I dream more often than I used to, or maybe it’s more that I’ve become better at remembering my dreams. The other night has to go down as the strangest for a long time, seriously strange.

My memory of the dream starts off with some flickering glimpses of some sort of legal proceeding involving Paul Keating and a woman who we know (I’m always intrigued how there often seems to be a taken-as-fact back-story in dreams, knowing things to be the case with no reason or experience of them) is his wife (though in reality this older blond woman certainly isn’t AFAIK, and is certainly unlike Anita, his ex). They’re sitting next to each other behind a simple desk and I think they’re being questioned. The woman is crying in some scenes. That’s about it for that thread.

The scene shifts in a patchwork manner, I think there might be a gap in my memory here but ultimately we come to our namesake. The viewpoint from one side of a busy room, a high-society soirée, women wearing colourful and extravagant gowns and men in three piece suits. The view focuses on the far side of the room and seems to zoom in on one figure — it’s Paul Keating wearing a single breasted suit. But there’s more, our Paul has full white face-paint on, heavy black eye-shadow and mascara, and blood-red lipstick. This is Goth Keating.

Some time passes, I’m not sure if this jumps or something happens — all I have is a sense of time passed.

We see Goth Keating exiting the venue hand on the shoulder of a young tan skinned woman of indeterminate origin. Unlike most of the women in the room she wears a very simple dress, though it has a glittering metallic sheen.

Now a sudden shift of scene.

It’s dark, Goth Keating is being chased by a large hairy man wearing a dirty polo top. We know this is because Paul’s been getting it on with his pursuer’s daughter, presumably the woman we saw earlier but this is not known as fact (no obvious family resemblance either). The scene is outdoors, green grass, low light (dusk I suspect) and some low stone walls reminiscent of the foundations of some ruined monastery.

Scene shift again.

We’re in a building. The architecture is known instinctively, we’re familiar with this building. It is octagonal (or thereabouts) with two, very high roofed, stories. It’s a giant lecture theatre (or something like a parliament of former times?), with a standing podium space in the centre and stadium seating on all sides. Lots of wood and wrought-iron. The second level of the building is a wide circular gallery providing entry to the top tier of seating, there are also small lecture rooms off the second level though I’m not sure how they fit into the physical space (they remind me of the little tutorial rooms between lecture theatres back in the Carslaw building at USyd). The outer wall of the second level features a huge barn door on each edge of the octagon. Why do I know all this about the building?

Immediately, in this new scene, we see Goth Keating running up the stairs to the second level, large hairy man not far behind. At this point things get skewed, there is an effect of the viewer (me) and Goth Keating merging. We’re seeing and experiencing from Goth Keating’s perspective now. We run around the upper level full circle, at some point the hairy man tears some piece of woodwork from a railing and throws it at us — it strikes us hard on the shoulder and we stumble. Next we round the bend of the hall and make for a barn door (is it open already? I don’t know) and leap through — to fall 20 feet to the ground and suffer a jarring impact, the knees and feet hurt considerably.

At a stumbling run we continue into the darkness and it’s at this point that I wake up, or the memory ends.

Analyse that one.