Oh gosh. Friday, already? 
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There are hidden hearts everywhere, if you look hard enough.
Whether this amuses you, or inspires, or simply hurts, would vary with the season and the person, naturally. It can be sickening to see couples romancing (or worse, just coupling) when one’s quite fallen out of all the whole relationship nonsense, you see. It can be rather tiring. The heart has cycles that repeat and reopen old wounds — when will it ever give in, you wonder? There is only so much you can take, honestly. Yet, it goes on. You go on. Truth is, you still want more, you always want more.
Denying this would be someone else’s life to lead and you have but your own.
The room is filled with familiar faces, most of them in animated conversations. The sound of laughter wallpapers your every turn, its cacophony pummeling you. Everyone is a stranger, you decide, in the end, everyone is a stranger. You laugh, yourself, of course, you wage war with wit and humour those who fall short. Weary, you feel as though you’ve used up every last bit of kindness you’ve hoarded, your cup needs a-fillin’ again.
Who will wet your lips so parched? your soul so deserted?
The years have taught you that ‘The One’ may be a myth, may not exist. An urban legend that keeps singletons searching and seeking, and the married and mellowed mouldering in their wedded afterlife. Passions subside and bliss is a balm that wears off. You can only rub someone else so much (or yourself, for that matter) before you get sore.
You are sore, you ache and yearn and there are hearts everywhere you turn. It hurts too much.
.
.
Sing.
All you need is the chorus of your own voice. It can carry you when no one else can. Carry yourself, my dear, the weight comes off easier than a pound of flesh, believe me. Sing, in a lost and broken key. Sing, for your losses and your regrets, as you cast them to the winds. Sing, for your dreams yet to be made real, it will be, you tell yourself, it will be, come true for me. Sing, for your supper and your sanity, for separation, if need be, and some surprises along the way. All you need is your own song, just listen…
The words don’t matter when you finally learn what you’ve been meaning to say.
Surrender. Release isn’t failure; it may be the bravest thing you do. All these things we want, isn’t horrifying to see what we crave only imprisons us further? We made these cages, we can surely break these bars and and free ourselves.
Sing and free yourself.
All these hearts that surround you, hidden in the corners and the closets, paraded in pride and in piety, they are not monsters, not flaunting fairies sent to plague you. If they haunt you, it’s for good measure; you’re meant to be celebrating too. Forget your woes, they’ll still be there tomorrow if you must insist on them so. Now is the time to open up and take your place in this neverending dance of life. Peel off those ridiculous shades that hide those beautiful eyes of yours. They spark like diamonds like stars. Allow me to amuse you so you may break out in a smile so infectious they’d name an epidemic after you, if Joy can be contagious. (There, see? You’re smiling already.)
Baby, you know it’s true. All you need is love, love… Love is all you need. 
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~ * ~
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Credits. Photographs taken at a not-so-recent (and most excellent) Oktoberfest/Deepavali brunch by a renown baker extraordinaire. Location and identities of party host and guests undisclosed for security reasons (mostly for the security of yours truly, if you know what I mean). Photos & design © Kenny Mah.
Also. Apologies to The Beatles. The song’s been in my head for days since I watched ‘Across The Universe.’ Brilliant film.
Hey, the Beatles are singing here too
» Paul
And they are singing all the best songs in town…
“…she loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah…”
What is a songbird that has lost its voice? Sing, sing, sing …. for joy and smiles and love. Yes it works!
» Chin
Yes! You guys are getting it! Let’s all join the Big Happy Parade! Come together — right now — over me — over you — all of us all together!
*sings and skips merrily into the sunset, which is at least nine hours away*
second photo looks like an acid trip.. haha… but how would i know…
love the hearts.. !
» cumidanciki
Acid trip is about right… Now Bono’s version fo “I Am The Walrus” is spinning through my head, all the psychadelic sunshine… The second pic is the inspiration behind the whole post, methinks…
i didnt realise the diagrams on the t-shirt actually resemble a heart! OMG! wouldnt have bought it if i knew..hehe…
cos you know how cynical i am about this kinda stuff lar…hehe..like my biography liddat, this..haha!
i enjoy the beatles as well! like let it be and long and winding road…hehe…
» Nic (KHKL)
To be honest, I didn’t realize it either till I start playing around with you guys… on Photoshop, I mean. And then the birds taking off… it just took off from there too. I know it’s supposed to be a map of China, but I rather see it as a map of everybody’s hearts, all beating as one and a-flutterin’ together…
I’m so in the Love Decade right now. Peace, brother!
you mean , the true one or the one that is true ?
