Martin Scorsese, the legendary filmmaker behind 'Taxi Driver,' 'Goodfellas,' and 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' delivered the commencement address at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2014. Having grown up in a household without books but with constant exposure to movies, Scorsese spoke with the authority of someone who had spent fifty years turning disappointment into art. The word 'alchemized' was deliberately chosen — alchemy being the medieval attempt to turn base metals into gold. Scorsese was telling the graduates that disappointment, properly processed, doesn't just teach you a lesson. It transforms you. It becomes fuel for something new. But the alternative — being 'undone' by disappointment — was equally real. The difference between the artists who survive and the ones who don't is whether they learn this particular form of alchemy.