Primal Experience Quotes

I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, gospel music felt familiar, like I had heard it in the womb or something. A lot of those old gospel songs still give me that feeling, that it's older than time and there's actually music that can tap into a universal subconscious, or whatever word you want to put on it.

Live music is the most primal form of energy release you can share with other people besides having sex or taking drugs.

Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissingthe tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.

Everything was simple, physical, painful, exalting. The world consisted of the four elements - land and water, firepower and distancing air.

And silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight.

I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.

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.

Before I could read, I remember trying to piece together the stories from the images. It was a very primal experience.

You want to know if we're animals? When I'm on stage with the volume rippling my body like a glass of water and thousands of people are generating heat in my direction, there's no time for thought. My basement facilities take over completely. Sure it's animal. People might like to talk about art, but look where art is, in the gutter.

To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves.

Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation.

The cause I am most passionate about is natural birthing. I had my son at home, and it was the most primal, intuitive, empowering, and loving experience I've ever had.

Music is primal: when it's done without pretension, you can really feel the shape of someone's soul.

I think walking is a little more primal than art-making.

What is it that is eternal: the primal phenomenon, present in the here and now, of what we call revelation? It is man's emerging from the moment of the supreme encounter, being no longer the same as he was when entering into it.

Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.