Review: Gothic Violence by Mike Ma
Review: Gothic Violence by Mike Ma
Spray and pray. Laws are on one side, poets on the other.
Mike Ma shoots from the hip. He misses a lot of shots. And he nails comedic bullseyes left and right. He shoots a lot. Some writers manage to not even pull the trigger. If a reader can overlook the unreadable jibberish in this book, they might find the original meme gems.
The man in the arena shoots his shots.
Today’s modernites are fish in water and the water is weakness. Incurious, indifferent, cowardice and idleness. The bravest thing to do is think, speak, care and try.
In both Mike Ma’s books, Harassment Architecture and Gothic Violence, the ideas can be dumb as shit, but his balls are so big that he could hack em off with a hatchet if he felt like it.
You, yes you reader, would have to be an idiot to think the next 50 years will be smooth emailing. I mean smooth sailing. My best writing is autocorrect slips. I mean Freudian slips. I digress.
Ma is a departure from the boring how-to noncreativity that plagues the internet and book world. How-to self-help word salads are so ubiquitous that the fish don’t know they’re in water. Mike flushes the fish down the toilet.
It doesn’t even make sense. That’s why it’s closer to truth than talking TV heads.
In a world of shitstorms, losers and mediocrity, Ma steps up and calls it how he sees it, and says some crazy shit. He’s a fly in the fat-free milk.
“Laws are on one side, poets on the other.”
Elon Musk
From Gothic Violence
When it’s quiet again, I register that I am alone and begin to stir the potion of thoughts. That’s the method. Pour in a couple handfuls of observations and ideas, stir vigorously and see what results. (page 27)
I spend every day of my life arguing with myself. Inside my head, arguing with my own thoughts. Full conversations with resolutions, agreements, new outcomes. Considering erratic boulders. Various evidence of the Flood. (page 28)
There are moments when your leaders, your neighbors, your family will all turn the knife on you. For nothing at all.
There are very few cures to this outside of violence. Should you leave, they might find you. Should you surrender, well then you lost. But the dead cannot chase you. Violence is a vaccine. It works, but at the cost of everything. It does not repair the victim. It extinguishes the whole flame and then itself. Just as the honey bee leaves its organs behind with a sting. There is nothing dark about this. (page 170)
When I stand on marble it feels like the floor of a pine forest, the shore of a beach, something equal in reality. The feeling is there in each. That certainty, that calling back to a classical ardor. There is a plasmatic glow in the veins of the world and it is felt by the honest. I am here now. I am firmly rooted and those who hate me are the enemies of all that is natural.
If I die, if I was struck down here in this second, my torch would carry still. (page 171)
[for I am a father, brother, extension of nature]
Men are the ever-changing adventurous nomads.
We may get lost at sea for twenty years or we may heard sheep until a peaceful death.
“Women and men alike need figures of importance they would hate to disappoint. This is crucial to the development of a respectable human. Nobody can depend fully on their internal value system as we are all lured to sin. You may believe that something is bad but choose to act differently when it comes to strike.
I’m waiting for the day that men realize there are white women in places other than America and Europe. . . your chances of finding a God-fearing virgin will increase in certain places compared to others.” (page 126)
[overhearing people in Miami] “A lot of bitches want rape like they want a mental illness”
“Rape is a necessary part of life. It’s how we got Rome and a bunch of other countries.”
“Sometimes jokes are just for whoever told it. The world doesn’t revolve around you, Rosemary. Plus, why the fuck would I risk years of jail time to have four minutes of missionary with you? Do you have a fever or something?” Art girl stands up with a bright red face. . . “Fuck you, I’m going back to campus. Good luck finding someone else like me.”
“I’m sure you lay on your back different than all the other girls.”
Benevolent exo-legal marital cults are the enemy of dark worldwide entities. (page 128)
It feels good to cut firewood and cook your dinner with it.
Traditional life is heralded not because it is fashionable, but because it works. It is a framework from which all creative and heroic endeavors might spring.
Fulfilling life is entirely within our grasp and hope is ever-present.
Capability is biological, and it is required of us eternally.
“Humans create more humans. Buildings cannot create more buildings.”
“We are Images of God, Forever . . . Nothing strikes fear into the heart of evil quite like minding your fucking business.”
The ancient Greeks would have had no trouble labeling the error into which our Victorian grandfathers fell: hubris. Tipsy on the heady doctrines of evolution and progress, the Victorians tragically overestimated their own power to do good, and Satan's to do ill.
I was wrong about something. I conveyed, somewhere along the line, that the adventures of the ancient days are unachievable now.
I believe almost anything that was done in antiquity can be replicated even today. It's exactly what should be done. Whether the stories of the ancients are as true as we've been told, we can do no wrong in taking from them. In doing as they have done. You can see it in the eyes of some men, and women even. They carry the recaptured spirit of older times. They would be at home in whatever century you placed them because they carry a timeless presence. All good things are timeless. (Page 70)
God asks men to be men and nothing more. We are promised nothing because there is no struggle within the confines of a promise. Our enemies exist to be slaughtered, our families exist to be loved. I will be important when Heaven takes me or I will stare into the eyes of God and kill myself for the deepest seat in Hell. In neither end will I be average. THE END.
Early in the year, I felt in the depths of the night that there is a book that wants to come out me. I didn’t know how to write a book until I read Mike Ma. I read his first book, Harassment Architecture, then read his second, Gothic Violence.
I realized “Oh, I can do that.”
Before, I had a perception that writing a book is something that must be planned! Researched! Sources cited in MLA format! You can’t just say what you think.
But actually, you can. That is, if you can actually think, which I can. If you’re already thinking, if you already have good ideas, you have a massive advantage because usually the ideas don’t come until after you start writing. But you don’t start because you don’t have ideas.
Writing a book is not arduous boring toil. If it is, than your book probably sucks. Before reading Ma, I was writing standup comedy jokes. The bits and sets leaned toward story telling and cultural commentary. For me, writing funny and critical essays is easier than writing and delivering stand-up jokes to audiences of tired comics at open mics.
Mike Ma showed me I can write an entire book the way that I think. I don’t have to follow the rules. He publishes the word “nigger” like it’s nothing. If he can do that, what can I do? In my life I gathered and thought of poignant ideas, but a list of ideas is boring. People want and need characters and dialogue. Mike shows how to bring ideas to life through a synthesis of fiction and nonfiction, dreams and real life experiences. Sometimes we don’t know which is which.
Shift an idea to a spirit. THE END.
