i can hear the fireworks going off, and saw some sprinkle themselves across the night sky as i was cycling back home. it reminded me of the hackney boys and how we set off fireworks in the rain in haggerston park last year.

now they’re no longer in hackney. and i miss them muchos.

i hate doing business accounts.

especially when i have to hand it in by tomorrow morning even though i’ve got to go for dinner tonight. i don’t think BPP does extensions.

double entry book-keeping is incredibly confusing, although i think i’m getting the hang of a profit and loss account and the balance sheet thingies. except for the provision for doubtful debts part. that makes my brain go into meltdown mode.

anyway. back to my homework before i get to go out for the last supper with the best friend and friends till december.

*update - have actually finished my accounting homework. although creative accounting means i shall put off reading chapter 3 till before my tutorial (it wasn’t necessary to have read it to do my homework. yay!)

am actually also at home after friends decided to watch season 2 or 3 of Lost. i was reminded, once again, of how annoying the audio is on the series, and made my excuses soon after they began their viewing.

the bunch of us were walking down charing cross road, past the national portrait gallery and talking about the exhibits that could be found there. there was an exchange about whether it was only portraits in the NPG, and i mentioned that yes it was all portraits but at the same time the NPG was trying to explore new mediums and new meanings of portraiture, and the reaction from R was ‘why are you a lawyer?’ i laughed it off at the time, and replied that being a lawyer would give me the money to buy art or to fund art, blah blah blah.

but the more i think about it, the more the question bugs me. not because i doubt that i want to be a lawyer, that isn’t in question at all.

what bothered me about the question was that it assumed that anyone who could talk about art and/or the creative industry ought to be involved in it. or rather, and i think this is the crux of the matter, that anyone who wasn’t involved in the artistic/creative industry is assumed to be incapable of talking intelligently about the arts and creativity.

it’s slightly insulting, really. don’t you think? it’s a bit like saying that if you’re not a musician, you’re not really qualified to talk about music. or if you’re not a writer, you can’t talk about books. or if you’re not a film-maker, you can’t talk about films.

maybe he was confusing being creative with being appreciative of creativity.

on my part, i don’t find that my lack of creativity hinders my appreciation of art, neither does it prevent me from critically appraising any exhibition that i view. my lack of art-schooling means that i tend not to go into shows with a pre-formed idea of how the works should be like, but it also means that i don’t always pick up on the influences or artistic asides that the work might display.

and because i’m not creative, i envy those who are, and who can produce works that invoke physical and/or emotional reactions, that engage my intellect and make me want to think about it for a while and then discuss it with someone else. it makes me less likely to dismiss a piece of work, and more likely to judge a piece on its own merits.

obviously not everyone might agree with my opinion, but that doesn’t matter because its art and its creative and there isn’t a right or wrong answer, just a visceral/cerebral response. and since everyone is different, everyone takes to a piece of work differently.

it doesn’t take 3 or 5 or a lifetime of art-school to make you capable of talking about art. neither does all that art-schooling make one an artist. it all depends on desire, intellect, curiousity, fate, luck and millions of other variables.

also, apparently, and this was in the papers so it must be true, bankers are one of the the largest collectors of contemporary art. so there you are, another group of people who look at a lot of boring numbers and information, but who appreciate art. (or they might just be buying it for investments sake, but then again, contemporary art isn’t really a very safe investment.) more people than just artists and creatives appreciate art and know about art and can talk intelligently about art. anyone with a curious mind will know more than is necessary for his or her occupational requirements - how boring will the world be if all we could talk about was what we did for our dayjobs? and how boring would the world be if we were only allowed to talk about our own industries?

anyway, i didn’t mind him making that statement. i might be making a mountain out of a molehill, and he probably didn’t mean anything by it.

it just makes me feel aggrieved that we stick labels onto people so easily, and we make judgements about people so quickly without even getting to know them better. if this teaches me anything, it’s that there is no ‘type’ and so if i don’t want to be ‘typified’ i ought to stop doing it to others as well. cos, y’know, it’s all karmic and come-back-to-bite-you-in-the-ass-dom.