I think she’s asking where the pleasure is in this work. It’s in the making, I know that much, though the process itself isn’t exactly pleasurable. It is, as the composer chronicled, a series of difficult questions. Attending to those questions demands both work and labor. Maybe I need another word. Casting about, I come up with service. We’re in service to the art, I tell my student, bent to it. There’s pleasure in this posture, in being bettered by the work. It isn’t the pleasure of mastery, but the pleasure of being mastered.
