Art & Creativity Quote by John Abercrombie

Abercrombie’s line is a quiet flex disguised as a warning: your originality is never pure, because your ears are always working overtime. He frames influence not as a conscious scrapbook of licks and references, but as something bodily, almost chemical - music “seeps” in. That verb matters. It suggests saturation, osmosis, the way a scene, a decade, a record collection can dye your instincts before you’ve even chosen a note.

The split between “consciousness” and “unconsciousness” is the real tell. On the surface, he’s reassuring young players who fear sounding derivative: you don’t have to force inspiration; it will arrive when you least notice. Underneath, he’s also naming the musician’s uneasy truth: you are being composed by what you consume. Practice isn’t only scales and metronomes; it’s attention. Listening becomes a form of authorship, shaping phrasing, harmony, tone, even the kinds of risks you think are available.

Coming from a jazz guitarist associated with ECM’s cool clarity and post-bop elasticity, the context sharpens. Abercrombie’s own sound feels like a conversation between traditions - the bluesy grain of American guitar, the spacious European production aesthetic, the restless harmonic language of modern jazz. His point isn’t that you can steal well; it’s that the best artists build a porous identity. They let the world in, then trust the subconscious to return it rearranged, personal, and strangely inevitable.