Quote

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.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Life
Series
Ultimate
Development
Journey
Endpoint
Open
Provisional
Creative
Breakthroughs
Soul
Breakthrough
Find
Ended

More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.
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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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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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Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
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With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
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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 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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Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
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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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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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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.
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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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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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There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
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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
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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
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.
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
Stephen Nachmanovitch