Nightmare in an art gallery
This dream happened early this morning after a night out with three of my house mates and a friend. I had already woken up at least once, and spent a certain amount of time feeling vaguely unhappy - hung over, wishing I hadn't got drunk, judging myself for what were in retrospect pretty harmless antics. The dream began in my college (a small art school which I love, and spend most of the day there Monday - Friday), which soon morphed into an art gallery that I have no recollection of ever visiting in WR. I'm outside on a large patio over-looking a city (large, but no skyscrapers - looks possibly French or Italian, nice old buildings) with my 4 house mates (all good friends of mine, two of which I go to college with). It's mild outside, a little sunshine. A woman dressed in a dark skirt suit and matching hat walks up some steps onto the patio. She looks quite well groomed, short dark hair, well made clothes. She's holding a short black strappy dress at arm's length in front of her, and talking to no-one in particular; she seems a bit agitated, angry. She's scaring me a little bit, and we all decide to go inside. She's walking quite close behind us, I can hear her talking but she doesn't make any sense, she just sounds aggressive and a bit insane. We begin to run, and go up some steps into the gallery itself.
The room we run into is busy, lots of people wandering around looking at large paintings. High ceilings, big windows, white walls and wooden floors. Somewhat old fashioned, feels more like a manor house than a modern white cube gallery. We lose her in the crowds, and I go into the next room to tell someone in charge that there's a possibly dangerous woman wandering around. Security go to get her, and I hear a commotion from the room nearest the patio. People are crowding round, my friends are watching the scene but I can't - I'm scared to see. One of them says to me 'She just had a complete meltdown', then I see the guards dragging her out; they're dragging her along the floor by the arms, she's pretty much catatonic. She now looks like the girl from The Exorcist, longish brown hair, terrifying sickly face, wearing a long white night gown type thing and nothing else. She's also covered in paint, she seems to have pissed her self and rolled all over the canvases - she's all pale pinks and greens and blues. They drag her out of the front door.
I woke up pretty horrified - I haven't had such a disturbing dream in a couple of years. I have a few ideas about what it has to do with, but I'd like some other perspectives. Some info about me: I'm female, 20 years old, coming to the end of my first year studying sculpture (there's been an ongoing question of painting versus sculpture in my head - there's a certain amount of rivalry between students of each at school, where there are about 4 times as many painters). I'm sensing some issues with femininity in this dream, which is not unusual for me - I tend to identify with a kind of masculine intellectual ideal in my head, and find it a bit difficult to get my head around "feminine emotionality". But anyway, I'll stop analyzing myself and see if anyone else has something to offer. :shadewink: Feel free to ask for more info (if I haven't given too much already...), I actually had a closely related dream with a touch of lucidity after this one, having woken up in between. But you probly have enough to digest with this one.
Edit: Should perhaps mention that I felt very guilty about getting the woman forcibly removed and effectively causing her mental breakdown.
