The members of Cloud Cult don’t hide their feelings, especially when it comes to the energy they regard as essential to sustaining life. No, not food. And definitely not fossil fuels. It’s love. And since their upcoming album, out March 5, is entitled Love, we thought we’d ask them for their thoughts on the subject. They responded with more than we had room to print. Here are their full thoughts.
But first, check out the trailer for the new album, Love, featuring the song, “All The Things We Couldn’t See.”
Shawn Neary (Bass & Trombone):
I find the situations where I am around or a part of love in its simplest, purest expression to be completely overwhelming. And, almost without exception, I’m inarticulate in their wake.
Shannon Frid (Violin):
What is love? Love is strength. Love is courage. Love is positivity. Our world is oversaturated with negativity. Negativity is contagious, but so is love, and it can just as easily be spread. Even if you start by opening up your heart and smiling at a stranger you walk by on the street. Right now at this moment what I love is the idea that we are all capable of making this world a better place by doing something as simple as sharing some positive thinking and kindness.
Daniel Zamzow (Cello):
Love is in forgiveness and letting-go, which respectively promote truth and growth. Everyone should have some experience with giving and receiving love, but it’s self-love which I find really hard to direct. Maybe by forgiving and letting-go of the fears within one’s self can we then increase our capacity to give love to others. Neil Young sang “It’s gonna take a lot of love to change the way things are.” I say it’s gonna take a lot more than what’s being shown right now, and we each need to start from within if we’re going to be able to share enough love to change anything at all.
Sarah Elhardt (Keyboard & French Horn):
Love can be so easy. The easiest thing in the world to do. To express it can be the harder task for some. For me, love is letting yourself be vulnerable and open. Love is knowing you’ll do anything for that other person and will do everything in your power to help them avoid pain. I’m feeling a lot of love for those around me. My new husband, a supportive family, and amazing and caring friends.
Arlen Peiffer (Drums):
Well, well. Love, you are a tricky little guy. At first I thought you were so simple, so obvious, so easy to see and understand. Then I came to find myself thinking you might be the most complex thing I would ever come into contact with as long as I should live. And now, asked to write about your nature, I hardly even know what to say about you. You’re capable of a lot of things certainly. There’s a John Steinbeck quote, taken from a letter to his son who was attending boarding school at the time, that has meant an awful lot to me this last year. If it’s alright to reprint his words, I think there’s something really nice about them and I would totally appreciate being able to share them. Goes like this: “There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you–of kindness and consideration and respect–not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.”
Connie Minowa (live painter):
Love can be so easy and simple, and yet it can also be so hard to do. When it’s done right… with the best intentions and without expecting anything in return…. it is the most magical and powerful thing I have ever known.
Craig Minowa (Singer/Songwriter):
There’s a fundamental law in physics that states that energy cannot be destroyed (only transformed). Our whole scientific understanding of the universe is built around this law. Interestingly, most of our world’s religions discovered this a long, long time ago. It’s not just a philosophy, it’s a literal truth to say the way you think, feel, and live will resonate eternally. So if we, as individuals, have these short lives to make some kind of energy that is going to live forever, what better energy than Love? I believe Love is the ultimate voice of the soul. I believe that our calling and purpose and meaning is to spend this life expanding our capacity to Love until our bones can’t hold any more in.
Scott West: (live painter):
Love is our family, our friends, our community and our nature. Love is in every moment of our lives if we open ourselves up to see it. Love is within nature, the process of creation and the passing of life. Love is God and love is within all of us.
