Free Play Quotes

“We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“Structure ignites spontaneity.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“But somehow, even when we are grown up and “adjusted,” everything we do and are—our handwriting, the vibrato of our voice, the way we handle the bow or breathe into the instrument, our way of using language, the look in our eyes, the pattern of whorling fingerprints on our hand—all these things are symptomatic of our original nature.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“When we are totally faithful to our own individuality, we are actually following a very intricate design.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“For art to appear, we have to disappear”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“These interreflecting themes, the prerequisites of creation, are playfulness, love, concentration, practice, skill, using the power of limits, using the power of mistakes, risk, surrender, patience, courage, and trust. Creativity is a harmony of opposite tensions, as encapsulated in our opening idea of lila, or divine play.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“Ultimately, the only techniques that can help us are those we invent ourselves.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“I play with my partner; we listen to each other; we mirror each other; we connect with what we hear. He doesn’t know where I’m going, I don’t know where he’s going, yet we anticipate, sense, lead, and follow each other. There is no agreed-on structure or measure, but once we have played for five seconds there is a structure, because we’ve started something. We open each other’s minds like an infinite series of Chinese boxes. A mysterious kind of information flows back and forth, quicker than any signal we might give by sight or sound. The work comes from neither one artist nor the other, even though our own idiosyncrasies and styles, the symptoms of our original natures, still exert their natural pull. Nor does the work come from a compromise or halfway point (averages are always boring!), but from a third place that isn’t necessarily like what either one of us would do individually. What comes is a revelation to both of us. There is a third, totally new style that pulls on us. It is as though we have become a group organism that has its own nature and its own way of being, from a unique and unpredictable place which is the group personality or group brain.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

“Questo libro è un vero e proprio viaggio all'interno di se stessi, alla ricerca delle sorgenti della propria creatività. E' un libro sull'arte nel senso più profondo del termine, sul perchè facciamo arte e su cosa apprendiamo quando la facciamo. Il gioco libero della vita è rivolto a tutti coloro che vogliono entrare in contatto con la propria energia spirituale e accrescere la propria creatività. Per raggiungere questi obiettivi, l'autore integra i più svariati materiali provenienti da molteplici campi disciplinari: arti, scienze e tradizioni spirituali dell'intera umanità. Nell'utilizzare aneddoti e storie illuminanti, ci mostra con chiarezza come la creatività sgorghi effettivamente da noi, ma anche quanto facilmente l'ispirazione possa essere bloccata o deviata dagli inevitabili accadimenti della vita. Ma questi blocchi possono essere rimossi - e questo libro ci insegna come - per finalmente creare esprimendo la nostra vera voce.”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch, Il gioco libero della vita: Trovare la voce del cuore con l'improvvisazione