Fighting the Familiar

How to cure the “been there, done that” blues, even in bella Italia

Yesterday in Val d’Orcia, a landscape that never gets old. All photos mine.

Cari amici,

In my last post, when I wrote about constantly comparing England to Italy (with unfavorable results), I didn’t intend to suggest that Italy is always delightful, always a feast for our senses. One reader seems to have taken it that way, though, saying that after living in Italy for going on six years, “it has started to get a bit less enthralling.” I both agree and disagree, with a big emphasis on the latter.

The problem is, Italy is a fantasy for many people. It was for me, both before I’d traveled here and after. It’s normal for visitors to imagine what life would be like in such a stunningly beautiful place, how different (read: better) their day-to-day existence would be. We’re often wrong; I certainly was, in many ways. And one big thing we tend not to realize until we’ve been here awhile is that the Italy we fell in love with has fissures and warts. We don’t like to think about how time can, or does, change everything—historic centers decline and revive, maybe fade again; bureaucratic processes that were once straightforward develop the switchbacks and obstacles of a high mountain road; issues of immigration and race cloud the pleasures of idyllic small towns and spectacular landscapes. Landscapes change, particularly when humans are involved.

Often, though, for immigrants, what changes the most is us. Italy isn’t shiny and new anymore, and we don’t like that. For example, after five years here I don’t experience the same the emotional rush I used to get in every tiny medieval town, and I miss that. Some of the supposedly borghi più belli aren’t exceptional, but that doesn’t mean they’re not beautiful and interesting and great places to soak up the Italian vibe. Still, anytime you’ve lived somewhere for a while, normalcy seeps in. We complain about this and that, and often our complaints are justified. Leaving such thorny issues as politics and bureaucracy aside, I’ve been guilty of borderline apathy at times, of taking beauty and charm for granted, of failing to see what’s around me as I go about my daily life.

Here's the thing—when we are apathetic, bored, or in a “seen one, seen ’em all” mood, we are suffering from a failure of imagination. We don’t see the possibilities, the potential discoveries and new experiences that surround us. Or we’re victims of overload, of sensory excess, an overabundance of beauty or spectacle. Which is why I don’t agree with that same commenter’s description of the main sites in Italy as “very similar.” He/she is right in saying that certain themes tend to dominate the frescoes in elegant villas of a certain time period, for example. You can see that as a negative, but you don’t have to. Look at medieval and Renaissance art, packed with annunciations, nativity scenes, crucifixions, pietàs. Look at the faces, the composition, the interpretation, the style (often revealing the influence of a teacher), the symbolism, the color choices, the brushwork. I’ve yet to hear anyone complain that Raffaello and Perugino and Leonardo and Botticelli and Michelangelo (and on and on) all painted the Virgin and Child, usually more than once. Within similarity, a world of differences lives.

Madonna and Child paintings by (L-R, clockwise) Leonardo, Michelangelo, Perugino, Bronzino,Tiziano, Raffaello

The way I combat this unique kind of fatigue—of normalcy, familiarity—is to venture into the commonplace and/or ordinary with the goal of finding something new. It might be an architectural detail perched high on a building’s façade, or a new piece of street art, or an explosion of seasonal color. For example, I’d walked past a particular stretch of stone wall for three years without noticing the Etruscan bas relief nestled into the more modern stonework. (Apparently there was a time when Etruscan artifacts, instead of being treasured, were relegated to “oh, this old thing?” status.)

Etruscan art hidden in plain sight.

A few paragraphs ago I used the word “normalcy,” and by that I mean familiarity, which is the enemy of engagement. That’s true in literature too. To avoid it, writers use a strategy called defamiliarization, which makes the old seem new again. It’s a way of presenting the familiar and mundane so that it seems fresh, even innovative, worth revisiting with a new perspective. Think about the thousands of novels set in the WW2 era, whose stories, circumstances, and horrors are overly familiar to all of us. Authors of such books face the challenge of making us see those known events anew, from an angle that reveal a different picture.

As writer Gabrielle Bellot explains in this essay, “When you become too accustomed to the things around you, they stop seeming extraordinary; when you step back and reflect on how rocking chairs, televisions, or markers work, though, imagining that you are describing them to someone who has never before seen them, they begin to take on an air of magic, of the marvelous, and the true strangeness and wonder of the world around us begins to feel visible again.”

Defamiliarization isn’t only for writers; it’s a tool for all of us, a necessary one to help us cope with daily life, an antidote to boredom and complacency. Sometimes defamiliarizing means narrowing our focus, looking in depth at one Renaissance oil painting or piece of spray-painted graffiti, one idyllic landscape or slice of urban blight, one marvel of antiquity or gravity-defying skyscraper. If we think all 16th-century nativity scenes look alike, we need to investigate the unfamiliar in one of them. Or two—are they really so alike? Look closer.

In other words, cari amici, I’m putting the burden on us. If we want daily life to be engaging, inspiring, stimulating, or whatever adjective you want to insert here, it’s up to us to make it happen. Not all the time, of course; we’re only human and we get tired and we complain, we despair, we ask ourselves what’s the point? That’s okay. Maybe we can manage defamiliarization only occasionally, in captured moments between the necessary, mundane, mind-numbing tasks we all have to do.

But it’s enough. It can be enough. Let’s take Bellot’s words to heart and look for the magical and marvelous, the strangeness and wonder of this world.

Alla prossima,

Cheryl

P.S. By the way, Substack says I should tell you about a new feature called Notes, where I’m posting little things nearly daily. Follow along or not, as you wish.

© 2023 Cheryl A. Ossola

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Books of the week (novels set during WW2):

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

• Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally