Brian Damkroger

I was in a jam. John Atkinson was gently reminding me of rapidly approaching deadlines, and my longtime reference CD player, the Simaudio Moon Eclipse, had just been recalled for an upgrade. This wouldn't normally have been a problem, but I was also in the middle of relocating from New Mexico to California, and all of my backup gear was either in storage or on a moving truck somewhere.

I had a wonderful audio moment the other night. It was late in the evening, after a long day. I was standing in the middle of my makeshift listening room—Trish's dining room—and in spite of the fact that we were moving in just a few weeks, I'd just unpacked and set up my combo of VPI TNT Mk.V-HR turntable and tonearm with Grado Statement cartridge and dug a box of LPs out of the stacks in the garage. I cued up Dave Brubeck's Time Out (Columbia/Classic CS 8192), and the first notes of "Blue Rondo à la Turk" froze me in my tracks.

My life is characterized by periods of relative calm interrupted by huge transitions. This last year has been a doozie, with changes in just about every aspect of my life: new cars, motorcycles, and guitars, new jobs and relationships, and, finally, the contemplation of a cross-country move. With a little bit of luck, all of this upheaval will end in a long period of relative calm.

As part of my employer's never-ending attempts to transform me from an engineer into a manager, I am constantly being sent to seminars and courses, some of which are eminently practical—like "Managers and the Law," which taught us how to avoid getting ourselves and our company sued. Others are more esoteric, like a recent seminar on "paradigm shifts." A paradigm shift, we were told, is a fundamental change in the way we look at things, arising from a change in a belief so inherent that it's unconscious.