If that’s how it makes you feel, she says, then why do you do it? Because there’s no other choice, I’m tempted to answer, if you’re compelled to make art. But 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.
