Printer Math

I accidentally had to do some abstract mental mathematics today when I needed to print my Life Story Poem script double-sided. In retrospect, the solution was obvious, though getting there required passing through a very uncomfortable fog of confusion.

Here’s why:

The problem became clear during rehearsal. My co-musician, Doc the Drummer, was struggling to flip through my script while playing the cajón during several duets we co-wrote (him on cajón, me on harp). We were in my set room, and more than once he had to turn a page mid-groove. Totally impossible. His suggestion was simple and correct: make the script double-sided.

As a millennial, I am both fascinated and terrified by printers. They are capable of incredible feats, but rarely perform them, much like most millennials.

A few days later in my studio control room, Kieran Davey and I opened the print settings. Unsurprisingly, I was horrified to see no obvious “2-sided” option. UGGHH. But then, shockingly, Kieran found a “double-sided” option somewhere. The printer instructed us to reinsert the pages after the first pass, and we successfully printed a four-page double-sided test.

“Eureka!” I thought. Prematurely.

Kieran and I didn’t meet during the week of Christmas. In that time, I refined the script - adjusting spacing so that no cajón-involved song began on an odd page and continued onto an even one. Ten days later (today, December 30th), we tried to print the newest draft.

No luck.

Across two computers and two phones, we could not find any reference to the double-sided option we knew existed. Very frustrating. UGGHH.

Then I remembered: you can always print only even pages or only odd pages.

The script, once 60 pages, had been shortened and condensed—fewer words, tighter emoji cues—until it was exactly 18 pages. That meant 9 sheets. A golden number.

My first thought was confident and logical:

“Okay Andrew, you definitely need to print the even pages first, because there will always be one more even than odd.”

So I did.

In my hands: pages 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18.

Then came the hard part: how do these go back into the printer? And in what orientation?

I did it wrong.

After some digging, I found a “More Settings” button, which contained multiple tabs, and within that, an “Even More Settings” button. There I discovered an option to print odd pages in reverse order. So I printed the even pages, then the odd pages in reverse.

Still wrong.

That’s when it finally clicked.

The printer always prints the last page first.

Which meant I didn’t need the “even more settings” button at all.

The correct, consistent process is simply this:

1. Print the even pages

2. Flip the stack upside-down (do not rotate it)

3. Reload the stack into the printer

4. Print the odd pages

That’s it.

Obvious—but only after walking through the confusion.