Nightmare in an art gallery

**branestawm** · 05-17-2013 09:14 PM

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.

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.

**Darkmatters** · 05-17-2013 10:27 PM

I see this is your first post - by any chance have you lurked on the site for a day or 2 before posting?

If so, have you by chance looked at my dream journal or any of my recent posts? Because there are some similarities. My last DJ entry involved an invasion in a very European looking city with stone courtyards etc by a superior race of people many of whom were dressed in elegant evening wear (I specifically used the words strappy and dress together in the same sentence, though strappy was referring to sandals). There was also a crazy woman, lots of danger and violence. Plus I've been posting on my Art Gallery thread, and was discussing the use of blues, greens and pinks for skin tones. The discussion was this morning, but I posted the pics last night and those colors are very prominent.

If you haven't looked at Dreamviews before and never saw any of the posts I'm referring to, then it could possibly be telepathic dream sharing, though I don't really believe in it (even though I've had experiences that are almost impossible to explain any other way). I prefer the kind of dream sharing we do electronically in the dream journal section, which often causes a flurry of similar dreams after somebody makes a post there. Its funny, but reading about someone's dreams can cause you to dream about the same things that night.

In case you're curious, here's the DJ entry: Invasion of the Well-Groomed Superhumans.

And my Art Gallery posting from last night, with discussion of greens blues and pinks for skin colors.

And if you don't accept either of these possibilities, then I understand.

** Edit:

I just re-read my DJ entry, and found a couple more similarities. When I first described the superior race I used the words dark, dress and suit right after each other, and you said the woman in your dream was wearing a dark suit skirt. In my dream she "said something that I don't remember clearly", and in yours she said something you couldn't hear clearly. I also described the stone courtyards as being crowded with people, and you said the art gallery was crowded with people (perhaps more to the point, after leaving the outdoor courtyards I entered some kind of large ballroom that was crowded with people). To me this seems like too many specific coincidences to just be 2 random and completely unrelated dreams, especially considering yours happened so soon after mine. Please tell me you have seen these posts of mine, otherwise Ill be forced to once again consider the possibility of telepathic dreamsharing!

**branestawm** · 05-18-2013 08:50 PM

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Please tell me you have seen these posts of mine, otherwise Ill be forced to once again consider the possibility of telepathic dreamsharing!

Haha, sorry to "disappoint" you but I hadn't read your journal entries! That's fascinating, I haven't had that happen before. I don't know much about dream sharing, but I've learnt enough from the general weirdness of dreaming not to rule it out entirely... Have you read 'An Experiment With Time' by J. W. Dunne? It's about the author's experiences with what seem to be random premonitions in his dreams (random because they don't have any apparent significance in the dream - he just recognises scenes from his dreams occurring in waking life after the fact) - he's initially highly sceptical, but then develops a theory about time in dreams. That made me think there was more to dreams than I had originally thought, also could be another explanation? Though the fact that I had a dream that was influenced by a knowledge of your response to that same dream in the future would be a complete mindmelt.

**Darkmatters** · 05-19-2013 12:53 AM

**branestawm** · 05-19-2013 01:40 AM

Just read your DJ entry and it reminded me of a dream I had a while back: I was on a beautiful mediterranean-type island, lovely old buildings, tiny winding streets. I walked out with some friends to investigate a sort of strip of land in the sea a little way away, like a sand bank with rocks and a little grass. An older man suddenly appeared, kind of shamanic in appearance, and told us to get off. We headed back to the main island, which had in the brief time we'd been away been invaded by a bunch of weird cyber-goth characters with guns. I was trying to escape down side streets, but got cornered with various of my friends from college. This was a month or two ago so maybe not so freaky, but it's entertaining anyway.