» backStreetGluttons
The truth lies in the difference, my friend.
the song….. i listen to it growing up, from mum’s black vinyl records.
oh no, i think it’ll be stuck in my head for the rest of the day!
(thanks to youtube…. i am playing it now…)
Within my ‘hidden’ heart.. I started singing this oldie:
“What the world needs now
is love, sweet love
it’s the only thing
that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now
is love, sweet love,
no not just for some
but for everyone.
Lord, we don’t need
another mountain,
there are mountains
and hillsides enough to climb
There are oceans
and rivers enough to cross,
enough to last
’til the end of time.
What the world needs now
is love, sweet love
it’s the only thing
that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now
is love, sweet love,
no, not just for some
but for everyone.
Lord, we don’t need
another meadow
there are cornfields
and wheat fields enough to grow
There are sunbeams
and moonbeams enough to shine
oh listen, lord,
if you want to know.
What the world needs now
is love, sweet love
it’s the only thing
that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now
is love, sweet love,
no, not just for some
but for everyone.
No, not just for some,
oh, but just for everyone.”
I sang…I sang pretty loudly too, this fine morning. OOOHHH, WHAT A BEEEOOOOOOTIIFULLL MOO…OORRRNING….OOOH WHAT A BEEEOOOTIFFFULLL DAAAAA…AAAY…..
Free breakfast came out of it too considering a Chucklehead offered me a cupcake, just to make me stop!
Bringing the “singing for my supper” to a new level?
Me thinks, I will sing even louder tomorrow. Tee hee.
» keropokman
I miss those black vinyl records… There’s a certain clarity to their crackle that just can’t be duplicated. It’s nostalgia spinning around, a slice of our shared, remembered history.
And hey, I’ve had this song in my head for over a week now! (Not that I’m complaining one bit, hehe.)
» Jemima
I love this Burt Bacharach tune… First heard Alison Krauss’s version in Borders/Starbucks — it’s my memory of books and coffee and lazy Sunday mornings with my best friend.
» Kaya MeeKoo
Gosh, another great Happy Song! I love how everyone is getting into the mood… Ain’t Life one Big Happy Parade?
P.S. Do sing louder tomorrow. I’ll join ya.
Hey, I saw the baker pair at a Halloween party too….they are so cute!!
And please do blog more if you can help it…..its been a long wait!
You know what? Last week, I watched Across The Universe and I got hooked to that song too! And and… couple days ago I came across the movie Love Actually and the song was also sung in the wedding scene. And then you wrote about it.
Wow.
» mh
The Just Heavenly Boys are the best, aren’t they?
And yes, my apologies for not blogging more — the past few weeks have been draining both physically and emotionally, but now my beloved’s discharged from the hospital and just gotten a clean bill of health from the doc, I can return to full-time blogging again! (Or as full-time as I’m wont to be.)
Thanks very much for waiting! *hugs*
» Vern
That’s the power of, that’s mystery of, that’s the beauty of… LOVE.
Wow, indeed.
Ooh, love those hidden hearts!
Yeah, all we ever need is lurveeeee….
Oh Gosh, that the Beatles song is stuck in my head too!
*trying to switch to another song*
Heehe ;p
» Eudora
Well, if you’re switching to another song, make sure it’s A HAPPY SONG!
(Gosh, I sound like a happiness junkie now… or The Pimp of Joy. Whatever sounds odder and freakier, I suppose. Tee hee.)
Truth is. We love, we hurt, we close up. Then we sing, we release, we open up to love again.
It’s an endless cycle, this. One that we’re all destined for, one that we can’t escape, and one that we just can’t seem to get enough of. No?
» Michelle
Endless? In a way, it is. Have you heard Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” before? She sings:
Moons and Junes and Ferris Wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; I’ve looked at love that way.
But now it’s just another show. You leave ‘em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know, don’t give yourself away.
I’ve looked at love from both sides now,
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall.
I really don’t know love at all.
