Pearls from artists* # 609

At the World Premier of “Barbara Rachko: True Grit” during the Newport Beach Film Festival

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Whether we are creating high art or a meal, we improvise when we move with the flow of time and with our own evolving consciousness, rather than with a preordained script or recipe. In composed or scripted art forms, there are two kinds of time: the moment of inspiration in which a direct intuition of beauty or truth comes to the artist; then the often laborious struggle to hold onto it long enough to get it down on paper or canvas, film or stone. A novelist may have a moment (literally a flash) of insight into which the birth, meaning, and purpose of a new book reveal itself; but it may take years to write it. During this time he must not only keep the thought fresh and clear, he must also eat, live, make money, suffer, enjoy, be a friend, and everything else human beings do. In composed music or theater, moreover, there is yet a third kind of time: besides the moment (or moments) of inspiration and time it takes to write the score, there is the time of the actual performance. Often the music is not even performed until after the composer’s death.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

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