Morcote — In Search of Stillness

Photo © by Hai Yen Ho

Perhaps it was a kind of revelation when I realized what I longed for was a lake. A still lake, shrouded in mist — peaceful, yet faintly uncanny. And Morcote, by Lake Lugano, appeared as the answer, after just a few seconds of searching on my computer.

Binh Thuan: Another Imagination of Death

Photo © by Hai Yen Ho

Among the countless fragments of memory vying to become the most precious, the one that lingers deepest within me is of a morning by the sea. In that fragment, I see myself sitting in a small coracle, watching an old starfish struggling in its quiet encounter with death.

Freedom to Flow with Todd Marston

Todd Marston

No one ever actually told me how to live as a musician. There are many ways, and you have so much freedom to create your own way. And that’s not easy because the choices are endless. So, I started this series of interviews to ask my friends how they live as artists. This first interview was with Todd Marston, my long-time friend and a keyboard player, composer, and educator.

New York: They were not born that way 

Photo © by Hai Yen Ho

The world is full of people who leave the place they were born, only to survive and then die in a place they never expected to live. The world is full of people who live without purpose, without any relationships, without any stories, or many that no one cares to know, despite the constant progress of everything around them. Such people tend to appear the most often in America, and even more in New York, the place where the no-identity-faces gather, the embodiment of the splendid America, the image that represents the most solid but also the most easily shattered dreams.

I saw one of them on the first morning after arriving in New York right after stepping out of a concrete hotel on Twenty-fourth Street, heading towards Seventh Avenue. For a moment, I had the idea of doing something different from the drivers — that is, following the African man to his destination.

Let Me Have It All: Reconsidering Sly & the Family Stone’s Fresh

Album cover of Fresh

Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart died on June 9th, 2025. There have been a lot of narratives about his life and death, but less about his music, particularly his under-appreciated 1973 album, Fresh. True to its title, Fresh is lighter, more relaxed, and much more personal than any music Sly had written to date. It's also much funkier, as Sly had in turn embraced the deep grooves of the Bootsy Collins-era JBs of James Brown.

Listening to Stillness: Nguyen Tuan Cuong and the Art of Vietnamese Lacquer Painting

...cả bóng tối và ánh sáng đều cô đơn | ...both dark and light are lonely by Nguyễn Tuấn Cường (Sơn mài | Lacquer, 120 x 60 cm)Photo © by Nguyễn Tuấn Cường

The first time I encountered one of Nguyễn Tuấn Cường's works, I found myself stunned before a canvas not characterized by richness, but by solidity. It was a painting of a bowl — an ordinary, creased enamel bowl — so realistically rendered it seemed to be living. Not polished, not idealized. It just was. Its rim chipped, its pale blue faded to something almost ghostly, the bowl rested ever so slightly askew on a darkened ground, emanating not surface light but a glow from deep within the layers of lacquer.

Moscow: Snow will melt when the sun rises 

Moscow by Hai Yen HoPhoto © by Hai Yen Ho

The previous night, the snow fell heavily. The snowflakes fell gently yet fiercely, floating through the night like magical creatures. The cold crashed on me suddenly as soon as I stepped outside, aggressively occupying all the corners in my body, sneaking into every inch of carelessly exposed skin. The cold froze on the skin, piercing my brain, aching with every breath. On cold winter nights like this, the best thing to do is to stay in a cozy room, drink a cup of ginger tea, and talk about everything — except politics, of course. Politics in Russia these days is taboo. Russians avoided the subject like a terminal illness. “War in Ukraine? No, don’t worry, we are fine.” They changed the subject. Except Varf Labec.