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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

More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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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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Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution
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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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There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
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Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
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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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