of Obsolescence

There's a concert in the Student Association Centre right now, and I'm not running the mix. I'm sitting in the office checking my e-mail.

B (Currently "in training" and my replacement as of graduation) knows what he's doing. He did the soundcheck, the last-minute organization of artists and songs, and he even fixed a problem I caused when I was "helping" troubleshoot a noise problem.

What's even stranger than not being in the room is sitting beside the board and not being able to play with the knobs and switches. It's compulsive now: I have to tweak the knobs. It's easier to leave things alone without my "+5 headphones of engineering authority," but I still played with the monitor volume knobs once. And I pushed up the mains when B wasn't looking.

Most surreal of all is seeing the little mistakes that I make all the time myself: forgetting to turn on a mic because I'm too busy trying to get the next CD ready to play, focusing too much on the sound of one performer and missing the whole point of the piece, obsessing over one aspect of a strange PA system, things like that.

I wonder what B feels like.