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Stephen Nachmanovitch

Stephen Nachmanovitch Quotes

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Famous Stephen Nachmanovitch Quotes

“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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Book:Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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“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.”

PeopleThinkingChildrenDoeSometimesEnoughForgetStruggleSourceFoolSakeAcceptedMaskConformityOfferingQualifiedProfessionalismChildlikeCredentialsBeing Accepted
Book:Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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“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.”

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Book:Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
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“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.”

KnowsArtSocialProcessChallengesAcceptingCreativityCreativePlanetsUltimateInstitutionsEmbraceSurrenderPassingPassingsPrimariesOutcomesCherishConformityCreative ProcessOur PlanetFind MeInsistingEmbrace LifeSocial Being
Author:Stephen Nachmanovitch
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