Hieracosphinx

The Thinker's Club

I don't quite remember the first part of the dream, but it ended with me in a cinema theatre ready to watch something. There must have been some form of social event or social club involved. I do remember a flash image of the outside of a building in the cold. Before it had completely ended, another film was scheduled to start; to see it, we'd have to usher ourselves out and into another theatre apparently popular with weed smokers. We were going to watch a second, cult classic film there. I don't remember actually seeing it.

Instead I ended up somewhere I thought I knew from a photograph posted on an online forum. Perhaps conforming a geeky origin, each seat had a sticker with the nickname of a previous class member or else a character quirk poking fun at them (e.g. I think a few seats were labelled 'anime nerd'); notably, I recognised one of them (in the dream) as someone's user handle. I remember, as people milled around, someone commented that a guy's 'discussion quality' was high enough that he should have been accepted into the club, but alas have not yet been. This was a workshop of some sort for teaching purposes. I'd thought it was the one I'd seen an image of earlier on the internet, even maintaining this when asked what I was thinking, but changed my mind upon seeing the wholly wooden floor, since I also remembered a grey part.

It turned out I was let into some sort of society's meeting. Like a debate club, but it was for polite discussion about light intellectual topics. Unusually, I was talking to people through the medium of speech and could actually hear my own voice, as opposed to using 'dream telepathy'. The speakers were a very varied group, and included Stuart Hameroff, the 'quantum brain microtubules' proponent. Some of the topics included ecology, evolution, the fate of the universe, 'haemoglobin-induced light hallucinations', and the amazing light contrast of either someone's laptop screen or the room in general (a lovely starscape on their desktop background!). The spotlight passed to me shockingly often, even when I didn't have much to say. Those latter two topics caused me to see images radiating brilliant, crystal-clear white light (e.g. white text on starscapes and nebulas) - incredibly vivid. Then the dream ended with a short debriefing, an image of a website giving a glowing review of my character and saying I was 'gatekeeped at Schmooze Island'.

Note: I am pretty sure these places are physical representations of the internet itself; the dream may be commenting on how both random geeks and famous people have blogs on the internet, allowing everyone to interact. The 'Schmooze Island' stuff is probably a reference to the Pencilsword comic about privilege, which I'd seen passingly the day before. I don't recall any emotional content during or after the dream, despite more social dreams seeming to have more of that.