Block Quote by 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.” quote by Stephen Nachmanovitch — Download Open image

“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

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Block Creative Creative block Creativity Edges Facts Failure Frustrating Growing Importance Instant Mistake Opportunity Preconceptions Self Self importance Troublesome Turns

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

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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…

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In the art of teaching, we recognize that ideas and insights need to cook over a period of time. Sometimes the student who is least articulate about expressing the ideas is in fact the one who is absorbing and processing them most deeply. This applies as well to our own private learning of our art form; the areas in which…

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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…

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

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

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

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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.…

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Can you understand why the Congress, most states and most cities refuse to pass legislation requiring the registration and licensing of any and all guns? For the life of me, I can't. We must register our cars and be licensed to drive. In many places we must get licenses for dogs and even bicycles. Being required to register firearms and…

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One of those blocks (that prevent the 'Middle East from entering the mainstream of modernity') is the orthodox tenet that the Koran and the…

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The family is the building block for whatever solidarity there is in society.

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New York is so serious about the creation of work. Everything is happening so fast, it feels like there's another studio, another session on…

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Tentatively I stood a great lump of wood on the chopping block and bought the axe down on it. It flew into two perfect halves. Such was my elation that I ran inside, put on our ancient cracked record of Aretha Franklin singing Respect and danced all by myself for half an hour in our living room, without inhibition, almost…

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Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.

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There's an interesting book about that called The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower, written by Stephen H. Norwood. It has a long discussion about Harvard, and indeed the school's president, James Conant, did block Jewish faculty. He was the one who prevented European Jews from being admitted to the chemistry department - his field - and also had pretty…

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Block Quote by Stephen Nachmanovitch

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