Red Sky at Night, Situationİst’s Delight

“Fool me once”… as the old cliché has it, “shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”. And if ever
there was a month for fooling someone this is it, beginning of course as it does with the bruised and
abused April 1st opportunity to reveal our malign selves to the unwary. This year I personally chose to
dine at a close friend’s aged and conservative parents using my shoe as a fork while feigning
advanced syphilis. How they laughed. Of course though, what actually makes every cliché a cliché is
the incontrovertible kernel of truth it contains. An observation that in itself has sadly become a bit of
a, but anyway…
İstanbul, as the poet said – “oh, majestic bridge twixt Asia and Europe, wouldst Islam and Christianity,
and ‘ponst past and present” (barf!) has itself been playing tricks on us of late. It’s principally been
pretending to know what season to be and then doing the reverse. Frothy breakers are still crashing
into the sea wall off Kadıköy. We’ve had some freezing moments too, and yet the delightful al fresco
fad of people leaving their unwanted shit on every green area, vantage point and open space in town
has already resurfaced for another high season. And as we all know, why just leave your beer bottles
standing there forlorn when broken glass provides so much more sport for those following in your
wake, perhaps even with one of those scary critters on a leash. Most cities have the capacity to piss us
off occasionally and inevitably. One cliché attached to this particular berg though that I’ve sort of
bought into is that even the things that do piss you off in İstanbul are entirely bearable with a bluff
chuckle and a jeepers-creepers roll of the peepers. Well, it’s certainly a safe city in the knife-to-the-rib-
cage sense of the word. But it’s a far safer bet that people’s staggering lack of sensitivity here when
mechanized will put a bead between your eyes every time. It’s probably safer still then to say that this
particular cliché applies mostly on good days. On the silver screen (ouch!), before truly losing the plot
(groan!), Woody Allen made some real gems (aargh!), many of which became (uneasy pause) real
blockbusters (ulp!). In ‘Love and Death’ (1975) Allen’s hapless Napoleonic era character spars with
frustrated love interest Diane Keaton armed only with, that’s right, clichés. A lengthy exchange later,
and after murderously declaring that, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”, he
frowns and declares himself “all out” of ammunition. Meanwhile, in the broader, virtual plain, the
twin gigabyte-glory-holes of Face book and You tube allow us,
in fact oblige us to permanently showcase our funny
(back)sides to the web fraternity. “Lisa is currently drinking a
lager, a bit anxious about that rash, and listening to Gary
Numan” is, I think, something I needed to know about
someone from Leamington-Spa I’ve never met. And as for that
video of her cat flushing the toilet she just uploaded, well, I
laughed so hard I had to stab a postman. Christ Almighty, at
least photocopying our privates back in the 1980ies had an
honest immediacy to it. To the cybernetic cliché and oxymoron
“virtual reality”, then, may be added “concerted spontaneity”.
Which after all, is what we all aspire to in our pixilated – every day is April 1 st – web lives. So why
have a special day reserved for silly pranks at all? Perhaps historically as a pressure outlet in an age
where ‘funny’ meant watching your enemy’s prize cow suffer a breech-birth. But then again, it’s also a
cliché to assume people didn’t bust a gut laughing in a seedy suburb of 760 BC Athens just as hard as
we do. Meanwhile, the Flemish, officially acknowledged as the most humorous people across a
1,400m2 region of south-western Holland, are having their own for to laugh out loud traditions in this
respect. Yes. Much naughty children are for to locking outside their teachers and parents in the
evening unless by said adults the promise of a gift is proffered to them. Ach, so naughty you are being!
Actually, April 1st has gained so much weight down the ages that it seems in 17 th century Poland
history itself couldn’t chance a costly misunderstanding. Us Poles like to indulge in our own version
that we call “Prima Aprilis” to such an extent that an anti-Turkish alliance with Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold I signed on April 1, 1683 was actually backdated a day for credibility’s sake. And as for the
Persians, their day of mirth has coincided with the 13th day of the New Year, or Norouz, which falls
on April 1st or 2nd. It seems this tradition began way back in 536 BC when an apprentice flute maker
called Govad regaled the crowds with a blinding impersonation of King Cyrus the Great, all the way to
the gallows. Just kidding. Or am I?