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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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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Surrender
Musician
Creativity
Business
Music
Improvising

More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making.
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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There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
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
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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.
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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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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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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Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.
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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Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
Stephen Nachmanovitch