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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
Actually
Intricate
Freedom
Individuality
Anything
Faithful
Kind
Opposite
Opposites
Totally
Following
Design

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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 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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Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
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If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.
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Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
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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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If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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