Nor would it apply to the tunes performed by Elizabeth Worgan and Nick McCall, SCH Academy students who had the gumption to get up on stage, borrow the guitar of their Grammy-winning guest lecturer, and sing their own compositions.
Worgan and McCall both elicited praise from Cash. The singer loved the phrase "the battle hymn of misery" in a song Worgan wrote about the death of Amy Winehouse. And after McCall got through delivering a confidently soulful vocal on a song he thinks he's going to call "Crawl," Cash told him that he reminded her of the Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice.
Cash visited the school as its 2012 Dempsey Writer in Residence, with duties that included teaching the master class and addressing an assembly of 500 students, for whom she performed and read from her 2010 memoir Composed. But she didn't come to Chestnut Hill from her home in Manhattan just to lavish praise on talented teens.
Quite the opposite. Instead, as she said in an early-morning interview, she hoped to convey the idea that being an artist of any kind requires more than talent and inspiration.
"My friend Steven Pressfield wrote a book called The War of Art, and he said, 'You have to show the muse you're serious,' " Cash said. " 'You have to show up, and keep showing up, even if it's awful and you're insecure.' "
"I think it's irresponsible when people tell kids, 'Just be yourself,' " she continued. "All that does is inflate their sense of entitlement. Of course they're going to be themselves, but they have to bring a work ethic to it. You have to pair it with revision, and editing, and a willingness to take risks. You have to be willing to fail without getting derailed."
