There’s really nothing quite like a planetarium laser show. Like the drive-in movie or miniature golf, it’s an art form that endures, part of our culture that doesn’t get nearly enough respect for how ultimately entertaining it is. It can help even the most fraught of family situations either reconcile themselves or detonate themselves in a cleansing restart. It’s one of those experiences that doesn’t insist on itself or overmarket itself in the mediasphere — the laser show is a perfectly shaped memory to file away in the non-horrifying section of American social history, adjacent to funnel cakes and right next door to mysterious haunted-house rides in fly-by-night carnivals.
The beauty of the Adventure Science Center’s ongoing Laser Prince show is multifaceted: It’s a fun, high-energy set that covers a surprising array of Prince’s work in a 45-minute selection. Like all of the museum’s outreach programs, it’s helping to keep science education going in uncertain times. But there’s also a great deal of civic pride in the programming team’s creation of this planetarium experience. In the near future, anytime an inquisitive mind or municipally inclined stoner feels the need for purple music on as grand a scale as possible, no matter where they might go in the world, it’s going to be the Nashville crew’s creation unfolding on the very fabric of the universe. I find this arcane system of creation and proliferation to be enthralling and exciting, an alchemy that uses the infinite as its canvas.
Given what all’s been happening with our state government and legislature, it’s shockingly reassuring to find something that bolsters whatever’s been occupying the part of the brain responsible for pride — or at least the opposite of shame. The fact that there’s something you can go do that combines lasers, ancient sciences, the music of Prince and communal ritual is a joy to cling to — especially when leavened with a little bit of sensual spice and local can-do. Paisley Park, as we know, is in our hearts; but thanks to the laser show team at ASC, it can be as big as the sky, anywhere in the world, from here on out.
