Stephen Nachmanovitch famous quotes

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Children #Creativity #Muse

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.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Change #Art #Lying

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

#Real #Inspiration #People

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Creativity #Play #Creative

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Creativity #Self #Play

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

#Hands #Boredom #Trying

To create, we need both technique and freedom of technique
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Technique #Needs

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

#Jobs #People #Imperfect

Structure ignites spontaneity. Limits yield intensity. When we play... by our self-chosen rules, we find that containment of strength amplifies strength.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Yield #Self #Play

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

#Play #Cost

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

#Art #Teach #Persons

Creativity can replace conformity as the primary mode of social being. . . . We can cling to that which is passing, or has already passed, or we can remain accessible to-even surrender to-the creative process, without insisting that we know in advance the ultimate outcome for us, our institutions, or our planet. To accept this challenge is to cherish freedom, to embrace life, and to find meaning.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Art #Creativity #Creative

Many musicians are fabulously skilled at playing the black dots on the printed page, but mystified by how the dots got there in the first place and apprehensive of playing without dots. Music theory does not help here; it teaches rules of the grammar, but not what to say. When people ask me how to improvise, only a little of what I can say is about music. The real story is about spontaneous expression, and it is therefore a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the technique of one art form or another.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Spiritual #Art #Real

It can sometimes be a hearbreaking struggle for us to arrive at a place where we are no longer afraid of the child inside us. We often fear that people won't take us seriously, or that they won't think us qualified enough. For the sake of being accepted, we can forget our source and put on one of the rigid masks of professionalism or conformity that society is continually offering us. The childlike part of us is the part that, like the Fool, simply does and says, without needing to qualify himself or strut his credentials.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Children #Struggle #Thinking

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

#Mistake #Block #Creativity

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

#Sunset #Kissing #Unique

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

#Moments #Surrender #Faithfulness

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

#Inspiration #Irritation #Pearls

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

#Art #Spring #Play

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

#World #Surprise

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

#Art #Crafts #Action

You can't express inspiration without skill.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Inspiration #Skills

Creativity exists more in the searching than in the finding.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Creativity #Findings

Commitment to a set of rules frees your play to attain a profundity and vigor otherwise impossible.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Commitment #Play #Vigor

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

#Creative #Rewards #Our Society

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

#Mean #Limits #Force

Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Memories #Iron #Intuition

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

#Play #Identity #Way

If form is mechanically applied, it may indeed result in work that is conventional, if not pedantic or stupid. But form used well can become the very vehicle of freedom, of discovering the creative surprises that liberate mind-at-play.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Stupid #Play #Creative

The beauty of playing together is meeting in the One.
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch

#Play #Together #Meetings