Armistice, armistice, peace at lastHave you learned to love those leaves of glass?Or do you long for softer things, like liberty in the harbourThat call to stretch your arms farther, fartherDo you even have what it takes? To leave those sheets of snow?Leave your boys on a mountain’s edge, say ‘last one, time to go’OrContinue reading “Armistice”
Author Archives: Ansel Tan
A travel day.
On the plane now from Seattle to Boston. If the flight map is anything to go by, we’re just over eastern Montana right now, a few hundred miles out from the North Dakota border, which from a plane is far from a tall order. It seems this flight is following much the same trajectory weContinue reading “A travel day.”
To our absent members.
Ten years ago, in 2015, a ten-year-old Ansel wrote his first screenplay, Wings of Canada. It was an action-comedy feature involving a war breaking out between Canada and a hegemony of Russian, Chinese, and American forces. A whole squadron of characters, funny yet ingenious, would rise up to fight the invading forces, and through theirContinue reading “To our absent members.”
Alone in America at the End of History
Sometime in the early 90s, a bright-eyed, idealistic young man, fresh out of high school and his mandatory two years of military service, packed up everything he had to his name and crossed the ocean for the very first time. The almost thirty-some-hour quadruple flight from Singapore to Tokyo to Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin mustContinue reading “Alone in America at the End of History”
Daughters of the Capitol Riots
On this day, four years ago, a mob of several thousand swarmed the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. They broke into the Senate and House chambers, clutched the Stars and Stripes and a suite of other colours, and, bearing rifles and makeshift weapons, shouted that first ominous death knell of American democracy. IContinue reading “Daughters of the Capitol Riots”
We aren’t going anywhere.
Yesterday morning, I woke up at 3:52 am. I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night, a lot of tossing and turning restlessly in my bed, in my silent apartment in Olympic Village—yet in that hazy fog of an early morning stupor it wasn’t silent. It felt noisy, unceasing. A constant hum of theContinue reading “We aren’t going anywhere.”
America
I have a dream todayOf vast, immortal marble rising over the state of MassachusettsUpon which is mounted the golden rotunda of the grand State houseAnd outside that spectacle, on the streets that surroundA rebellion mounts against the oppressors and the tyrantsAnd the masses rise with their guns and their spiritsAnd stand before a world thatContinue reading “America”
What life feels like when it’s falling apart
At a certain point in life, man’s spirit finds itself overcome by a drive for adventure. It beckons him to look outward. To escape his hometown, to embrace life beyond the known world. Perhaps travelling is a means of satisfying that drive. Europe. Asia. Australia. Faraway lands. No, he’s done that. To hell with thisContinue reading “What life feels like when it’s falling apart”
Three Days in Oregon
Three years from home, got two years to go, but you’ll never see it the same way againYour Rockies are empty; your streets are pretending; palimpsests make up a nooseThree years from home, still better than most, but your compass stopped pointing you eastVersions of memories imprinted in reverie cry, ‘Why did you ever haveContinue reading “Three Days in Oregon”
A Black Mile to the Surface – Manchester Orchestra’s Beautiful Claustrophobia
Manchester Orchestra’s ‘A Black Mile to the Surface’ is less of an album and more of an auditory film. It’s soulful and visionary tracks were designed from conception to flow smoothly into one another as if it were a single continuous movement, carrying the listener through a harrowingly beautiful narrative of life, love, darkness, misery,Continue reading “A Black Mile to the Surface – Manchester Orchestra’s Beautiful Claustrophobia”
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