now things are truly making themselves known...

I am undergoing a Sea-Change, it seems...

From Shakespeare's The Tempest:

"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a Sea-change,
Into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! Now I hear them, ding-dong, bell."

Renewal, Redefinition, Metamorphosis.

Lyrics are beginning to flow as I just work with my hands, especially when parts of completely different eras and ages suddenly click and just work together. My mind is allowed to float freely as my hands work. I am drawn to Dragonflies, Skulls, natural elements of change.

There was a woman that once wrote, "how do I know what I have to say until I see what I write?" So funny to see what is coming out of me and only just now catching myself in the mirror!

On Purging and Moving Forward...

Sooooo…. it's been a good long while since I have written anything here. A great deal has happened in the last long while, and it's been very hard to write about my personal life. How does one lead a public and private life, staying true to one or the other, continuing a sort of mythology in order not to cause pain to fans, yet at the same time be thrown into the struggle of my life? Some of you know what I've had to go through in the last year. It's been, to say the least… challenging.

But I have come through and almost on the other side of some very dark times. Now I have a new life, new Love and feeling very hopeful towards the future!

With all of this, I am stronger now. I've learned to count on myself and to believe in myself. I've found the ability to ask for help when I need it (which is not easy for me), and to lean on those close pals around me who have helped me along the way. And the good side is these changes have fed my own personal artistic expression and have allowed me to grow by leaps and bounds at learning to record and mix my own music, as well as create the soundtrack to the live film for my shows. I feel as if I am walking in new worlds, entering new realms and all of it up to me.

Yet the truth is… It has been extremely costly to deal with a mountain of debt from the FatM tours - on top of upheaving my life, creating a new studio to work in and - in many ways, start completely over. I am now a completely self-run entity and will start my own record company to release my album in the U.S. But doing just a simple search for my music, I find website after website offering my music for free. Orders are very few and far between. It's been, at the very least, disheartening.

My fans say they can't wait to hear my next album. Many don't understand that it costs so much to do what I love to do, and create what they hopefully love to listen to.

This is why I am going to do the following: sell my paintings, more artwork, some personal creations, belongings and costumes -- and -- ask for donations.

I had a long talk with kaRIn and Statik of Collide, another completely independent musical entity and old friends of mine. They told me about their donation page, and the amount of support fans have given them. They also pointed out the following facts, which I know all too well, but may be good to reiterate here:

• If you buy something directly from a band's website, and you spend $10, they get the whole $10, minus only the processing fees from either the credit card company or paypal.

• If you purchase something from iTunes, the band gets about 67 cents for each dollar you spend.

• If you purchase a CD from someplace like Amazon, they get about 45 cents for each dollar you spend.

• If you download something from a torrent site, they (we - as musicians), of course, get $0.

For anyone who feels like they can help out a little (or for people who may have been getting my music for free), now is your chance to help me continue to make music. Your donation will help fund some of the costs of recording my new album, including mastering costs, production costs, some studio equipment I need as well as the dreaded pressing costs.

With any donation of $25 or more, you will also get your name in the credits of my new album as a special supporter.

PLEASE DONATE NOW.

Here are the pages with Items for Sale:

My Best Known Paintings, and Less Expensive Paintings

Unique, Hand-made and One-of-a-Kind items

Costumes and More

Hand-made Jewelry

I hope this will be fun for those fans who would love their name added to my next album, or get the chance to own a little piece of history from one of my costumes or art pieces.

Thank you for the support all these years!

XXOO!

Monica

New Blogs coming at last!

I've been out of the loop, but now back to work on writing my thoughts... Stay tuned! XXOO, M