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Overview
An international bestseller and beloved classic, Free Play is an inspiring and provocative book, directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured, and how finally it can be liberated—how we can be liberated—to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice.
Stephen Nachmanovitch, a pioneer in free improvisation, integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity, drawing on unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors. The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. Free Play brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781440673085 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/01/1991 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 282,689 |
| File size: | 18 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Sources
Inspiration and Time’s Flow
The Vehicle
The Stream
The Muse
Mind at Play
Disappearing
The Work
Sex and Violins
Practice
The Power of Limits
The Power of Mistakes
Playing Together
Form Unfolding
Obstacles and Openings
Childhood’s End
Vicious Circles
The Judging Spectre
Surrender
Patience
Ripening
The Fruits
Eros and Creation
Quality
Art for Life’s Sake
Heartbreakthrough
Notes
Bibliography
Illustrations
About the Author
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The author thanks the following for their permission to reprint from copyrighted works.
Constance Crown, for Hands by Rico Lebrun.
Walter Gruen, for Musica Solar by Remedios Varo.
Ben Berzinsky, for his photograph of a Carlo Bergonzi violin, c. 1770.
Grateful thanks to the late Arnold Fawcus of the Trianon Press, Paris, for permission to
photograph his magnificent William Blake books.
Artist Rights Society, Inc., for Two Children Drawing and Dawn Song by Pablo Picasso. © ARS
N.Y./SPADEM.
Charles E. Tuttle Co., Tokyo, Japan, for Tomikichiro Tokuriki’s Riding the Bull Home.
North Point Press, for excerpt from Wendell Berry’s essay, Poetry and Marriage.
For M. C. Escher’s Encounter © 1989 M. C. Escher Heirs/Cordon Art, Baarn, Holland.
Excerpts from “Burnt Norton” and “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets, © 1943 by T. S. Eliot
and renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot, .
Excerpt from The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life. Introduction by Carl Jung,
translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm, .
Excerpt from A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, © 1929 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc. and renewed 1957 by Leonard Woolf, .
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Nachmanovitch, Stephen.
Free play; improvisation in life and art / Stephen Nachmanovitch
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 9781440673085
1. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) 2. Improvisation (Music)
I. Title.
BH301.C84N-49303
153.3’5-dc2O CIP
Paint as you like and die happy.
HENRY MILLER
Acknowledgments
The following are only a few of the many friends and colleagues whose support, criticism, ideas, and other contributions were vital to the creation of this book:
Table of Contents
Free PlayPrologue: A New FluteIntroduction
The Sources
Inspiration and Time's Flow
The Vehicle
The Stream
The Muse
Mind at Play
Disappearing
The Work
Sex and ViolinsPractice
The Power of Limits
The Power of Mistakes
Playing Together
Form Unfolding
Obstacles and Openings
Childhood's End
Vicious Circles
The Judging Spectre
Surrender
Patience
Ripening
The Fruits
Eros and Creation
Quality
Art for Life's Sake
Heartbreakthrough
Notes
Bibliography
Illustrations
What People are Saying About This
"Stephen Nachmanovitch has produced a celebration of human uniqueness. What it amounts to is a guide for gettingthe most out of whatever is possible"
—Norman Cousins, author of The Anatomy of an Illness
"This is an unusually intense, packed, thought-through book on the most difficult subject in the world: mystic creativity. If you wantto be intellectually informed about how people actually craete things, then you should read it at least once."
—Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
"Would that Free Play found its way into every school, office, hospital, and factory. It is a most exciting book and a most important one."
—Yehudi Menuhin, violinist
"Nachmanovitch tells it like it is in the most important book on improvisation I've yet seen."
—Keith Jarrett, pianist
"Free Play is a superb guide for anyone who aspires to create, whatever medium."
—New Woman
"This book is important not only because it delves into the creative process, but also because Nachmanovitch creates the opportunity for the reader to get in touch with her/his own creative possibilities and abilities."
—Harvard Educational Review