#boywiththearabstrap

[mrhockeytemper]

This song from this astonishingly excellent record will always remind of my first 6 months in Dodge. Melancholy and loneliness was my thing back then. This was an outstanding soundtrack. My #tbt #belleandsebastian #boywiththearabstrap #nostalgia #tbt #memories

[teresatatum]

Colour my life with the chaos of trouble 'Cause anything's better than posh isolation Third & last photo I took on stage! (I had to...) #belleandsebastian #chicago#boywiththearabstrap (at The Riviera Theatre)

[jeepsterrecordings]

Belle & Sebastian's The Boy With The Arab Strap is Classic Album of the Day on BBC Radio 6. Listen to Steve Lamacq talk to Stuart at 4pm GMT today about this beautiful collection of songs released 16 years ago this week.

[riotchu]

he

there are faded roses pushing up from under loosed soil damp in the sepia dawn's light there is the lean silhouette of a boy out on the terrace standing up straight with hands like resting birds upon the railing and trailing cigarette smoke flowing in currents  halo around his head   boy with an  aura like the river styx  

[riotchu]

SO THIS WAS ORIGINALLY A FEW SENTENCES OF TRITE PROSE. NOW, TWO HOURS LATER WRITTEN WHILE SINGING THE BLUES, I WROTE SOMETHING MUCH MORE INSPIRED, SHAMELESS ADORATION FOR YOU.

i'd travel the whole world, see all the people and places and things see what it is to be born and see what it is to be in that moment of dying. walk down each and every road--the oldest of old to newest of new i'd live through every today, for that one boy waiting in the tomorrows just ahead.

i will come along to you walking backward along highways holding corrugated cardboard signs destination THIS boy: (here is where i would print in big block letters your name) hitchhiking and boxcar-jumping likes of which dylan never dreamed.

but you see,

your hands and heart i will reach in time-- ambling in someday, with the dust and the wind. me with the daydream face, small slender frame here. at arms-length. not many would do what i have done, learning the whole entire world's surface with my favorite moccasins' thin soles. because why wouldn't i, with you, Boy, on the line?

[riotchu]

HALLMARK EAT YOUR HEART OUT

twentyone years and some change for days. tides pulling in tides pulling out. shoes--scuffed blurred high gloss animal hide necktie careful and windsor tied thin black polyester line down torso i would like to think of as mine.

but rheumatic archaic mountains feigning prowess prelude acres of spiney forests pine, spanish moss, kudzu vine

the breeze plays coy with my whisper-thin chemise ohio and all the sun it can cry ambles down my bare shoulders back, neck lifting a thick glass cup sipping bourbon through reddened lips.... i hope your birthday never finds you alone. there always to be a person to trace a finger along your beautiful slumbering spine to grab and hold tight then your body full of cages made of bones holding you atomically close. lifting my glass up to the sunlight prismatic kentucky-grain kaleidoscope coping mechanism 101. wishing that it could be me, but smart enough to know much better than that. here's to looking at you, kid.

[riotchu]

impersonal light

shining on beautiful faces with eyes

only wishing they could behold

in reality

write forever for me.

feeling pulse quicken with every line

taken in

as if this is the sweetest drug

tailor made to intoxicate

my young body and head

that you've made such a pretty little mess,

oh darling boy,

with words so bright

you could reach out and

have all of my little life

undone

i've become

on this

summer night.