I was either hosting a dinner party--or otherwise involved with it--at a large house. Several people had come and gone through the course of the night, and I'd visited with them. But I don't have much memory of that--it's a blur.
The memorable portion of the dream began with kind of the last people remaining--we were sitting around and watching movies.
A friend of mine from Utah had stopped in--and he had brought an unusual number of bottles of alcohol with him. I recall feeling that I recognized the brands, as the cheap brands from the store--which isn't surprising, as we tend to drink on the cheap. What surprised me was that he'd bought so many bottles...as he works as a handyman and is often short on cash. I recall looking in the bag and seeing at minimum a whiskey, vodka, and wine.
While a strange movie ran, I was talking to a woman seated at a long table about talking to some people who'd stopped by that had contacted me on a social website for travelers.
Note
I do have an account on such a website, which is called "CouchSurfing". It's a social network for people who travel and visit other people who like to travel--and you either let people stay with you, or just show them around town.
I'd not talked to anyone from the site for a long time...but strangely enough, a week after this dream had two visitors from London (who were from originally from Russia/Ukraine, and sort of "all over").
woman: "So those visitors from the website, what were they like? Were they cool?"
me: (hesitant) "'Cool'? Hmmm. Well...the thing about people from those sites, sometimes is you try to talk to them about what they do. You never get a straight answer about what their job is. I tend to think most of those people bounce around so much because they're mentaly ill...and can't work."
woman: (smirking) "Mentally ill, huh? This coming from the guy who not too long ago was in a manic rant to me about being one of the highest-level geniuses in the universe."
me: (apologetic) "Hey, wait! Look, I wasn't saying that in a judgmental way. What I meant was that I can find conversation to be stifling at times--if people won't just come out and tell you the facts. It's just about being direct. I've got a dozen mental illnesses--I'd be the last to judge anyone for that!"
woman: "I've noticed something in psychology."
She took a drink.
woman: (continuing) "There's often a situation, where people make the transition from denying they have an illness, to accepting the concept that they do. When this transition happens, they tend to over-count the sources of their problems. But later when they settle down about it, I think it's usually the fact that they can trace what's affecting them the most down to one main cause."
me: "That's an interesting observation. Well, I wonder what my main problem would be, then?"
Note
As I sit having to type up that conversation in a parallel universe's coffee shop, I'd like to offer that is a pretty big problem. Is it my "main" problem? There are a lot of shamen...religious gurus...or hippy drug users who seem pretty nonchalant about parallel universes or past-lives or different 'planes of existence'. And I've resigned myself to getting around more or less okay after waking up.
I didn't get a chance to answer the question in the dream, because the woman was fairly excited about the conclusion of the movie. It ended with some kind of chorus of people who were singing something like
We love Ollie, we love Ollie...as the credits starting rollingNote
I have a very vague feeling that the whole movie was about some mysterious Ollie who, in the course of the movie, never appeared. They only knew Ollie by some illusion...and it may have been that the movie was about someone keeping the illusion of Ollie alive. Obviously that's close to "Allah"...but I don't believe that's what they were saying, as I would have picked up on that.
woman: "Oh, that movie is so good. I really should get my own copy of it, but it's hard to find these days."
me: "Can't be that hard to find, if we've got one here."
I dug into a large cabinet of laserdisc-sized flat discs in square illustrated jackets, and pulled out the one that I somehow (?) knew went with the movie we were watching. It was titled "Phylos", and it was a musical involving some kind of famous band...who did the soundtrack and may have starred in it as well.
Note
Phylos may have been the name of the movie, or the name of the band--or both. The definition of "Phylo" is "race or tribe"... it's of Greek origin. There are some Phylos-related things on the web, but nothing much like what I saw in the dream.
Going over to some kind of web terminal with the disc jacket, I typed it in and began searching to see if I could find other copies for sale. On a for-sale site, I saw an image of the cover and an associated price of something like $5,000.
me: (surprised) "What?! Someone's selling this disc for $5,000? Well maybe you can't have your own copy after all, because I'm going to sell this pronto."
But as I paged through the listing, it wasn't actually for the album. It was for a "Steam Van", which I suppose was a van that ran on steam power (as opposed to having an internal sauna?) They called it the "Phylos Steam Van of Love".
The ad was peculiar because it didn't show any pictures or details about the van. It was just talking about how the van had been used by Phylos on tour, and it had a bunch of pictures of concerts. It was kind of a rambling nostalgic post about how much fun they had with the van.
me: "Okay, well they're not too interested in actually selling this van if they're not going to put pictures. There's one other picture matching the album cover on the site, let's see about that."
I clicked on the other picture that seemed a match for the jacket I was holding in my hand. But when it came up, it was a graphically spare geometric image...lacking any real details.
At first I thought it couldn't be it, then I realized that it was just rendering the image slowly...one piece at a time. Each layer would come over the network and add another section. It was kind of oceanic with windows floating in the air--maybe like something Pink Floyd would have. But as the rendering came in, it eventually added some kind of large animated video wave that came rushing at the screen and woke me up.