I really don’t know how to start this article and how to make myself understand by others but i will try to explain what is happening to me in these days of full-immersion in gipsy culture thanks to the project we are developing and to my work in Curcubeu center…
First of all..have you ever heard about “Vermendrungseffekt”? In many languages is also called “distancing/alienation effect” and it’s typical of some kind of literature that use this effect to show how a normal thought, idea or action can be seen by others as totally strange or odd..
According to wilkipedia, the alienation effect can be explained with these words: “In performance, as the performer "observes himself", his or her objective is "to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his work."”
Everybody, in everyday’s life can experience this effect if, for one moment, he/she forgets to be “normal” and start to think that maybe for people of different culture he/she is not acting normally. Using the Vermendrungseffekt can be often a way to remember to ourselves that what we consider normal or usual can be misunderstood by people pertaining to a different culture (or just to a different reality).
It’ s like when my dog considers me weird because he’s offering to me the mouse he just killed but i (politely) refuse the offer. By his point of view this is totally incomprehensible and he stands at me for several minutes, looking at me as the most odd person in the world…
So, in some indigenous communities of South America, i was considered totally crazy because i was eating fish all the time…people were so disgusted that offered me a cup of milk with cow-blood to purify myself…and what about when they knew i wasn’t merry yet at the “venerable age” of 26 years old?
Traveling around the world (or just walking in your town) you will discover that habits can be weird or normal at the same time, it depends by who is doing and who is watching.
It happened to me also in Romania when some tsiganes told me they had some activities to do with some volunteers or turists..Iwas really curious and when they told me there were some volunteers going in their community to work they explained also (according to their point of view) they wanted to help “poor volunteers” to be good and better people and they were providing them some job in their community…
Oh magic power of Vermendrunseffekt! Sometimes we think we are protagonists of the story, we think we are changing matters, we are doing them better, maybe changing a little also the world but if we stop a minute to think and we “grab some shoes and walk in them” (i mean, we try to adopt the point of view of who is looking at us), we ‘ll discover that what we think is seen often in a different way..
Who is right? Who is helping who? And who is making the world of the other a better place?
Probably no one. But no matter who is doing what and who is looking at who. What matter is the Vermendrungseffekt, the effect of making the familiar strange that will force you to abandon the illusion you have of being “normal” and will give you the surprise of discovering you are “not so normal” for someone else.
Everybody is different, everybody is weird in his/her own way. The important thing is don't forget it!
