Lasers and Pink Floyd…. in a planetarium. Think about that for a second. How perfect does that sound?
Friday night I was invited to a different kind of concert experience at the Boston science museum. For someone who loves music and science as much as I do, I was more than excited when I was told about a planetarium laser show...but set to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon? Oh yes. As a kid, I remember walking into Borders book store with my parents every so often. They would tell my sisters and me to go get a single book. While my little sister escaped to the manga section and my older sister went to the Young Adult novel section, I found myself in the astronomy section trying to find the least expensive book in a sea of high level textbooks. After presenting a small, but hefty in page numbers, book to my parents they would laugh at the price (almost always far more than they were ever willing to spend) and they would walk back with me to pick out a much less thorough but less expensive option.
That story wasn't just one. It happened nearly every time we found ourselves in a book store, making my at home library much like the astronomy section in Barnes & Noble. From reading each of those books from cover to cover to taking hours upon hours just to listen to and analyze albums of artists I only dream to meet, the opportunity to listen to one in a planetarium seemed like a combination of past and recent lives.
Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was always the album that was saved for very specific occasions. I remember a dark raining night in London, pushing my bed against the window so I could lay with my head hanging out from the second story and Pink Floyd streaming from a speaker just loud enough to mask my thoughts but not the sound of the rain pouring on my face. It is the album I dissociate to and the album I had never listened to unless the situation required. This was one of the first times I had ever listened to the album while in a relatively good and positive mood.
Despite the fact that it was windy, and snowing in Boston that night, I was more than excited for the show. Though it still gave me that second world feeling, the album (set to a laser show, can't forget that) brought out my little scientist as I sat and laughed as the laserist used his laser pointer to point out the exit signs just before starting the show.
The whole show was about an hour including a stellar encore that I didn't want to end. Can't wait to have the opportunity to see another of these shows, and if you can, I highly recommend!
