I now have one certainty in life...
Yesterday was just plain horrible: on a scale of One to Bad, it was Terrible.
Okay so the people themselves weren't bad, quite the opposite; there was the driver, whose name I can't recall for some reason, a pink-haired girl called Kat (OMG secutatrix SHE HAS STOLEN YOUR VOICE. It's scary. I mean.. I closed my eyes and you were there in the car. She wasn't quite as awesome as you, but still pretty damn cool) -the two had an interesting dialogue involving finding names for the twins they were likely to have: the choices were a) Fish & Chips, b) Syd & Nancy. There was also Lauri from Spain and Manuela from Italy.
We drove forever, 2 Many DJ's playing loudly in the background while everyone (save yours truly) was smoking like a chimney on a cold winter night. So far so good. We eventually got to Camberley (which is ludicrously FAR from Camden), and that's when it started going downhill. Fast.
I got paired up with Lauri so that she could show me how their little scam works (apparently it's quite a common practice as well -some people said they'd already bought paintings from similar people). So each one of them's got a different story, and my partner spun a tale of penniless art graduates painting together in Camden, and exhibiting their paintings door to door as a protest against the commission galleries take (which, in itself, is true). And then she started showing the 'paintings', each one more craptastic than the other, and the worst part is they claim to paint them themselves.
Now, I may just be a selfish elitist poseur of an artist, but that doesn't sit well with me on several levels: for starters, I CANNOT take credit for something I haven't done, no matter -and I should say especially- how ugly. I simply could not live with myself selling these pathetic excuses for art they have in their portfolios. They even had a terrible Dali reproduction made with AIRBRUSHES and oil.
So I stayed with her for a bit, and then climbed back in the car to wait for the evening to finish. I had a discussion/argument with the driver (whom I can't help but compare to a pimp, as he 'moves' girls from street to street. there's something truly terrifying/pathetic involved here), who, it turns out, has studied art for 8 years, and was a artistic director in Georgia.. He quit that and came to London, and apparently has no qualms selling crap art to uneducated (rich) masses.
I just can't make that disctinction -between art and sales-. I might just be overly sensitive, I don't know. In any case, I am glad I tried out, because any experience is enriching, no matter how /soiled/ you feel afterwards.
This is Syl, heading back down the trail of job hunting, signing out!
And for those of you who want to skip the whining, here's a pretty awesome short animation movie
On another note: I met a guy called Lee in Camden again today. He's always gettting people to sign up for causes like asthma prevention and help for abused kids, and he's covered in piercings and he rocks. Yay.