tigertail (dir. alan yang) was beautiful and poignant in the way you come home after a long day and allow yourself to slowly unwind in the silence. the film soaks in the quiet, recognizes that there aren’t always words to say what you mean, and visually renders those moments to speak louder than the script. it’s not a perfect film, but it is a poignant one. stop on any frame, and you see a sketch of yourself and your family in the mirror. these are a few things that made the film so resonant:

1. recognizing that the homeland is so bright and vibrant, yet so unbearable. our parents, grandparents all started somewhere—some version of that same concrete house and barely-paved dirt road.
2. the monotony and loneliness of arriving somewhere new, unanchored. trying to put down roots in a place when you’re not sure it wants you.
3. the sacrifices and choices we make so that someday we end up with a house on american soil. when does that stop being the dream? when did it stop for pin jui?

it’s pin jui sitting with a cup of tea in his dining room, alone in a big house. it’s angela with a half-eaten meal, wishing her father would say something. it’s the two of them together, framed side-by-side by a concrete block at the end.

this film was alan yang’s way of producing a careful study of his own father, vivid in color and pensive in thought. it makes you want to stop and study your parents too; think about where they came from and what they have to say too.

moving portraits: a series about how the online and offline interact and collide

Living memory, as told through live performances.

Live performance is a dialogue. It is a magical, unspoken conversation that connects the performer with each member of that audience. It is the connection that stays with you in physical space, forged through the visual, auditory, and tactile sensory input that is only possible by experiencing the performance/demonstration in a real, live setting. The relevance of live performance is to build that connection between observer and art, but also to initiate the live dialogue that occurs after. There is something special at the conclusion of a performance when you have a chance to react, process what you have seen, and reflect with those around you about what you have just experienced. Those conversations often cement the value and significance of the performance; and that reflection transforms a live performance into an experience and a memory that is enriching, immersive, and above all, timeless.

bright lights / big city: a love letter to cityscapes and the urban form

There is nothing static about New York City; it is a constant ebb and flow of shifting gears and moving parts. I have observed the city as it lives and breathes as its own organism. Cities are dynamic, kinetic, and ever-changing: they bleed people and passion.

bright lights / big city: a love letter to cityscapes and the urban form

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a literary monument to cities. Invisible Cities was the last piece of literature I read in English class before graduating from high school. Calvino’s vivid love letter to cities in all their iterations captured the goodbye I said to my hometown city of New York as I left for a new city—Cambridge. My love for Calvino’s work is rooted in its sentimentality, but also originates in its effortless universality.

My favorite of the invisible cities is Chloe:

In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping.

There is a quality that is unmistakably New York simmering underneath Calvino’s description: for that, it is truly beautiful. The greatest strength of Invisible Cities is its intersectionality. One city could just as easily be another city. Just as the cities are themselves, Calvino’s descriptions are eternal and fluid.

though we may be grieving for the past few february weeks spent writing in the desolate winter, the 29th is a special leap day that comes with the promise of a new spring. for one day every four years, we stand in abeyance until we see the spring sun rise in the blue sky once again. we find our temporary respite in a dream of spring, a safe harbor among the turbulent seas of the winter nightmare.