Whispered words can be devastatingly effective. Stephen Nachmanovitch More Quotes by Stephen Nachmanovitch More Quotes From 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 boredom trying hands 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 struggle hands art If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak. Stephen Nachmanovitch gaps language speak 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 struggle children thinking There are only people doing their imperfect best at doing their imperfect jobs Stephen Nachmanovitch imperfect jobs people 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 rewards our-society creative 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 eggs artist practice Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways Stephen Nachmanovitch identity play way 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 cannot be defined, because in play all definitions slither, dance, combine, break apart, and recombine. Stephen Nachmanovitch definitions break play This is the evolutionary value of play- play makes us flexible. By reinterpreting reality and begetting novelty, we keep from becoming rigid. Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways. Stephen Nachmanovitch identity play reality 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 real responsibility mean 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 eye artist self Creative living, or the life of a creator, seems like a leap into the unknown only because "normal life" is rigid and traumatized. Stephen Nachmanovitch normal creative life-is With too little judgement, we get trash. With too much judgement, we get blockage. Stephen Nachmanovitch judgement too-much littles 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 falling-in-love reading writing If we operate with a belief in long sweeps of time, we build cathedrals; if we operate from fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter, we build ugly shopping malls. Stephen Nachmanovitch ugly shopping long I no longer sought skill, flexibility, strength, endurance, muscle tone, and quick responsiveness as means of imposing my will on the instrument, but rather of keeping an open and unrestricted pathway for the creative impulse to play its music straight from the preconscious depths beneath and beyond me. Stephen Nachmanovitch skills play mean Practice is an ever-fresh, challenging flow of work and play in which we continually test and demolish our own delusions; therefore, it is sometimes painful. Stephen Nachmanovitch practice challenges play 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 phases brain hands
