"It never got ugly, although it got a bit strange at times"

A gentle verdict wrapped in understatement, the line frames experience as a spectrum with two endpoints: “ugly,” a realm of cruelty, betrayal, or collapse; and “strange,” a region of the unexpected, the awkward, the off-kilter. The speaker admits that things wandered into unfamiliar territory but insists they never crossed the boundary into harm. That distinction matters. It suggests a commitment to civility even when the dynamics became unpredictable, a willingness to accept eccentricity while refusing to let friction calcify into malice.

There’s also an ethos here, especially resonant with artists and misfits: weirdness is not only tolerable, it’s a vital sign. Strangeness often signals authenticity, the shedding of postures, the emergence of unguarded play. It’s the creative milieu’s natural weather, sudden squalls of odd behavior, baffling decisions, inside jokes that don’t translate. Calling that “a bit strange” refuses alarmism; it normalizes the discomfort that accompanies genuine experimentation. But the quiet assurance that it “never got ugly” marks a moral perimeter. People may confuse, surprise, even unsettle one another, but they do not dehumanize or destroy.

The past tense carries a soft afterglow of perspective. With time, the anomalies that once felt destabilizing become anecdotes, folded into a coherent story. The phrase is almost comic in its modesty, as if to downplay turbulence without denying it, an adult tone that avoids both bitter revision and saccharine nostalgia. It hints at a culture of humor as pressure valve, a habit of not taking offense when the room tilts.

Taken as guidance, it proposes a way to navigate difficult seasons: permit the strange; protect against the ugly. Cultivate flexibility, maintain respect, and embrace the absurdities that come with any long collaboration or relationship. The art is in discerning which discomforts are merely odd and which are corrosive, and in choosing, again and again, to keep the latter at bay.