Stardust

The most unexpected places sometimes will bring out the most unexpected memories.

The staff left the wooden doors of an auditorium open while they were busy elsewhere and there was no one in sight. Naturally, out of curiosity, I snuck in!

I’ve never been inside this space. Yet there was a feeling… The stage was lit, the chairs were empty, the lectern was set in a corner, the space itself was large yet cosy… There was a strange feeling of familiarity.

I let myself drift deeper. I walked up the stairs to get behind the seats and noticed the ceiling was made to look like a beautiful starry night sky. There was a black door behind me. Maybe it was for the staff. I opened it, walked a few steps in darkness… and found myself in the control booth.

There I was, shifting through the cables and light stands, ending up next to the AV rack, in front of the mixing console, and dozens of other controls and devices. Behind the seats, the control booth watched over the room like a quiet little cockpit.

When I was in high school, my aunt dated a guy I thought was the coolest person around. He talked about technology the way I did, which was rare for me back then. We’d spend hours talking about computers. I think my dad was jealous I didn’t spend time with him as much.

Beyond tech, there was another thing we did together. We joined the astronomy club of the local university where he worked. One evening every month, they would show a video in an auditorium by a famous bearded, grey haired, balding astrophysicist talking about the nature of space and the stars. We were a small group: a dozen people or less. I remember the speaker had a voice so soothing some in the audience fell asleep every time.

After the screening, we’d all chat for a bit, stepping in and out of the control booth. So yes, indeed, the control booth and the auditorium where I stood felt like stepping back into those days. Although the university’s auditorium didn’t have a ceiling made into a night sky, as far as I can recall. But we did go on a short trip once on a freezing winter night with a telescope to look at some stars.

I was supposed to make a website for our club, but back then, honestly, I had that old bulky computer that only had DOS and floppy drives on it, and didn’t know where to begin. I thought I’d have to build a whole encyclopædia talking about space and our solar system… I thought too big, too much, too detailed. If it was today, I would have just made one page that mentioned us and how people can join, then call it done. That’s really all we needed and all the world had to see. I don’t know why I thought it was supposed to be much more complicated than that.

Then the source of that familiarity surfaced. For a moment, I stood quietly in the dark control room of an empty auditorium, inside a building in the middle of a crowded metropolis, remembering those astronomy club screenings from 30 years ago and giving a moment of silence to that cosmos uncle who told us about the universe once a month.

Finally, I snapped out of my reverie and saw myself out before anyone noticed I was still inside. I didn’t expect much from the detour, but I liked the feeling of wandering through a place that was technically familiar and unknown at the same time, and how this simple walk brought up back those moments I thought I had forgotten.

Before leaving, I turned around to look at the starry ceiling one more time, and the voice of that astrophysicist echoed in my head while I remembered he had passed away only a few years ago…

“We are all stardust…”

Rest in peace among those stars, space poet. Thanks for telling my uncle and I all about space and time.

“Excuse me,” one of the staff members interrupted my moment with her smile. I guess she looked inside to be sure there was no one, but saw me. “I need to close the doors of the auditorium,” she said. Of course. Here I was sliding around like I owned the place. I stepped out.

The curiosity to wander into unknown spaces I had in the 90s. I didn’t lose it.

Time to go see what’s out there.