Before and after

*Chapter 21 of my upcoming novel, Resurrection, is posted here. When we're exposed to new experiences we change and, once changed, we can never go back to where we were. But that is alright because now we can take the next step ahead. I remember as if it were yesterday an experience that forever changed my life. My first slap-in-the-face high-end audio exposure. First, a little background. I had always been interested in HiFi from as far back as I can remember. My father built his own rig, and then I did the same: a single driver mono turntable setup based on an old receiver. Mine was the envy of the neighborhood, the best sound anyone my age had heard. Move forward another decade and now my HiFi experiences were expanded to the studio monitors and headphones radio stations used—a real step up from my homebrew rig. But then I was invited to listen to a pair of JBL corner horns driven by an all Audio Research system. From the first needle drop, I knew this was sound from a different league. There was actually an image, something I had never experienced (other than the phantom center image we all get). From that moment on, I was forever changed. Which is exactly the point of this post. Were I to recreate that same setup and play the same music today, I'd no doubt have a good chuckle. What I listen to now, relative to what I heard in the past, is light years better. It's the magnitude of change—the major stepping stones—we get to experience that radically alter our lives. Perhaps this knowledge is what drives my lust for the upgraded experience. Just when I think it cannot get better, I remind myself that is simply not true. We can always move beyond the stepping stones of our experience.