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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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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Evolution
Improviser
Three
Formless
Doe
Vacuums
Years
Vacuum
Operate
Organic
Billion
Billions

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The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
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We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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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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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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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 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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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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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 provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making.
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With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
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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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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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Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
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To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.
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There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
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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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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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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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