Lying On My Back While Climbing A Stairway To Heaven

The way I tell the story: The Pacific Science Center saw that there were a lot of hippies on the streets of Seattle but there weren’t a lot of hippies inside the Science Center. 

How do you get hippies to come inside?  The answer: play rock music, use that new device called a “laser”, and put on a light show.

The laser shows became a hit – and spread to science centers and planetariums all around the country.

When I lived in Seattle in the 1970s, I went to a laser show.  I didn’t qualify as a hippie; the hippies were a pretty closed group with rigid rules for clothing, appearance, and behavior --- and no one would ever have mistaken me for one, unless it was my mother or my father. 

As I entered the Laser Dome at the Pacific Science Center, it seemed like a lot of the audience had prepped themselves chemically for the show.  There were no chairs.  I lay down on the floor amidst the chemically-prepped hippies, and let the music and laser lights cast their spell.

A laser show is actually a live show.  The music is recorded but a laserist runs the lights that dance across the dome.

It was a nice experience.  At the end of the laser show, I got up from the floor, stretched, and strolled out into the Seattle night.  That was over 30 years ago.

I now live in St. Louis, where the Planetarium has decided to revive its laser shows from the good old hippie days.

Of course, I had to go.  The website said we were allowed to bring pillows.  I thought that might be a joke; I showed up at the Planetarium on a Friday night expecting someone to confiscate my pillow.

Nobody confiscated my pillow as the audience filed into the Planetarium.  We had a choice of a chair or a floor mat.  I took a floor mat, flopped down on it with my pillow, and waited for the laserist to start the show. 

I glanced around: everybody at the show was either an adult about my age or the grandchild of an adult about my age.  Some of the audience might have been chemically prepped, but it would have been with high blood pressure medicine. The adults were clearly looking forward to the show, probably because they had been to one in the dim past. 

The chairs were empty.  Everyone had decided to lie on a mat.

The laserist began the show.  The grandchildren stayed remarkably silent as the lasers formed patterns on the dome of the Planetarium.  Pink Floyd was playing and lasers were dancing when the Planetarium’s Zeiss star projector was turned on.  The night sky was projected on the dome as the lasers simultaneously danced across the dome.

The lasers kept on dancing overhead while the night sky started revolving – revolving rather fast.  I was on the mat with my head on my pillow realizing that I was having a vertigo episode while lying down.

The show continued.  Jefferson Airplane.  The Beatles.  Led Zeppelin playing Stairway To Heaven.  I was transported.  It was just like being back in Seattle.

Then the show was over, and it was time to get up from my mat.  Creak.  Groan.  One lady in the audience verbalized what we all felt: “This was a lot easier thirty years ago.”

OK, so it wasn’t exactly like being back in Seattle.

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Here is a YouTube Trailer for the current Laserium show at the St. Louis Science Center (2 minutes long):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDEaGtESGs

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com