As Vicki and I were sitting in the middle of the Interactive Van Gogh Experience (in the building that was once the Fillmore West in San Francisco), she turned to me and said, ‘I wouldn’t want to see this stoned.” Neither would I.

The experience was breathtaking, amazing, expensive and safe. See it if you can. Bring a cushion; the seating is hit and miss.

But Vicki’s comment did send my mind reeling back to the summer before my freshman year in college, 1970, when Portland hosted several rock concerts that included the then-new import from San Francisco: the light show. Oil and water dancing above colored lights on an overhead projector was the height of technology at the time. I was mesmerized.

A half-century later, we spent an hour inside Van Gogh’s mind, to a clever (if sometimes a bit bombastic) sound track that put the stacks of speakers in Portland’s Masonic Auditorium to shame.