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The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Work
Creativity
Creation
Becomes
Present
Noun
Moment
Merge
Moments
Verb
Play
Nouns
Self
Verbs

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We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making.
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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
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With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
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Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
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Practice is an ever-fresh, challenging flow of work and play in which we continually test and demolish our own delusions therefore, it is sometimes painful.
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There are no prescriptive solutions, no grand designs for grand problems. Life's solutions lie in the minute particulars involving more and more individual people daring to create their own life and art, daring to listen to the voice within their deepest, original nature, and deeper still, the voice within the earth.
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Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
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Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.
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An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution
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The professionalism of technique and flash of dexterity are more comfortable to be around than raw creative power, hence our society generally rewards virtuoso performers more highly than it rewards original creators.
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Every moment of life is unique-a kiss, a sunset, a dance, a joke. None will ever recur in quite the same way. Each happens only once in the history of the universe.
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If the art is created with the whole person, then the work will come out whole. Education must teach, reach, and vibrate the whole person rather than merely transfer knowledge.
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The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
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Paradoxically, the more you are yourself, the more universal your message. As you develop and individuate more deeply, you break through into deeper layers of the collective consciousness and the collective unconsciousness.
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As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business I am in the surrender business.
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In improvisation, there is only one time. This is what computer people call real time. The time of inspiration, the time of technically structuring and realizing... the time of playing it, and the time of communicating with the audience, are all one.
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Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
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Brahms once remarked that the mark of an artist is how much he throws away. Nature, the great creator, is always throwing things away. A frog lays several million eggs at a sitting. Only a few dozen of these become tadpoles, and only a few of those become frogs. We can let imagination and practice be as profligate as nature.
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