Which seems bittersweet but that’s kinda what love is like. And that’s fine, really. It cycles and repeats, and we can’t stop going for more.
That’s just love.
» Michelle
P.S. She did an orchestral version of classic songs like “Stormy Weather” and included two of her originals, one of which is “Both Sides Now” above (giving the album its title) and also “A Case of You.” I believe the concept of that album was to showcase the highs and lows of love and how you can love again despite it all.
The trouble with love is that different folk have different interpretations of it.
Love for one might be the meeting of strangers’ eyes across a room. Someone else might say “Bah! Humbug!” to that and say that love is companionship, harmony and the sharing of one vision for their lives.
“Both Sides Now” was also in Love Actually…..
Ok. Officially weird.
» Argus Blur
Different faces, different places, different paces… And they say variety is the spice of life, and so it is. It’s something different for everyone. But we all know it when we feel it. That’s one thing that never changes, eh?
Makes me wonder what I’m trying to do here, with my half-baked musings and re-constituted collages. Perhaps trying to share with others my own personal vision of what love could be, what love means to me. It’s not everyone’s idea of what love is, and that’s just it. It shouldn’t be. We all march to our own tune.
But we all know the sound of music when we hear it.
» Vern
Yup, it’s the refined, orchestral version from that album I mentioned, not the folkier version from her earlier days. And that scene with Emma Thompson was the highlight of the film for me; it showed me what we can endure and what love may mean…
“But we all know the sound of music when we hear it. ”
Except when it’s German “Schlager Musik” and it kills your eardrums slowly but surely.
Yes, the best way of trying to know what you feel and think is to write it all down and see if something definitive comes out of it. You call it self-expression probably?
» Argus Even Blurer
Writing it down is the advice our muses offer us, but the words don’t leave the pen that easy. Something is lost from the ear to the heart to the hand that scrawls love down onto paper…
i was reading the comments and everyone was talking about the hidden hearts. and i was like hah? what hidden hearts?
very clever!
then i looked at the photos again and saw them
~and me veli blur~ lol
release, probably the bravest thing you can do. how very true. i’ve been known to be rather anal and uptight. and he often tells me i need to relax, enjoy the journey instead of always wanting to get to the destination.
» lingzie
Your better half seems to have the right idea. But we may not be as anal and uptight as we think we are or as others picture us. There’s a fun-loving cute creature in everyone of us, trust me on that!
kenny, ur site is such a relevation to me. just when i think the world is all out of love u go and prove me wrong. ur such a beautiful person!
love the pictures, especiallt the 2nd one! those guys are sooooo cute! hehe
» Anna
May the world never be out of love, my friend, never ever. I know it seems tough with what goes on with the news today about war and rape and murder (always headlines, they never seem to go away, unfortunately) but there is always hope.
Now, I’m not an American, but I will take a leaf out of their president-elect’s book on change — “Yes, We Can.”
We can change, and we can definitely bring more love into this world. Keep the faith, my dear.
» crimson@venger
I’ll be sure to tell them, and the lovely wife of one of them too, hahaha… I’m sure she’d be pleased her darling husband’s getting so much praise and admirers!
i love barack obama! i really believe he’ll bring change to this world, not just usa.
ur kinda like obama too, ur so optimistic!
Here’s a song I like and I thought of it when I read ur post:
I left home when I was seventeen
I just grew tired of falling down
And I’m sure I was told
The allure of the road
Would be all I found
And all the answers that I started with
Turned out questions in the end
So years roll on by
And just like the sky
The road never ends
Chorus:
And the people who love me still ask me
When are you coming back to town
And I answer quite frankly
When they stop building roads
And all God needs is gravity to hold me down
It’s called GRAVITY.
» Anna
I’m a fan of his ideals, but I have to be honest — I’ll reserve judgement till I’ve seen his performance in office. My American friends all voted for him and I guess they are more euphoric but then again, they have to deal directly with his decisions (though the rest of the world aren’t exactly immune either).
But as ever, I’m optimistic!
