The World of Technicolour
On dullness, the mundane, and grey cars.
I watched La La Land again the other day.
I’ve watched it plenty of times before – especially when it first came out – but somewhere along the way I realised it’s nearly ten years old now. Ten years. That surprised me enough to press play again.
And honestly…I hadn’t remembered just how colourful it is.
Not polished for effect, but unapologetically vibrant. Yellows that feel warm. Blues that linger. Reds that don’t seem concerned about subtlety. The whole film feels as though it believes colour still matters.
It left me with a question I haven’t quite shaken:
Have we lost something since then?
Maybe that sounds nostalgic. Perhaps it is. Looking through rose-tinted glasses. But I don’t think this is only about films.
Later that week I was standing in the supermarket car park. Rows and rows of cars – black, silver, white, grey. Including my own. Entirely sensible. Entirely practical. Entirely…neutral.
Grey works. It doesn’t stand out. It doesn’t demand attention.
And somewhere along the way, it feels like we’ve grown comfortable with that. Blending in. Keeping things manageable. Choosing what feels safe.
No one sets out hoping for a dull life. And yet dullness rarely arrives dramatically. It slips in slowly. Routine after routine. Rush after rush. Days filled but barely noticed.
And yet, perhaps the ordinary isn’t colourless at all.
Perhaps colour keeps breaking through if we slow down enough to see it. Evening light falling differently on a familiar street. A bright coat on a grey morning. Steam rising from a takeaway coffee in cold air.
Small moments. Easily missed. The kind of colour that waits rather than shouts.
When I was younger, I loved old films from the Golden Age of cinema – the moment movies suddenly moved into colour. Everything felt brighter than life itself. Almost exaggerated. As if filmmakers were simply delighted that colour could finally be seen. Today our cameras are far better. They capture the world almost exactly as it is. Strangely though, as our technology has improved, much of life can feel flatter.
Communities feel more fragile. Attention more scattered. Presence harder to hold. We move quickly between things. Conversations shorten. Notifications interrupt. We adapt because we have to. We cope. We keep going. Sometimes without really noticing where we are. And settling like that often looks a bit like choosing grey.
The natural world, though, refuses neutrality. Colour persists whether we pay attention or not – moss against stone, sudden sunsets, birds brighter than seems necessary.
Creation carries on in technicolour.
Jesus once described his followers as salt and light – small things that quietly change their surroundings. Light doesn’t create colour; it reveals what was already there. Maybe faith looks less like escaping ordinary life and more like learning to notice it again. Not adding more noise. Not forcing brightness. Just paying attention.
There’s a line from an old Disney attraction that has stayed with me since childhood: the world is a carousel of colour.
I remember hearing it long before I understood what it meant. As a child it simply sounded joyful – a celebration of brightness and movement and possibility. The idea that the world itself was alive and turning, full of things worth looking at.
Perhaps that’s why it has stayed with me.
A carousel doesn’t create anything new. It simply turns, bringing what was already there back into view again and again. The same colours passing before your eyes – familiar, ordinary, easily missed – unless you choose to notice them.
And maybe that’s closer to reality than we realise.
The world has not become colourless. Life has not lost its depth. Much of what we long for may still be there, slowly coming back into view again and again, like a carousel turning – waiting for us to look up long enough to see it.
I still drive a grey car.
But I’m beginning to wonder whether following Jesus might sometimes mean resisting the slow drift into monochrome living, and rediscovering – in God, in creation, in one another – the colour that was never actually lost.
Only unnoticed.
Josh | A Curious Follower
A Curious Follower is a space for anyone who’s learning to slow down, live with intention, and follow the quiet tug of something deeper.
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