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.”
Author Archives: Ansel Tan
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”
From Here to Forever
Kiera rests her head against a carelessly framed advertisement as the dying strains of some wistful indie rock song emanate through her earbuds, the singer’s lowly baritone drowning beneath the cacophonous rattling and screeching of the subway car. Through its cracked windows, she stares out mindlessly as the gleam of the evening makes its wayContinue reading “From Here to Forever”
American Wasteland
In the final lines of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald situates the condition of man in a primordial experience of wonder. Imagining the first arrival of European explorers to North America, he writes: “For a transitory, enchanted moment, man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aestheticContinue reading “American Wasteland”
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