Stephen Nachmanovitch Quotes

41 Sourced Quotes

Play, intrinsically rewarding, doesn't cost anything; as soon as you put a price on it, it becomes, to some extent, not play.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
The conception, composition, practice, and performance of a piece of music can blossom in a single moment.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
An improviser does not operate from a formless vacuum, but from three billion years of organic evolution

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Here the artist is, as it were, an archaeologist, uncovering deeper and deeper strata as he works, recovering not an ancient civilization, but something as yet unborn, unseen, unheard, except by the inner eye, the inner ear. He is not just removing apparent surfaces from some external object, he is removing apparent surface from the Self, revealing his original nature.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs

Stephen Nachmanovitch
The Western Idea of practice is to acquire a skill. It is very much related to your work ethic, which enjoins us to endure struggle or boredom now in return for future rewards. The Eastern idea of practice, on the other hand, is to create the person, or rather to actualize or reveal the complete person who is already there.... Not only is practice necessary to art, it is art.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways

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
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
Fidgeting and boredom are the symptoms of fear of emptiness, which we try to fill up with whatever we can lay our hands on.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Any action can be practiced as an art, as a craft, or as drudgery.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Artwork is not thought up in consciousness and then, as a separate phase, executed by the hand. The hand surprises us creates and solves problems on its own. Often, enigmas that baffle our brains are dealt with easily, unconsciously, by the hand.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Looking at the creative process is like looking into a crystal: no matter which facet we gaze into, we see all the others reflected.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Mastery means responsibility, ability to respond in real time to the need of the moment. Intuitive or inspired living means not just passively hearing the voice, but acting on it.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Every attempt we make is imperfect; yet each one of those imperfect attempts is an occasion for a delight unlike anything else on earth.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Every conversation is a form of Jazz. The activity of instantaneous creation is as ordinary to us as breathing.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
Technique itself springs from play, because we can acquire technique only by the practice of practice, by persistently experimenting and playing with our tools and testing their limits and resistances.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
To do anything artistically you have to acquire technique, but create through your technique and not with it.

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.

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
Play is the taproot from which original art springs. It is the raw stuff that the artist channels with all his learning and technique.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
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
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
Play, creativity, art, spontaneity, all these experiences are their own rewards and are blocked when we perform for reward or punishment, profit or loss.

Stephen Nachmanovitch
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
We provide both irritation and inspiration for each other- the grist for each other's pearl making.

Stephen Nachmanovitch