I warm bowls of leftover soup for us – old chicken, carrot, tomatoes and sweetcorn are comforting ingredients for a cold evening. We sup, our spoons tinkling against our bowls as we chat, as we recount our busy day at work. You tell me there is a song you want me to listen to. You head to your computer and search for the song on the internet. You find it, and click play. You say the title of the song is “Night Blindness”; the singer is Tanya Chua, a Singaporean. I say I know who she is and you look pleasantly surprised. But I’ve not heard this song before. It’s lovely. You stand up and start to sway to the music. I come to you, wrap my arms around you, and we slip into a slow dance in place, just our bodies moving, swaying, pressed against each other. I let my head fall against your shoulder, rest it there. I smell your clothes, the perfume that resides in their fibre, that lingers all along your shoulder blades. I turn higher and smell your neck and you smell different here, more sweat and skin, perhaps. Delicious. I sink my nose into your hair, tickling it, and I smell lavender, the shampoo you use, and the night itself. There’s nothing quite like your scents, wonderful. And we dance until the song ends. I give you a kiss on the lips and we have smiles in our eyes.
We’ve been dancing, as the night is blind.
.
.
Copyright © 2011 Kenny Mah Ying Fye. Image from the book Dancing with Mr. Darcy.
Kenny Mah believes in the good in people. He has been blogging for over ten years. No, his hands aren't tired. Yet.
Save the last dance for me, ya…. ;)
@jemima: I’ll save the dance for you, but it won’t be the last, for we have more days and dancin’ left to do… *hugs*
i wanna bogey.. but am hitting the gym 1st! LOL
oh, this post is so MILD for you.. where’s the FIRE?!! LOL
@ciki: Uhm, bogey at the gym? You can join a dance class or a BodyJam class there ma…
Heh. Sometimes a mildly spicy sauce does better than one with a five-jalapeño-rating.
I always remember the dances, always always. Even when the music playing was bad, or when we’re no longer on speaking terms, or I don’t remember anything else about the person.
@minchow: Always remember the dance, always. Thanks, dear, for this. You are both beautiful and wise.
strange coincidence indeed. i was thinking abt writing a post on dancing too :P but we shall see if that materialises. brain not functioning after night duty @__@
@Jun: Oh but you must! Write about dancing, I mean. You’ve got me curious as to whether it’d be midnight dancing in Madrid or some exotic moves in Istanbul. Rest well… then write, write, write. Your feet and your rhythm commands you.
I love Tanya Chua too but I ain’t gonna bogey with you. I’ll be surprised too if McC knows her.
@alilfatmonkey: Indeed, I’d be very surprised if McC knew who Tanya Chua is too. Hehe.
And are you sure you dun wanna bogey with me? C’mon, baby, ya know ya wanna… *winks salaciously*
Such a feathery, floaty post. :)
I miss dancing with him. It’s been so long, our shoes have been sitting in the cupboard, dusty, neglected and unused.
Is the book any good? To me, Darcy will forever look like Colin Firth! :D
@gfad: Time then, I believe, to dig those dancing shoes out of your closet, grab hold of your hubby and start DANCIN’…
And I have to agree with you – Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is just so perfectly Darcilicious! Hehe.
dancing… how i miss it so…
and so nice that the both of u swaying together in the music… i can almost imagine it…
pity i’ll prolly never dance wit my other half… him being a dance teacher n all… really puts the stress on one u know… =.=
@asstha: Oh, that’s even better! If your partner’s a dance teacher, he should be able to teach you moves on the dancefloor you never knew…
… and you may reciprocate by teaching moves in other areas, ahem, that he never knew either. *winks*
tanya chua? if i heard that, i’d have replied, “ask chua what?” (really!). never heard of her :D
some of my favorite songs contain the word ‘dance’ in their titles. bruce springsteen’s dancing in the dark (a contender for my ‘top 10 most beloved songs’ list). abba’s dancing queen. whitney’s i wanna dance with somebody. irene cara’s flashdance. tina turner’s private dancer. lee ann womack’s i hope you dance. the bitter irony is that i have two left feet (and uncooperative hips) :D
@Sean: I may be able to help you out there – Tanya Chua’s wiki entry here.
(By the way, Devil wants me to tell you he thinks your “ask chua what?” quip was a really lame pun. I have to say I agree. Very lame. The lamest.)
Are you sure you don’t have two RIGHT feet? Cos if you do, I’ve found the perfect partner for you! Let me introduce you to J the chocoholic whom I’ve only promised via some tweets this morning I was gonna find her a perfect dance partner for her two LEFT feet.
Do say it’s so.
eeee, how unfair. tanya’s a year older than me, but looks five years younger…
bah, you’re just both seething with envy that you didn’t think of that pun first :D
if she doesn’t mind me stepping on her feet (and possibly tripping over mine), then why not? but the best thing to be said about me is that i keep my hands to myself =)
@Sean: Well, she is a singing sensation, a Singaporean superstar – so she probably gets tons of great cosmetic goodies and spa treatments. That’d take five years off anyone, my friend!
