It’s a Wednesday evening in early November, and the promise of summer is ripe in Sydney’s sun-soaked streets – outdoor tables filling with friends as colleagues clock off for the day and beeline for the closest happy hour. The group of strangers I’m about to spend an evening with is just wrapping up days defined by unique challenges and triumphs: break-ups and promotions and setbacks and excitement. But moments after stepping into the Ace Hotel’s warmly lit lobby, the outside world vanishes into the abyss. This is the effect that conversation can have – real, deep conversations that help us discover sides of ourselves that we didn’t know were there.
Hosted by psychologist and wellbeing lead Dr Ash King, Neurotica is the kind of dinner party that I wish took place every week – the kind of event I’d clear my diary for at a moment’s notice. With a mission to help Sydneysiders explore bold topics in a safer, more intimate setting than what she describes as “our fraught digital ecosystem”, Ash launched Neurotica as the city’s “dinner party for deep thinkers”.
“Neurotica is Sydney’s new cultural salon where psychology, art, and pop culture collide over candlelight and cocktails. No icebreakers, no polite chit-chat, no show-boating. Just provocative prompts, big ideas, and conversations that cut deeper than ‘So, what do you do?’” Ash explains.
The launch event – exploring the topic of “bad ideas” – was a sold-out success story back in October, but I’m lucky enough to score a seat at the table for the November edition.
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We’re welcomed with drinks and Ash’s electric smile, and at each place setting we find a blank white mask and are encouraged to decorate it in any way that calls to us – with colours or words or shapes that make up the masks we wear in the world. With a group of open-minded strangers who have opted to spend their evening exploring the topic of the self (this event was titled Masks, Personas and the Many Faces of Self), conversation flows easily and with an immediate, disarming depth.
Ash kicks off the more structured part of the evening with a few quotes about the concept of the self from some of history’s most fascinating thinkers, explaining a little about what Sartre, Jung and Goffman believed about the idea of the self.
After a game of pub trivia-style heads or tails that involves us signalling whether or not we agree with statements like ‘Have you ever felt attracted to someone because they saw through your mask?’, we sit down with people we suddenly know so much more about.
As Ash explains to us at the end of the night, “Identity isn’t a single face we uncover. It’s an ongoing act of creation. We build ourselves through the roles we play, the masks we wear, and the moments we dare to drop them.”
The sides of ourselves that we share so early into the evening act as a bonding agent – revealing the confusion and complexity within all of us.
Snacks (focaccia, calamari, arancini balls and perfectly spicy olives) make their way onto the table as we discuss the question prompts on the cards that Ash has provided: exploring identity, performance, authenticity, honesty and self-expression. Towards the end of the evening, we make our way around the room matching masks with their owners and leave with the kind of buzz that comes from uncovering something new that fits so perfectly into your existing worldview.
“Philosophers have argued for centuries about whether the self is something we find, make, or dissolve into. After researching the science of the self for four years, I can assure you that the debate is still live. Maybe we are all patchwork creatures, stitched together from every version we’ve ever been brave enough to try on,” Ash tells us.
With so many big ideas to explore, each event will interrogate a different topic, with the next one (taking place on International Women's Day) entitled Neurotica: Feminism, Power and Pleasure.
The $90 tickets include a cocktail on arrival, and wine and share plates to fuel your conversations throughout the night. You can book your place at the next event over here, and you can explore Dr Ash King’s other offerings over here.
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