The mentor in creative work does not primarily transmit techniques but transmits a relationship to the work — a way of looking at it, being honest with it, returning to it when it resists. This is why the best mentors are often those who were themselves well-taught, not those who are most technically accomplished: what passes from person to person is an orientation, a standard, a proof that sustained creative work is possible. The debt owed to teachers is real but is best repaid not to them but forward, which is how traditions stay alive.
Each step builds on the last.