Why don’t we embrace eccentrics in Australia anymore?

The recently departed, singular filmmaker David Lynch had the strength to be exactly himself. Parts of the world venerate independent thinkers like him but our nation is not one of them.

US director David Lynch pictured after receiving a lifetime achievement award during the Rome Film Festival in 2017. Picture: Tiziana Fabi / AFP

And let us now praise singular men. Like George Lawson, who, when he was at school, ran away because he felt there was just too much annoying sport and PE. He had a pet monkey that was banished because of a habit of urinating on guests from a balcony. His uncle left his fortune to a giraffe at a zoo, because it reminded him of his very tall wife. In adulthood, Lawson’s clothes included an array of handmade bowties, a monocle and a collection of ecclesiastical headwear. He abhorred the colour green because it reminded him of nature. He felt there was too much grass in the world – except the kind you could smoke.

Lawson, an antiquarian bookseller, died late last year in his eighties and obituaries went to town on his eccentric delights. The Times obit said he was “known for his ability to think everywhere but in the box”, quoting an employer who said, truthfully, that Lawson was “not cut out to be a nine-to-five man, or a great one for following office routine.” He was a paragon of singularity and frankly there just aren’t enough of them now in our deeply judgmental and rigidly policed world. Who has the courage any more of the true eccentric?

They are the non-conformists who refuse to toe the line. A question they may well ask: why live your life contained and cowed when you can embrace a vividly untrammelled self? Why indeed. Does one want to live honestly, or bound by a too-easily-embarrassed conformity? Give me colour over beige any time; I love the unique, the joyous, the ludic and the strange.

‘Britain is a land that venerates eccentricity; in Australia we don’t,’ says Nikki Gemmell. Picture: Nick Cubbin Styling: Viktoria & Woods silk shirt in black. Vintage colour, Nikki’s own.

Eccentricity has an alluring energy to it, pumping oxygen into a room. It’s attractive because it’s brave. What a freedom it is to refuse to live the way others expect or demand of us; it points to a strong and confident sense of self. The eccentric is the person who has the strength to be exactly themselves. And as we age we’re often freed into a looser, bolder version of ourselves; we retract from the rigid social policings of the world, with relief. Why not be who we really want to be? Why not live freely? As we age we find the courage to not care what other people think of us.

“What a great time to be alive if you love the theatre of the absurd!” declared the recently departed, gloriously singular filmmaker David Lynch. Yet what a dispiriting time to be alive if you loathe the theatre of the cynical and opportunistic, the craven and divisive. Lynch was the creative genius who, like Lawson, embraced eccentricity when young. He thought school an unnecessary component of childhood that only encouraged students to conform rather than embrace freedom of thought. This was the man who talked to a Barbie for four minutes while promoting his coffee brand, and who broadcast his very own weather reports during Covid. “If you can believe it, it’s Friday again!” Lynch’s mantra for living: “Stay true to yourself. Let your voice ring out, and don’t let anybody fiddle with it.” It takes courage to be different. To exist loudly within a pack; at a remove from it.

“I’m not eccentric. It’s just that I’m more alive than most people,” declared English poet Edith Sitwell. “I’m an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.” Britain is a land that venerates eccentricity; in Australia we don’t. Oh we’ve had them, but they’re few and far between. When I think of Aussie eccentrics I think of Sydney’s Eternity man, Arthur Stace, cricketer Greg Matthews or broadcaster Jeannie Little. All yesterday’s heroes, who gave the world so much pleasure back in the day. Yet imagine any of them trying to maintain their singularity in our vicious world of social media. Perhaps the dearth of gentle eccentrics in Australia’s public life now reflects our more brutally judgmental, cowed and cautious times. We are the poorer for it.