It’s hard to make sense of things in the world today. Social media and the web have increased the availability of information at the expense of reliability. Politicians reject science and label news as fake. Truth as a concept seems more contested than ever before. What can we do about it? I don’t have any practical answers but I do have a secret for staying positive. My secret is this: embrace the chaos.
This blog is about opening ourselves up to possibilities. Amidst all of this confusion and uncertainty, we have an opportunity to rethink the accepted truths of the past as well as our paths to the future. This may sound grandiose for a blog which will often be about weird, psychedelic and freaky movies and TV shows but if truth itself is no longer certain, doesn’t that make reality weird too?
The works I’ll be discussing here will come from a range of genres and backgrounds, with one thing in common: they show us the world from a different perspective. They represent unusual beliefs and practices, styles and subcultures that challenge ideas that we generally take for granted. Some of these works could perhaps be dismissed as exotic curios, but I see in them questions which prompt us to make our own sense of what we see and to justify our conclusions. You can think of them as practice exercises in critical thinking or just a chance to have your mind blown. The choice is yours.
Human history is full of bizarre and unusual things that were at various times believed to be true. You don’t have to believe in mythical creatures and supernatural powers, alternate realities and extra-terrestrial visitors, and neither do I in any literal sense, but even the most abstract or far-fetched scenario can resonate if we are open to its ideas. The trick is to view these works through a different lens, one that filters out scepticism and reveals a different kind of truth. Not all of the works featured here will be great. Some of them will even be pretty bad, but they’re not here because of their overall quality. They’re here because they have a spark, something in them that gives us a vision of a different way. They’re here because they’re weird. Are you?
