The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is, I think, the goddamned book I’ve most enjoyed reading, as far as I can remember, and I can’t find my goddamned copy to reread it. I’m thinking now would be a good time to read it, for some reason, and I must have fucking lent it to someone, pressed it upon them, Here read this you’ll love it it’s great, and they’re all Whatever okay and now it’s gone.

I like the Russians. Viktor Pelevin, “The Life of Insects” I dug. Good combination for me, Russian and insects. God talks to me through insects, maybe that’s why I feel this affinity for them. I see two firebugs fucking in my back yard, and hear God saying, It’s all about the fucking, Mig my boy. Fucking in the broader sense, God says. For some people, it’s eating or painting or music or the kids or canoeing or rock-climbing or cooking or writing or, for some, like my one uncle who seemed fond of Portland hookers and died of something vague, something hushed up in the family, a few years ago, literally fucking. Whatever, God says. It’s the creative urge, I’m creating through you, baby, that’s what it’s all about, you think you’re in the driver’s seat, but you’re the car.

So, liking the Russians, I am surprised at myself that I have never read Gonchorov’s Oblomov, especially since the main character must be like a total slacker hero. I say this because I’m currently reading a 1961 book called “Grundformen der Angst” by Fritz Riemann. The title means, in English, something like “Fundamental Forms of Fear”, which I found appealing.

It’s the sort of book I wish I would’ve read 30 years ago, or even 35. At least, that’s what I say now, after reading the introduction and skimming a bit of the rest. Fear is a fundamental aspect of life, and there are four kinds of fear, basically, and we can react to fear in one of two ways. That seems to be what the book is about, stretched out over a few hundred pages.

You probably know all this already. Maybe you’re thinking, Doh, Mig, the way the nice violin teacher did when I told her, Gee, this year I figured out that if you practice more, you get better faster.

Fear cannot be eliminated from life, it can only be dealt with, or avoided. If we deal with it – confront it, we develop. If we avoid it, we stagnate. I was thinking about Oblomov, lounging around and doing nothing — either he is fearless, or he is avoiding fear and stagnating. I’ll have to read the book, I guess.

All of human culture is an attempt to deal with fear by whatever blah blah blah. From magic, religion, science, politics, collecting Pez dispensers, pimping your ride, you name it. “Love”, whatever. Society itself. Banding together. Being a hermit. Organizing scavenger hunts. Pick any abstract concept.

So, I suppose, my method was avoidance, for a long while. Stagnation: I called it fermentation, aging in the bottle, whatever. Ripening. And what I think is better is to follow your creative urge, the fucking God was talking about, and deal with whatever fears or scary situations arise along the way. There is nothing necessarily heroic about this, it’s just what you do or don’t do, I think.

Like me and the cello, there is getting over the fear of bowing, the cautious bowing that squeaks so much. Squeakophobia as it’s known in the business. Face that and it sounds better. Or, the annual recitals that churn my stomach. They’re getting easier, and christalmighty, they’re only recitals, they’re no big deal, really.

I sat down near the back of the room at the recital, two evenings ago, and looked at the program. Dang, I thought, they put me near the end, amidst the good cellists. Following a girl who plays much better than I do.

Everyone else, though, played badly. Played like kids at a recital, that is. Some weren’t nervous or scared, most were. Most had bad intonation and squeaked and so on. Even the good kids before me made mistakes. A handsome young man was quite nervous and mad at himself while playing at all the boo-boos he was making.

So by the time it was my turn, I was in a very much What-the-hell who cares mood. I was quite happy as I sat down, as happy as you can be when you are as nervous as I was, nervous but calming down rapidly.

I smiled and if not exactly throwing caution to the wind, at least thinking, the cautious playing of the kids before me sounded like crap, I’ll loosen up and if it sounds like crap, it won’t be because I was too timid.

Let me mention here my state of mind: quite fragmented. My picture of the actual playing looked as if it were viewed through a long, shiny tube reflected in a jagged construction of small mirrors assembled with superglue by a crazy person; kaleidoscopic, in other words, and disorganized.

I hammed it up on the vibrato, though. I got vibrato on maybe half the notes where I should have. The others, I was more careful and passed on the vibrato because, like, tricky passages immediately followed them and so on. The first half of the piece (a Romberg sonata for cello and piano) repeated, and although I had been dreading the repetition, it turned out to be fun, and a second chance to go back and get right all the stuff I screwed up the first time, which wasn’t that much, it turned out.

Whenever I made a mistake, I just grinned and played through it. Playing in the orchestra this year really helped with the playing past mistakes issue.

In fact, the hard parts I got right, mostly, and got tangled up over some of the easier passages. Best of all was this dramatic exit at the end, this series of fast, dramatic notes that I had been batting .500 on in practice. I got it right, and knew as I was playing it that I was getting it right, and thinking, I’m getting it right, man, this is fun as hell.

The applause seemed quite heavy, but I was still kaleidoscopic. A friend in the back row yelled Bravo, which was to be expected, he is a funny person, but then some stranger also did. And my kids were proud of me, and Beta, who knows her music, said some nice things, and my inlaws were very proud too, and friends congratulated me for having the nerve to get up there, and my cello teacher said, Great you didn’t lose your sense of humor, whatever that means.

So I suppose, if one faces a fear, it can pan out, although if you are like afraid of a lion, then you get fucking eaten, so use your judgement.