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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
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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Ever
Fresh
Play
Test
Sometimes
Tests
Work
Painful
Demolish
Flow
Delusions
Therefore
Continually
Challenges
Challenging
Practice
Delusion
More quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch
Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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
Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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
The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
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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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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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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
If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
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