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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.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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Stephen Nachmanovitch
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 2
Author
Jazz Musician
Happens
Transformation
Self
Listening
Writing
Painting
Kind
Playing
Eros
Love
Looking
Swept
Reading
Composing
Fall
Submit
Away
Require

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Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
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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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Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
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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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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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If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.
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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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Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.
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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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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.
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There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
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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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Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
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The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
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Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
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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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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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The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
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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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