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Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Drudgery
Practiced
Craft
Crafts
Action
Art

More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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There is not ultimate breakthrough what we find in the development of a creative life is an open-ended series of provisional breakthroughs. In this journey there is no endpoint, because it is the journey into the soul.
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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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To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.
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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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There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.
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Writing, playing, composing, painting, reading, listening, looking-all require that we submit to being swept away by Eros, to a transformation of self of the kind that happens when we fall in love.
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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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If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.
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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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When we are totally faithful to our own individuality, we are actually following a very intricate design. This kind of freedom is the opposite of just anything.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch