On Colour Photocopying

I’ve been trying to work out how to articulate the “philosophy of creativity” that we’re baking into OFFBEAT. It’s a game about music, and about DIY, and about the confidence which comes with figuring stuff out as you go along. I feel like there’s something really important that ties all those themes together, but it’s hard to put it into words.

Anyway, here’s a story. When I was 18 or so, me and some friends were given a lift to a music festival by someone’s dad. It was that time in life when adults are constantly asking you about your future. I suppose they’re aware that you’re at the start of adulthood, maybe going off to university, thinking about your career and all that big life crap. And this dad who was driving us to the festival was no exception, and I remember him asking “What do you guys want most from life?” Maybe he was having some kind of mid-life crisis too, I don’t know. So we went around the car and gave those kinda interview-eseque answers that you assume the adults are looking for - I want a nice house in a big city, I want a good job, I want to get married to someone. Lofty, distant, self-important stuff. Blah blah blah. 

In the back seat of the car was someone I didn’t know so well. She was a musician, in a scrappy DIY sort of way. She burned homemade albums onto CDs and put on gigs in pub basements. Her answer to the dad’s question was absolutely brilliant and I think about it all the time. When asked what she wanted most from life, her answer was “a cheap way to do colour photocopying”.

At the time we probably laughed and the conversation probably moved on, but it stayed with me. She needed cheap colour photocopying, I assume, in order to make fancier covers for homemade CDs, and better-looking posters. Black and white photocopying is cheap, but it imposes a certain creative limitation. She was trying to overcome that limitation.

This all happened over 20 years ago and I really can’t remember all the details (or even what her name was) but we can extrapolate a little further. It’s tempting to say “her ambition was to be a musician” but actually, she was already a musician. I don’t think she was necessarily making a living at music at that stage, but she was certainly writing music, and performing it, and collaborating with interesting people, and going on adventures. She wasn’t going to wait until some institution gave her permission to make that reality. She was already living the dream. She just wanted to carry on doing so. 

I think if your answer to “what do you want most from life” is something simple and immediate and practical, it probably indicates that you’re a happy person. It means you’re already living in your ambition, rather than putting it off somewhere on the horizon. We live in a time where the cost of living is high and life is hard for a lot of folks, but at the same time, access to creative tools has never been cheaper. In 1996, if you wanted a studio-grade digital sampler, it would have cost you more than a car. These days, there are free apps that do a much better job. There are still plenty of other barriers to being creative, but I think they’ve moved somewhere else. And I think DIY is part of the answer.

I never found out if that person found a cost-effective way to make colour photocopies, by the way, but it’s certainly something I’d find useful nowadays. Please do get in touch if you have an angle.

Oh, yeah, and this all relates to OFFBEAT somehow, too. I’ll keep thinking about it.