#scenes from an italian restaurant

[radicchia]

When you've always kind of ignored a song and suddenly everything clicks and you listen to it five times in a row

[blackbirdsnonsense]

I'm having an idea but I'm not sure if I want to add more cuts to the scene cause I feel it should match better but damn if it doesn't just work as is!

[setaflow]

Since Billy Joel is trending now, here are my favorites in no particular order:

New York man is fucking pissed

Why you shouldn't marry right out of high school

Don't trust anyone, not even yourself your lover

Tied with Alicia Keys for "Most Overplayed song at any given NYC sports game" award

Barbershop quartet serenades you so sweetly under the moonlight

Never live in Hackensack, New Jersey

Hey remember the Vietnam War? Yeah that was bad.

I wanna have sex with a Catholic girl

I wanna have sex with an Upper East Side girl

Solo by The Artful Dodger from the hit 1830's bestseller Oliver Twist

Shit's fucked

The only reason I know about the existence of Wheeling, West Virginia

"Hey, Billi! Looks to me like you're on the WRONG SIDE OF THE RIVER"

[gay-caveman]

[fizzy-watches-and-listens]

I LOVE SONGS WITH MULTIPLE MOODS SO MUCH

they are 100% the best type of song!!!

like yes please billy joel i will absolutely eat up scenes from an italian restaurant

AND YES DAVID BOWIE i will break it down sexual style to station to station

[dumbcloud-old]

Do you ever just……..

BRENDER AND EDDIE WERE

STILL GOING

STEADY IN THE

SUMMER OF

SEVENTY-FIVEEEEE

[captain-nicnac]

Billy Joel really wrote a song that was like. Hey girl long time no see you look as hot as you did in high school speaking of high school remember Brenda and Eddie? Yeah they got married and then they got divorced anyway it was nice talking to you hmu

[dragonsandgayships]

i love listening to “scenes from an italian restaurant” love listening to mr. billy joel tell me the story of render renetti

[siennaspeaks]

Scenes from my Italian restaurant (s)

“A bottle of white, 

a bottle of red?

Perhaps a bottle of rosé instead?

We’ll get a table near the street,

In our old familiar place

You and I, face to face”

Here’s the introduction of a song that talks about catching up. Here’s a song that caught up with me tonight. Here’s a song that catches up with me every now and then.

The theme is exactly that: catching up. For quite a while now, the theme of my life has been catching up with myself and people. Going back to my roots, coming back and checking in has been a recurring theme for me these days, just like my diving-ins and coming-outs during the free summer days that I long for.

Oh, my Italian restaurants.

The first one that I remember distinctly was Gezi Istanbul in Gokturk, not only an Italian restaurant but also a pâtisserie, with my memories dating back to 2008 or so. Back when where I was living was an actual suburb(1) with horses and forests right around the corner, the center of the suburb was very very limited, and there was a tiny Italian restaurant, the second of a chain(2). 

That restaurant hosted so many memories: birthday of a friend, learning that there’s a cocktail called margarita different from the pizza Margherita that I fell in love with, but most of all, so many family events were celebrated there.

“A bottle of red, a bottle of white

It all depends upon your appetite

I’ll meet you any time you want

In our Italian restaurant”

The second that I deliberately choose to remember fondly is the one in Flanders, Dolce e Salato. Even thinking about that restaurant hyper-activates my lacrymal glands. 

This restaurant means a great deal to me, for it was one of my refuges when I was about to go coo-coo from not having enough human interaction or change of environment, in plain covid period, especially when they reopened the bars around mid-May and my exams were until June.

This restaurant was there when I learned about Belgium, when I wanted to practice my crippled Italian, when I just really was tired of cooking, or just wanted a coffee and/or someone to chat with.

It’s still there. The fact that it’s still there gives me incredible strength, especially in these times where all of my fortresses are collapsing or have already collapsed.

The third one, I had known its existence since quite some time but hadn’t experienced a meal there; until a few days ago. It’s not perfect, none of these restaurants are/were. But sometimes, these days, it feels more home than my own apartment. I get to chat with people, I get to try new food, I get to practice my Italian (more than I got to do so in Ixelles (surprisingly(?)).

One little touch made it more home. The frogs. The frogs that I can hear now that they are back. That sound is one of the official sound of late spring and summer of my childhood and early adolescence. I almost felt home again. I almost felt like everything was fine.

And most things are going to be fine. Hope shall overcome.

I’ll meet you anytime we both want, in our Italian restaurant.

(1) My parents haven’t moved (yet). It’s still the same house, but everything has changed. I deliberately choose to not get into that, to choose to put the curse You-Know-Who cast on my childhood and adolescence aside.

(2)A rather upper-middle class one at that. It was tiny back then, now I don't really know what's become of it.

[rastronomicals]

1:47 AM EDT May 6, 2023:

Billy Joel - "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" From the album The Stranger (September 29, 1977)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: Motherfuckin' breakthroughs

[ignisambulabitmecum]

[blackbirdsnonsense]

A quick AMV idea that just wouldn't leave me alone.

[crispyflowerblaze]

why are ~7 minute long billy joel songs so good. like why are they so amazing what's up with that

[annabelloki]

This is for Scenes from an Italian Restaurant erasure

If you vote please reblog and maybe put your age I'm the tags because I'm curious as to who this reaches.

[shrimpbucket69420]

that tiny minuscule three second snapshot has literally changed my life guys