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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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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Freedom
Individuality
Anything
Faithful
Kind
Opposite
Opposites
Totally
Following
Design
Actually
Intricate

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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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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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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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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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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
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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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Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
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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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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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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
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With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
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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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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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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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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
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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.
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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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