Lessons with Z. - waging the battle

This blog started as an attempt to define things for myself while on the path to being a composer. To continue in that vein, I am finally listening to and transcribing excerpts from my lessons with Z. between 2000 and 2004.

Z: Did I tell you that in my enjoyment of music class they told me about "art" and "artist?" I said, "Now the time has come to tell you you're full of shit. Most of you don't know what an 'artist' is, you don't even know what 'art' is, so how could you possibly delineate a practitioner of something that isn't 'art?'" So, after struggling for about five minutes, one of them said, "Well, are there degrees of talent?" Yes. "Well then, anybody who's talented and who makes something is an artist." And then, the farther we got into it, this is what came out: "Anybody who does something well that I can't do, is an artist." And that's the attitude that is right off the record liners: he's and artist, she's an artist, everybody's an artist. So finally, what's an artist? You have to reserve, it would seem to me, that word for something that's special. What percentage of what you hear is of that quality? Well, their answer was: "If I like it, then that's about as far as I go." Then now, you begin to go into, one kid said, "Maybe it's like two or three percent." I said, "Maybe." He said, "Are you an artist?" I said, "I don't know. I don't know if what I do is art. Time will tell. But, I know when I'm in the presence of non-art." But that's for me. I'm not telling you that it's a world standard. There is no world standard.
fp: Well, then how do you wage the battle if there is no world standard?
Z: You wage the battle...the battle is... you, Frank, come to your conclusions that satisfy your unrelenting standards. Because, if your standards are not unrelenting, then you're full of shit and you have none. So, you see me struggle, you struggle. You see me do what I have to do to come to my own conclusion, that's all I encourage you to do.
fp: What is the difference, then, ...when does that become zealotry? Or is it?
Z: That's a character thing, when you become a zealot, when your position, now you want to become an evangelist...
fp: Are you conscious of, if there's a point in your teaching these idiots, that you could easily get into evangelims, that you could easily become...
Z: what I'm evangelizing is the process, not the answer.
fp: The process for yourself...
Z: No! Any process. For all of them. All of us have to arrive at, and discover a process. That I am an evangelist about. Arrive at your position through information, taste and experience, with whatever insights God gave you at birth. Yes, I'm a zealot, but that's not about "You gotta get to where I got." But they misunderstand that. They'll always think that what you're doing at first is telling them what's good. I show them how I got, how I get to what I think is good, and I say to them, "You now have to do the same thing." Not to get to that same place, but you still have to get to it doing what I do which is: seriously, honestly, painfully, studiously... so then, you carry that over into your own work. The process is everything. So, it's not zealotry. It certainly is passion about the activity as being inevitable and irreplaceable. You can't replace it. Now, most people are not interested in it - fuck 'em! You tell them once. Your job is to teach them, is to tell them. Now, they don't want any? Fuck 'em! Did you understand how I got there? Did you hear how I said it? Now, it's up to you - let's get on with something else. That's my responsibility. But the mistake is to try to convince, to try to make the deaf hear. That's a big mistake, and I made it all the time when I was a young teacher. The deaf will not hear and the blind will not see and that's end of the discussion. So you have to be compassionate and kind and move on.