Sinister: Unicorns and cannonballs,palaces and piers,trumpets,towers,tenements,wide oceans full of tears

[Will Salt]

Matt recently said that you should always post when you're incredibly
drunk.  I'm not incredibly drunk --- if I was, then I wouldn't be able to
type --- but I had a few drinks a bit earlier, and I still haven't
recovered.

This started out as a private reply to Dimitra, but she said I should post
it to the list.  Well, I edited out bits.  It's quite long and it doesn't
have any jokes in it.  I'm sorry.

On Fri, 28 Sep 2001, Dimitra wrote:

> It seems I'll always post about the weather.

> Not all Belle and Sebastian fans would read twelve posts a day about other
> fans lives, and enjoy it. And well probably not everyone out there does -but
> we do. A Sinisterine is a Belle and Sebastian fan with a more or less close
> relationship with their computer, and an interest in other fan's lives.

I keep thinking of what it says at the top of the list homepage:
"Sinister.  It's where we live."  However much Honey denies it, Sinister
*is* more than just a mailing list.  It's a special place, and a way into
our hearts.  It's a brotherhood, in a way.

> it has already been said, by Joan of Dark and repeated by Will, that
> "sometimes Belle and Sebastian feel like they've become a way of
> life". What I meant to say is that we live our lives inspired by them.
> Or at least look at them in ways inspired by them.

Hmmm.

I wouldn't say that they deliberately inspire my life, or that I
consciously think about them when looking at the world.  But, they ...
just seem to *fit* with the way I think and the things I do.  I want to
tell you a bit about how I found them, in case it helps explain any
better.

When I was 18, and in my first term at university, I didn't own a CD
player or a tape player.  I did have a radio---well, an alarm clock---but
it was so hard to tune that I would leave it set to Radio 4 so I could
listen to the Shipping Forecast at 12.45am every day.

(If you don't know what the Shipping Forecast is, go to
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/shipping.shtml>, read and listen)

Because of that, I didn't listen to music much---in fact, I didn't listen
to music at all.  I didn't own many CDs or tapes or records anyway.  I was
going to be a writer, or a journalist, or something, and every week I
would go to the editorial meeting of the student newspaper society.  I
never wrote anything, just went to the meetings and sold copies of the
paper, which was printed every Thursday, wasn't very popular and was
almost out of money.  Apart from that, I spent my days wandering round the
city taking photographs, most of which didn't come out very well.

I was expecting a CD player of some sort for Christmas, and just before
the end of term I read a review in the last edition of the paper before
Christmas.  1996, this was, and the review was of a record called "If
you're feeling sinister".  It was a good review.  The next day was Friday,
which is the day that The Guardian --- the normal newspaper that I read
most days --- prints its album reviews.  They also reviewed this album,
and also seemed to think it was good, although, they said, the band
sounded like they didn't leave their bedsit often enough.  I sometimes
wonder if Stuart read that review and thought of it when he wrote "I
Fought In A War".  But anyway.  It was the end of term, and after buying
Christmas presents for my friends I had a little money left over, so I
went to one of the local record shops and bought three CDs.  One was the
last Lush album, one was a Les Rita Mitsouko album from 1984 which had
been lurking at the back of the record shop's racks for several months,
and the third was this unknown album with the plain red cover.  It had a
lovely back cover, it had *wonderful* sleeve notes, and it was
*mysterious*.  The notes and acknowledgements and whatsit didn't actually
say who the band were, and the picture on the back wasn't exactly clear.  
For that matter, neither was the one on the front.

A few days later, I got back to my parents' house, and could put my new
CDs on the stereo.  At first, I wasn't sure whether I liked B&S or not.  
They were very *different* to any of the CDs I already had.  As I've said
I never really knew much about pop music, and the only things I had to
compare them with were my mother's Simon and Garfunkel LPs that I would
*very carefully* listen to before I left home, always trying very hard not
to put my fingers on the grooves.

(a digression: when I was small, I was entranced by my mother's
record-player, with the "Click-clock, click, *click*" noise the tone arm
made when it reached the runoff groove and picked itself up off the
record.  When I got a bit older, I was even more intrigued by my mother's
*other* record player, which would take a stack of five records, and drop
them down onto the turntable one by one.  It still sits on my bedside
table at my parents' house; when I visit I sometimes use it to play my
parent's old S&G, Abba and Sky records).

(sorry, this post is getting a bit long, isn't it.  oops.  i'm not sure
i'm getting to the point, either)

When Christmas morning came, I got my new CD player -- not a big stereo, a
little portable thing.  The CD player part of it is broken now, and I
mostly use it for listening to the Shipping Forecast at 12.45am every day.
My old radio has been useless as a radio ever since the cat ate its
aerial.  But anyway.  The first thing I did with it was listen to IYFS
again; and it started to grow on me.

