Bubbles are incredibly basic. We think of them in that way just because they’re a kid’s toy. But I think it’s more basic than childhood, something primal – the liquid, the flow, the shapes. We were liquid at one point in our development.
Steak and its accompaniments – wine, vegetables, potatoes and generous desserts – is a primal source of pleasure to which many people can relate.
I have a theory that there’s almost this primal viewpoint on women in the business, that once you’re beyond childbearing age, you are perceived as nonthreatening, nonsexual, noncastable. Sure, I already knew it before I got into it. I just didn’t know I’d end up making my living from low-budget, independent films.
When you want something enough, it brings out primal emotions. You get into this place of ‘must happen, must happen.’
The creation of God itself, I deduced, came from our primal fear.
It’s Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony I’m really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.
The human voice: mysterious, spontaneous, primal. For me, the human voice is the vessel on which all emotions travel – except perhaps jealousy. And the breath, the breath is the captain of that vessel.
The horror genre gets you in touch with our primal instincts as a people more than any other genre I can think of. It gives you this chance to sort of reflect on who we are and look at the sort of uglier side that we don’t always look at, and have fun with that very thing.
My brokenness has made me become more primal, more instinctual.
Dame Edna is that rarest sighting in our time of the absolute comic, an inspired personification of caprice whose comedy answered the primal call to take the audience for a tumble.
Walking is magic. Can’t recommend it highly enough. I read that Plato and Aristotle did much of their brilliant thinking together while ambulating. The movement, the meditation, the health of the blood pumping, and the rhythm of footsteps… this is a primal way to connect with one’s deeper self.
The fact that monasticism preceded the identification of greed as a primal sin is an important reminder that our very ability to name sin is a theological achievement.
You build up coming out to this horrible moment. It’s so stressful, there’s so much adrenaline, and there’s so much primal fear – even though I know my parents to be good people – that they’re going to reject you.
Fear is ubiquitous in human life. It starts in infancy with our primal state of helplessness, where we can see what’s going on but we can’t move to get it. As we grow older we become a little more able to get what we want but then we’re going to die so that gives fear another boost.
Light is a powerful substance. We have a primal connection to it. But, for something so powerful, situations for its felt presence are fragile.
I never grew up with a mother’s hand – that’s why I will forever be insecure, I think, in that primal way.
I think Los Angeles is often portrayed as kind of a petri dish, where bad decisions start and then spread to the rest of the world. I don’t see it that way. I feel Los Angeles is a place of almost primal struggle and survival. It’s not a city that embraces its inhabitants.
You need to make people think about society in a less literal and more primal way. It’s about using the least amount of sounds to make the most amount of noise and energy, and making a bass stab really feel like you’ve been punched in the face.
It’s not like I don’t have my own wants and dreams anymore – it’s just that the kids come first. It’s primal.
Possession and exorcism is something that’s in every religion and every culture. It’s a real primal fear: Is the body a vessel for our spirits? What happens if something else takes over it? Where does the spirit go?
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