Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Practice
Delusion
Ever
Fresh
Play
Test
Sometimes
Tests
Work
Painful
Demolish
Flow
Delusions
Therefore
Continually
Challenges
Challenging

More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch

Image
Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
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
Image
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
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
Image
We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
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
Image
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