Over the next few months, my life continued pretty much as before.  I
still didn't write anything for the student newspaper, which finally ran
out of money on Valentine's Day.  I still took photos, but not many of
them came out.  I spent several hours timidly talking to a girl in one of
my classes, who at the time I thought was rather nice, and eventually I
asked her out for a drink. She bought me lots of drinks, then kissed me
when she thought I was too drunk to be able to run away.  We stayed
together for about three years after that.  A couple of times, I noticed
that Belle and Sebastian were about to release an EP, so I went down the
shop and bought them, and It Was Good.  The girl thought they were a load
of pants, and said so.  She said lots of other things to me, too, which
made me realise that if I ever was completely open with her about myself,
the way I felt about myself, our relationship would be immediately over.
So, I wasn't.

October of that year, and as the new university term started me and the
girlfriend went to the university library one day to reset our new email
passwords and surf the web a bit.  Bored whilst she was sending email to
people, I put in the website that was listed on the sleeve of Dog On
Wheels and by a few links found the Sinister website.  I joined a mailing
list, with about 300 people on it, based in another university department
over on the other side of the city.  I read this list for months, but
never dared post anything.  I came to feel that I knew the people posting,
and so I never dared try jump into the discussions.  Besides, I soon
realised that I knew a tiny, tiny, tiny amount about pop music compared to
the rest of the people on the list, and that scared me.

(I'm forgetting why I started writing this now)

After I'd been on the list a year or so, I had to go away from the
internet for a couple of months, to work in the Hebrides, so I
unsubscribed from the list. Whilst I was away, I heard Tigermilk for the
first time, on a third-hand (or so) tape copy belonging to a Glasgow
colleague called Cat Toms.  Another girl I was working and living with
noticed that whenever IYFS was playing I would silently mouth the lyrics.  
She was a friend of a friend of the band, she said.  She used to have an
original Tigermilk herself, but had sold it.  Before it became popular.  
For five pounds.

Whilst I was away, the green album was released.  You couldn't buy it in
Stornoway, but as soon as I got back to Edinburgh I got hold of a copy.  I
had nowhere to live, though, so my computer was stuck in storage
somewhere, so I didn't rejoin the list.  When I *did* find somewhere to
live, I still didn't rejoin the list.  I had moved in with the girlfriend,
which on the one hand was lovely and nice and cosy, and on the other hand
was horrible and nervewracking and frightening.  I kept things hidden from
her, which was bad.

Another couple of years after that, I heard that another album was coming
out, so I rejoined the list.  Shortly after that, her mother died, and our
relationship collapsed.  We were laid back in bed together one afternoon,
and she started crying.  "Will," she said, "do you see us staying together
forever?"  "I don't know," I replied.  "I don't," she said, "you're just a
friend now."  She picked up her pillow, and some of her clothes off the
floor, and took them to the spare bedroom there and then.

I seem to have lost the point of this email somewhat.  I started out
trying to write about why B&S seem like a way of life, but not one that I
carry out deliberately.  I seem to have ended up writing my autobiography.
Everything else I want to say will probably end up as a pile of disjointed
sentences.

Sinister was the first place I know where I found people who are vaguely
similar to me.  That's special.

In many ways, I'm the same person now as I was when I first joined the
list.  I spend my days writing nonsense, taking photographs and listening
to music.  I write letters to people I've never met.  I timidly try to
talk to people, but I don't think they realise how timid I am.  I'm going
to try and be open with people in future, because it's better.

What does this have to do with what Dimitra said originally?  Um, I'm not
sure.  Something, I think.  I've not so much been dicussing what she said
as discussing something in parallel.  Years and years ago on the list,
there were long discussions about the nature of P!O!P! music, and -- as
far as i remember -- one of the defining factors people decided on was
that it becomes a part of your life.

I don't behave the way I do because of Belle and Sebastian, or because of
Sinister, or because I'm a Belle and Sebastian fan.  I dress the way I do
because they're the clothes I like wearing, or the clothes that are in my
wardrobe.  It just so happens that I like doing things which *fit*.  I'm
shy, but I like meeting people from foreign countries.  I wear my hair in
pigtails because I like having my hair in pigtails, not because I'm trying
to look twee.

Now, I sound like I'm trying to defend myself.  I'm sure I shouldn't have
to. I'd better stop before I paint myself further into a corner. I hope
you can get some vague idea of what I mean from what I say.  I'm not sure
I know how to say it properly.

This post has ended somewhere quite different from where it started, I
think.  I hope none of you mind.  I'll try and think of more jokes to put
in next time.  I think I'm completely sober by now.



xx
will





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