Q&A: At Austin City Limits, Cure For Paranoia Talks Manifesting Your Dreams
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY ISABELLA APPELL ☆
AUTHENTICITY SITS AT THE CORE of Cure for Paranoia’s music. Last year, Dallas-born frontman Cameron McCloud marked 10 years since founding the band, and its success has skyrocketed since. Queer, loud and proud, McCloud doesn’t hold back in his music. He writes about the trauma of losing his mother suddenly to a heart attack and about growing up as a gay man in Texas with bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. Through those songs, the band has become a testament to anyone’s ability to turn their life around.
Luna caught up with McCloud after his Austin City Limits set to talk about the intentions behind his performances, his advice on staying authentic and the importance of perseverance.
LUNA: What does it mean to you to perform at ACL in your home state?
MCCLOUD: It’s a crazy affirmation. We’ve been a band for a decade, and for so much to change within the last year is really affirming.
LUNA: There’s a lot of intention behind your music and your brand. What message are you hoping to share?
MCCLOUD: I think I’m just really trying to share the power of authenticity. All of the things I thought were wrong with me, all of the things I hated about myself, are the reasons I’m on an ACL stage right now. I just think, “Nobody’s gonna outdo you at doing you.” I got asked earlier what genre our music would be, and I honestly go back to the word “authentic.” Especially coming from somewhere like Dallas, where we have one-of-one artists, I’ve always strived to be that. I’m inspired by Erykah Badu not because she makes me want to be like her, but because she makes me want to be myself. I really try to push that out when I’m onstage.
LUNA: What advice do you have for people who might struggle with feeling authentic in who they are?
MCCLOUD: As hard as it is in this society to be yourself, it is so much easier than putting on a front your whole life. It’s so much easier to just do you than to try to show up as something you think you’re supposed to be.
LUNA: There are a lot of creative elements that go into your clothing, your music and your sound. Where do you find everyday creativity?
MCCLOUD: I find creativity in an undying need to not be poor. It’s a fear of poverty, is what it is. Honestly, it’s that first and foremost. Second, creativity has always been a great way for me to express the jumbled-up mess that’s in my head. Not to keep going back to Badu, but there’s a quote she had onstage the night I snuck backstage and rapped for her: “If you have a dream, write it down, because spelling is a spell.” Everything that has happened in my life in barely the past year, I’ve written about. I’ve written “Bitch, I am the art show,” and I’ve gotten to play some amazing art galleries. I’ve talked about needing all these labels to know me, and now we have our first agency. I’m almost tricking myself into being the confident person I’m trying to be. It’s like meditation, mantras or affirmations: you repeat things. I’m just creatively making affirmations and getting paid to do it.
LUNA: Fun and good vibes are a big part of your shows. What do you hope fans feel when they see you live?
MCCLOUD: I feel like it’s a much better experience for people at my show to really focus on the fact that no one there is thinking about them. That’s a way of being and a way of thinking that people can take with them anywhere. I just want people to be present in the moment, even after they leave the show. If people don’t work on themselves and their own problems, it tends to create problems for everybody. That’s why I think our shows are so much fun, because you can really see people just “release their inhibitions and feel the rain on their skin.”
LUNA: Is there anything else you want fans to know about you?
MCCLOUD: If I can be here at ACL; if I can have the year I’m having right now (without a doubt the best year of my entire life) after the year I had before it, when I went through some shit; and if I can come out the other side because I really put the work into myself and focused on loving myself, there’s no reason anybody else in the world can’t do the exact same thing.
