On Eccentricity

A little old lady with purple tortoiseshell glasses, green acrylic nails and mild halitosis; an apartment covered floor-to-ceiling with jungle print and crocheted stuffed animals and hideously clashing shades of orange, purple and green; the lone woman in black paint and white straightjacket with long, stringy black hair that performs a nauseating sort of interpretive dance in front of Washington Square Arch. That right there is the spectrum of people and places I’ve always thought of when I hear the word “eccentric.”

So when Alisia christened our magazine’s tagline as, “eccentric, for the eccentric, by the eccentric,” I had reservations. I obsessed over finding an alternative with an amount of neurotic determination that’s wildly inappropriate for three syllables. “Unconventional?” Too overused to be catchy. A word that’s been chewed up, spat out, and stepped on by lifestyle brands. “Bizarre?” Now that evokes impressions of a Moroccan bazaar, a two-headed goat, a bright green Ripley’s Believe It or Not! encyclopedia. It would be blasphemous to refer to ourselves as bizarre. We’re hard-working taxpayers (on paper), not circus animals. “Freaky?” Not quite the kind of thing I’d want my future employers to see in the search results. “FREAKY by FREAKS for FREAKS.” Yeah, this girl would be a great fit for our, uh, asset management division.

But the die was cast. Eccentric’s hold on our brand had gone past the point of last return, sailed far past the strait of Gibraltar, had shot light-years beyond the Van Allen belt. I surrendered to Alisia’s vision – creative director knows best, creative director knows best. Eccentric, I decided, would be gifted a rebrand, free of charge. Merriam-Webster would be sent a rather demanding letter to see to the change. It was no longer the kind of word you’d get called by a fair-weather friend that attempts to explain the off-kilter sort of way about you to another friend while you’re getting yourself another drink at a house party. The eccentric subject would no longer cower under the weight of the connotation of “strange” or “uncool” in purple tortoiseshell glasses and a feather boa. 

We had a radical new eccentric to define – had to be sharp, irreverent, witty, flirtatious, probably. A heavy burden for three girls who can count daytime naps under their top five favorite hobbies.

How to start? I sought advice from Descartes’ basics – I think, therefore I am. Writers are eccentric, naturally. The good ones, certainly. Occasionally, even the bad ones (lucky me!). The sort of oddity that describes eccentricity really boils down to juxtaposition. Eccentricity is passion, obviously manifested; eccentricity is nonconformity, visually and cognitively. Eccentricity is a vision seen through a tunnel wide enough for only one head. 

I’d like to think our magazine will define our own brand of eccentricity. I love to criticize a mission statement that misses the mark, so to allow myself to be a little lazy, and to retain a little wily feminine mystery, I’ll keep my examples close. I’ll let Sunbleacht speak for itself.