Quote

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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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Playing
Inspiration
Realizing
Structuring
Audience
Technically
Call
Communicating
Real
Improvisation
Time
Communicate
People
Computer

More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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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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An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution
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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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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
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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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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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Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
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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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Working within the limits of the medium forces us to change our own limits. Improvisation is not breaking with forms and limitations just to be 'free,' but using them as the very means of transcending ourselves.
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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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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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The power of mistakes enables us to reframe creative blocks and turn them around...The troublesome parts of our work, the parts that are most baffling and frustrating, are in fact the growing edges. We see these opportunities the instant we drop our preconceptions and our self-importance.
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With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
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The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
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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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The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
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Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
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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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If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.
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