Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by 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
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
Image
To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making.
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
We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.
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
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.
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
Image
There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
If we split practice from the real thing, neither one of them will be very real.
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
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
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
Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
Image
An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution
Stephen Nachmanovitch