Beautiful Strangeness

I'm interested in the idea of strangeness.  I think strangeness can be hypnotic, beautiful, and receptive.  I have met some women with so-called mental health problems who are like this.  Strangeness can mean anything from which is beyond our idea of the ordinary.  Being radical could be considered as strange, as by conventional standards it is beyond the norm. I'm also very fond of surrealism and weirdness.  I like weird ideas and things because they are more creative and interesting.

Strangeness is often thought of as related to ugliness or to something which is frightening, worrying, and disturbing, but from listening to avant-garde classical and modern music and appreciating modern art, I wonder if there is such a thing as a beautiful and intelligent strangeness and how this can be described in human and other terms.

To be strange, can mean relating differently to the way others relate, or it can mean having a sense of detachment, receptivity, or an intelligent and sensitive sense of awareness.  Maybe there is also a wise strangeness which is accompanied by a knowing yet unexclaming presence about a person.

These are all matters that interest me, as some people's expectation or judgement about people who are diagnosed with mental health problems are that we are "strange".  Strangeness in music or art is usually described as a positive thing - even in surrealism where strangeness is there to disturb, it is still valued as a positive quality - yet in other fields like psychiatry all human strangeness is suspect in being seen as a negative thing or an indication of a symptom of a mental health problem.

I like the way Jim Morrison describes people as strange in the track People are Strange, as when you're a stranger, faces seem ugly, when you're alone. This identifies strangeness with marginalisation and alienation, whilst Billie Holiday uses the metaphor of Strange Fruit as being black human bodies hung from tress, and so racism is equated with strangeness, again as a negative connotation.

There are also ways that strangeness can just be a way of saying we don't understand, or that we dislike somebody, even though no such real strangeness actually exists about a person or racial group.  Sometimes strange can simply be equated with being offensive, even though no such offence is neither witnessed nor intended.  Strangeness is also just that which is by it's very definition unfamiliar or unusual, and can be a way of describing a different cultural, personal, or social perspective.

Strangeness is also innovation, and it strikes a chord for that which is unexplored of our emotional and intellectual capacities and functioning. The strange goes beyond the narrow and conservative ideas and concepts of normality, and goes beyond the mundane into the new or radical.  As love is also a spiritual concept, I wonder if strangeness can be can be related to wonder and openness, which are surely normal human and spiritual qualities.