Collaboration

          “When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in any way.”

                     The Beatles said it in one sentence- when you’re younger, you get a hundred ideas a day, everything seems great and possibilities are all around you. It’s only as you get older you realise that the world isn’t as keen as you are. Heck, even your family isn’t as keen as you are. Or friends.

                     If that first paragraph seemed bleak, it needn’t be. Because there’s an upshot- when you work with other people, they pull you through. When things don’t seem to be going anywhere, they are the ones that get you out. Whether you like it or not, they remind you that what you want is worth fighting for.

                  This is another thing I’ve learned- it’s called the creative “industry” for a reason. My brother in law is a music producer (he wrote and performed our brilliant theme tune, one everyone deserves to hear). That sounds great, but he still has to fill in forms, make phone calls and tears his hair out once in a while.

                   But people don’t want to hear that. They want a creative person to be the butt of the joke, a softened liberal dandy who exists purely in a dreamworld. They’re either so incredibly successful that you can’t live their life, or they are the losers who pave the way to the job centre.

              It never occurs to anyone that there is the middle ground, those of us who work hard to try and push a creative project. What I find is if I talk to someone for more than five minutes about Polycomical, Reynard City and what I want to do, then their eyes light up. What a great idea!

              Sadly, life is more like the quote from Men In Black “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals. And you know it” I have found this to be true throughout my life- get a kid on their own in the common room and you can talk no probs, but amongst their mates they become irritating jocks who nick your bag and mock your feeble chatup techniques (and in all fairness quite rightly so).

                What I will say is this- I’ve been lucky. I work with a lot of decent people, too many to mention here (though Dom is one of them and a particularly loyal one at that). What I’d like you to do is go on www.reynardcity.co.uk and read the comic. Decide for yourself if you like it, and if you do, don’t keep it to yourself, pass it on!

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