» Phoenix
I. Love. That. Song. It’s another one of those Borders/Starbucks songs I have fallen in love with, that is part of my life’s soundtrack. Like Vern said, eerie. (I think she said weird, but same lah…)
i know what u mena. i like sitting in starbucks n reading n listening to music. so relaxing.
is it just me or is the hidden hearts someone’s @r$e? lol
hi there, i came here from cecilia’s blog. i’m so glad i did! ur words and pictures are simply wonderful! u make me want to fall in love again!
thank u, kenny
» diego
It’s actually raining really hard here in Kuala Lumpur. I’ve just had a late lunch and walked through the downpour to return to an empty and lukewarm office (the air-conditioning’s turned off during the weekends). All I want now is a good cup of coffee, a comfortable sofa to sink into, together with an engrossing read and music to soothe my soul…
Ah well, maybe next weekend, then.
» Munir
Uhm, maybe you are looking too hard, bro?
» Sunita Simon
Welcome to Life for Beginners, Sunita! And as to your comment, I think we all should fall in love every day, over and over again! Don’t you think so?
i’m praying he do well too. we need change!
“Love is All Around”?
» Anna
Well, change comes from us first, no?
To change a country, one must change the states.
To change a state, one must change the cities.
To change a city, one must change the people.
To change the people, one must change the oneself first of all.
Or something to that effect.
» Zaitun
I think I prefer Bill Nighly’s rocked-up version of that song — “Christmas is all around.” And fitting too, with X-mas around the corner, haha.
so when’s the next post? more LFB! quickly!
ps. pretty please?
» crimson@venger
Well, since you asked so niiiiicely… There should be a new post up tomorrow (Monday, November 17th 2008 to be exact) once I get around writing it. Now, to continue cleaning me apartment… Ah, to be able to afford some domestic cleaning help…
hey kenny, been awhile since i dropped by your blog. i’ve missed quite a bit, haven’t i? time to catch up on reading.
the beatles rock, btw!
» Neil Lim
You said it, man. The Beatles rock like none other.
(Of course, let’s not forget ABBA, they who make us groove and dance like none other. LOL)
Yeah. All you need is love … starting with oneself.
» FH2o
Let’s all start this week with some (healthy) self-love. Do something for ourselves, something small and rewarding each and every day.
… all you need is love, love, love is all you need…
oh and ABBA! how could i forget them!
money, money, money…. we’re reminded of this everyday ma! LOL
yes and abba too. mamma mia. all the oldies are becoming golides again!
» Neil Lim
I am oddly short of that particular commodity at the end of each month.
» Anna
Oldies to Goldies to Goodies once more! I wonder who will get revived next. Jimi Hendrix? Nirvana? Engelbert Humperdick?
humper-what? that sounds like a dirty word, lol
they should bring back the carpenters
Niravana definitely!
» Anna
Humperdick. It’s a real name, trust me. Though I suspect this ain’t the first time that name’s gotten this response, haha.
The Carpenters? Ooh, another good one. Anyone else lovin’ the animated handmaidens dressing the princess in Dave McKean’s Mirrormask while they sing “Close To You”?
» crimson@venger
Smells teen spirit to me, bro.
how is it that your posts always strike a chord with me?
that was a lovely post, kenny.
» carrot
I’m just glad you enjoy it, dear.
hmmm, coulda sworn i left a comment here. as usual, such a deep post that sends the imagination on a marathon, with all the various permutations of different scenarios. i just LURVE that last pic of the two boys …guffaw, opens up all kinds of interpretations…..
your blog is exercise for the imagination…..
the emma thompson scene where she gets the joni mitchell cd for xmas instead of the bauble? yeah, she damn good actress la. severus snape was good in that too.
» fatboybakes
LOL. Yes, Severus Snape (sometimes known as Alan Rickman — why hasn’t he received a knighthood yet? he sure deserves it, brilliant actor) was decent there too.
Ms. Thompson is in a new movie with the redoubtable Dustin Hoffman called “Last Chance Harvey” — I think it will be amazing given the two great character actors at play here, yes?
As for the last pikcher, hehe… It’s for everyone to work their imagination HARD on it…
hehehe.. I shouldnt be hungry when I’m reading this because all I could think of was FOOD not love… LOL.
Haha… well, one feeds the tummy and the other feeds the heart…
To sir with love,
You are right there’s nothing more precious in this world than the feeling of being loved.
Gosh! there are so much to read and so little time.. hope i’m not too far too catch up with you >0< …
Nah… plenty of time… take it one page, one post at a time, I suppose.
And why are u calling me ’sir’? Am I that OLD?