Perhaps it’s time you rethink your spending habits? Maybe a change for your blog come the Year of the Rabbit? No more Eat Drink KL; instead welcome Facial Spa KL? Hehe.
Oh I think she (and any other lady, actually) would be rather disappointed if you kept your hands to yourself. Didn’t you mention before that they were very talented hands? Hee.
your post today is good and bad for me…good in the sense that it helps me to visualise doing this with someone and the bad thing is i cant get this happening now or sooner, therefore i can only picture all these for the rest of tonite..
@lena: Not now, maybe but there’s always in the time to come. Have faith, my dear.
And from my own experience, back during the days when I danced, not by myself, but with myself, that can be sparkling and smashing too. Never forget we are pretty damn good dance partners too, to someone else, and maybe ourselves also.
i understand your point and i know how important that we got to love ourselves, if we lose that, it would even be tougher for us to receive love. I’m experiencing and just want to enjoy life in the ‘now’..it’s just when i read abt that, it triggered my mind for a moment and give me thoughts on somebody..
@lena: Excellent points. If we lose ourselves, then that’s just about everything, isn’t it?
*hugs*
Afraid I haven’t ever danced with anyone for years. Not like that. Ankle injury and there went any hopes of dancing further. My dance partners didn’t count. We didn’t click. Ahh well. Maybe one day I will be able to dance with -someone-.
@Spindle Girl: Dancing, well, one doesn’t really have to move all that much. Sometimes just dancing in place, that could be pretty much perfect.
May you dance this way some day soon, my dear. I know you will. *hugs*
I’ll dance with you on the Birthday minus my high heels because I tread on toes. :P Or we could just wave spatulas around in the kitchen bouncing around to ‘Uptown Girl’.
@Spindle Girl: ‘Uptown Girl’! I love that song! Especially Westlife’s version, surprisingly. Hee.
Would that make you a Dancing Queen? :D
@Shannon: Haha, hopefully that will make us all Dancing Kings and Dancing Queens… Hehe.
Dig it out then m’dear! We’ll dance around to that and other things. I’ll bring the music library over and we can rap Green Eggs and Ham too. :P Or Piranha Women of the Avocado Jungle of Death.
singapore has superstars? i just realized i can’t name any singaporean singers at all. not even those dudes who won ‘singapore idol.’ :D
eat drink kl could become facial spa kl … if life for beginners becomes life for cannibals. hehe :P
maybe what i meant by having talented hands was that i have nimble fingers for playing the piano or strumming a guitar leh :D
Yeah, I was just referring to our infamous night before I had to take my flight the next day back to America. Definitely one of the top 10 nights ever for me. :)
@Spindle Girl: Piranha Women of the Avocado Jungle of Death? Oh, I’m excited already. Hehe.
@Sean: Oh they have, but most of them have to head off to Taiwan or China to make their name, so to speak.
Devil & I were just listening to Sun Yan-zi (Stefanie Sun) in our car this morning on our way to work. She’s one of Singapore’s more stunning successes and one of her early albums – My Desired Happiness (我要的幸福) – was quite instrumental in keeping me sane during my time in Munich almost ten years ago.
Let’s stick to Eat Drink KL and Life for Beginners lah. *chuckles*
Well, you can take Toni Braxton’s advice and strum your dance partner like she was a Spanish Guitar ma. No?
@Shannon: Oh yeah. That night. I need to revisit it one day. It was crazy. Flying bicycles, five guys in a telephone booth, sneaking around some dodgy corporate-type buildings in Munich, singing in the streets… and those are just the parts I remember! I wonder what else we did?
Good Bavarian beer will do that to ya, everytime.
It’s probably in one of my top 5 nights, actually. Wow. Okay, I so gotta write something German-ish soon. The nostalgia’s really getting to me, haha.
meh… not exactly the way it works… he stresses me with his perfectly coordinated steps and I suddenly have two left feet due to the sheer pressure of getting it right… even when he was my tutor and i, the student in a class full of people, i’d tell him don’t stand beside me, u make me stress n i’ll mess up the steps even more… =.=
@asstha: Okay, I guess it is different when your partner’s not just a dance professional but a teacher as well.
Are you sure you can’t convince him to do the simple, somewhat-lame-but-cute dancing-in-place that Devil & I heartily recommend here? Hehe.
i shall try… >.<
@asstha: That’s the spirit!
Tanya Chua released some self-written English materials before and I thought they were good. Then, came the Mandarin covers that sounded refreshing (in the Mandopop scene at that time) but somehow, her music is getting pretty predictable. The last album from her that I bought was “Stranger”, I think. That must have been like…5 years ago? Haha.
@Nic: ‘Stranger’ is the album where this “Night Blindness’ song came from. And it’s a constant struggle to stay fresh, not merely for singers but writers too. How do you do it, my friend?