The Koan of Self‑Defense and Wise Response

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Stephen Nachmanovitch is widely known as a musical improviser, and wise teacher of improvisation. But his is an improvisation not separate from life; it is more that of a Zen master’s, tuning into the microscopic contingencies of everyday life, probing life itself as the ground for creativity and wonder. His earliest beginnings as a scientist, and later a student of psychology and scholar of William Blake, have afforded him a uniquely integrative view on the power of play and permeability, on the Pythagorean mysteries of the human mind. Most of all, he was a student of the great systems thinker Gregory Bateson, a presence one can feel when speaking with Stephen, whether through his recounting of anecdotes, his love of silence and patterns, or his generous, playful ways of relating. 

This conversation was perhaps a bit unusual for those who know Stephen’s work well: it didn’t so much focus on his two masterful books, Free Play and The Art of Is, as on the many resonances between his existential understanding of improvisation and the central questions that animate the enactive approach: Why is creativity a key feature of living organisms? Are humans born improvisers? What makes it such that computers can’t play? What makes improvisation an eminently ethical exercise in equality, and a template for democracy? Are there limits to improvisation as a tool for living well in society? How do we navigate the many tensions inherent in improvisation, between agency and letting be, between the safety of a temenos and the boundarilessness of interdependence? How do we more finely tune our semi-permeable membranes, discerning when to open and when to close? Where can we look for those “Pythagorean hippies” (as Bateson called them) who are able to see, before the rest of us, the patterns that connect all of life? 

True to his mentor’s aphorism, “there are no things, only relationships,” this conversation was a generous exercise of relationality, humility, creativity, and wisdom. 

Dr Stephen Nachmanovitch performs and teaches internationally as an improvisational violinist and at the intersections of multimedia, performing arts, ecology, and philosophy. He is the author of two books on the creative process, Free Play and The Art of Is. Born in 1950, he graduated in 1971 from Harvard with a degree in psychology and in 1975 from the University of California, where he earned a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness for an exploration of William Blake. His mentor was the anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson. He has taught and lectured in many countries on creativity and the spiritual, social, and ethical underpinnings of art, and on Bateson’s ecology of mind. Since the 1970s he has been a pioneer in free improvisation on violin, viola, and electric violin. He has presented lectures, master classes and workshops at many universities and conservatories, and has had numerous appearances on radio, television, and at music and theatre festivals. He has collaborated with other artists in media including music, dance, theatre, and film, and has developed programs melding art, music, literature, and computer technology. He has published articles in many fields since 1966 and has created computer software including The World Music Menu and Visual Music Tone Painter. He has been a Buddhist practitioner for decades and his Buddhist and musical practices inform each other. He is currently performing, recording, teaching, and writing. He lives with his family in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For more about Stephen’s work: www.imaginaryliberation.com | www.freeplay.com | https://youtu.be/t0bS-CcOYbQ

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