Word: primally
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...more we monkey with nature, the more we seek assurance that somewhere it is beyond our tinkering. To a world idling in traffic, "Alaska" strikes a primal chord. Our longing expresses itself in mail-order catalogs full of the back-to-nature look and in the popularity of films like Dances with Wolves, The Last of the Mohicans and A River Runs Through It, viewed by urban audiences sitting elbow-to-elbow in the dark. Most will never know what it is to be dwarfed by an old-growth forest, spy brook trout sipping mayflies or hear a wolf howl...
Holiday dwelled and worked, however, on a plane of pure, primal feeling, and by that standard -- on her level -- this package contains peerless music. Like a superb actress, Holiday knew how to internalize her turmoil. She had too much pride in her womanhood, her race and her artistry to turn herself into a sorry paradigm of self-pity. Rather she could make each song she sang a personal testament -- a confession, a regret, a reverie. She did not trade on her personal devastation. She used it till the end, to drive her artistry...
Coppola composes movies as Wagner composed operas, setting primal conflicts to soaring emotional lines. The force of his will is as imposing as the range of his art. He goes for majesty over subtlety and, often as not, finds what he's looking for. Magic-lantern images are everywhere: in the blood pouring from an altar crucifix; in the Castle Dracula chauffeur garbed as Darth Vader; in the endless supertrain of the count's cape; in the placental gel and rat's-nest cocoons that encase the vampire. But more: in the wonderfully spectral mood that does justice...
Turns out 14 Plympton St. was in less danger than I thought. But I wondered, what is it about the Harvard party scene that brings out the primal spirit in people? Is it that we don't have frat houses with big trenches to fill with beer? Is it that, in drunkenness, the neat divisions we draw in the day time blur and confuse us? I'm not sure. It reminds me of a scene I once saw on television: A man feigned injury on a New York City street. He laid there hours and none of the thousands...
Like all good industrial music, Nine Inch Nails' sound is so overwhelmingly technical that it becomes primal. Speed ("Wish" clocks in at 180 beats per minute) and volume give the EP a sense of manic urgency. Broken also celebrates destructive impulse in all its magnetic horror and beauty. It is violence you can dance to. "1000 lips/ 1000 tongues/ 1000 throats/ 1000 lungs/ 1000 ways to make it true/ I want to do terrible things...