Horses I have met along the way in the hills and hollers of West Virginia. (Click photo bigger)

'Nelson, Out Standing in His Field' | May 2010 | douglas imbrogno

I generally distrust video links e-mailed to me from friends and acquaintances that includes a Web address and message like: “From me to you; have a wonderful day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The multiple exclamation points are the usual give-away that some well-meaning soul, moved to the ends of their toes by a slideshow of rainbow photos and quotes about angels, thinks you will be, too. When I got just such a message above and a link this morning, I was about to delete it. But the sender had a good track record of entertaining e-mail linkage via my in-box, so I took the bait and clicked. Of course, maybe I am doing the same thing to you? You, being the hard-bitten cynic of human society that you are, may think this video my own rainbow-and-angels gush. So be it! This one got to me, though, by the end. Also, I was seduced by the Italian location. You had me at “abbracci“:

I will be shooting video at the upcoming PGA Greenbrier Classic for the Charleston Gazette, my first visit to the Greenbrier v2.0 since Jim Justice, bless his millionaire Mountain State soul, rescued the place from insolvency. I must admit to having no special feelings for golf perhaps because I have only ever successfully thwacked a golf ball a half-dozen times so that it went any appreciable distance. (‘Thwacked,’ by the way is perhaps the most splendid onomatopoeiac golf adjective ever).

I don’t believe natural selection or God, should she exist, ever intended for the human animal to take a rigid, thin reed and attempt to bat an object the size of a walnut vast distances into a hole you can’t even see. Makes no sense. It’s no wonder Tiger Woods carried such stress around with him that he needed a cavalcade of bimbos just to cope.

But my feelings re: golf are nothing in comparison to this ravishing raking of golf from a bog post titled “Why Does the World Contain Golf?” by Glen Newey, which is a good question:

Why does the world contain golf? The question is strictly analogous to asking why it contains evil. Like chess or darts, golf is clearly not a real sport, which I define as an activity that you can only be any good at with a BMI of less than 35. At school, golf was offered to us as a ‘games’ option in the sixth form. Then, as now, I had no interest in bashing a dimpled pill towards a tiny and distant hole. But it looked less nasty than waddling through sludge in frozen mist after a leather ball, or getting the club-end of a hockey stick in the nuts. I was beguiled by the golfing scenes, in TV soaps as much as sportscasts, where the players were conveyed between strokes in electric buggies, alighting only to swoosh a lazy approach shot to the green. Reality bit when I found that I had to lug the bag of clubs myself, blasted by wind and rain, for a nominal five miles – a purely theoretical figure, bloated by the constant need to divagate onto the beach or into tussocks of marram to track down my wayward ball. It was with relief that I switched the year after to another non-sport, snooker, where you could at least stay in the warm and get a drink.

Some people have too much free time on their hands. But this is fun.

UPDATE. ~ OK, I have learned a little more about the provenance of this video, concocted by Improv Everywhere.

'Red Heel' | w.va. | may 2010 | douglas imbrogno

UNDRUNK

Is how
I prefer
you.

I’m just
saying.
Nothing

more than
that,
my dear.

This is
no judgment.
Nor, god

knows, an
argument.
We, too, after

all,
were
intoxicated

with our
usual
emendation.

It’s the
sloppy talk
that makes me

want to slouch
outside in
streetlamp calm.

Fixing on
the crescent moon.
Its mouth agape

transfixed by Venus,
a pale fire flickering
the darkling heaven.

from “What I Meant to Say,” by Cardinal Crowe (The WestVirginiaVille Press)

mechanics' helpers | huntington w.va. | douglas imbrogno

“800 MILES: Rounding Third”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | PART 6

NOTE: Getting here late? Read the whole piece in a single blogpost here.

—–

There comes a point driving 800 miles in one day hauling a dead Honda homeward when your consciousness begins to resemble that of  a certain person. A person who has gone without sleep for several days on cocaine while the Columbian drug lords who’ve taken you hostage march you mercilessly through the jungle, lashed by whips to keep you stumbling down the narrow mountain path despite your feeble-minded exhaustion. And if you stumble, you tumble into the 800-foot gorge below and are never heard from again.

I hit this point about mile 697, somewhere in the late-night darkness of Interstate 64 after the turn-off from I-75 at Lexington, Ky. Problem was if I stumbled or fell asleep or strayed into the next lane, I would not disappear. I’d end up in in the local news: “U-Haul truck hauling Honda crashes into Dominican Mission bus, all perish. Film at 11!” So it was only through an act of will, intense concentration and yogic eyeball exercises that made me look like Rodney Dangerfield behind the wheel of a Ford truck that kept me focused on the white center lines dashing by through the night.

Also, there comes a point in the consumption of massive injections of caffeine when the caffeine seems to shift into reverse. It starts to make you tired as your body says, ‘Whoa, Charlie, that’s a wee bit too much, now. We are hereby refusing further stimulation. All systems on overload. Shutting down. Yo, Self, your endocrine system is taking a siesta …”

More stressful yet, I was in a race against time. My mechanic had promised to stay up until I got back to his small Cabell County shop, to help me offload the car from the dolly. I was not at all sure I could do it alone as the engine was dead and I had to do a gravity roll off the dolly into his lot, located up an alley on the edge of town. But it was now 12:05 a.m. and he said he could wait only “a little longer” as we communicated via phone. Then, in the wilds of eastern Kentucky, somewhere between the towns of Mt. Sterling and East Jesus (just across from West Jesus, Ky.), the signal dropped out on my iPhone back to town. I was alone with my addled thoughts while still more than an hour from the end of this infernal haul. Right then, I glanced up at my rear view mirror. Who was tailgating me! There was a car RIGHT on my bumper, out here in the middle of nowhere. Damn it, WTF?!! (more…)

hazelwood place | december 2009 | douglas imbrogno

…………………………..

EMBER POEM

In the light given
all the light this
night, iridescence
of a bronze shield

hair drawn off cheek
pulled back to reveal
Artemis. Or is it Selene?
Crescent moon

tumbling like a stone
in a roil of black-purple
clouds over head.
Don’t doubt, although

I know you must. A hundred
times, the gods say – don’t
go to the hilltop. But you do,
which is, of course,

their point. A deer,
white as Carrarra marble,
on the lip of the
pine-scented woodland

incantatory, whispers:
‘Artemis Agrotera,
Potnia Theron.‘
Flees into the dark.

Michael Lipton and a host of helpers and backers have done a remarkable job with the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. Contrary to what you might expect, the state’s now seven-year-old HOF does not exclusively showcase old-time, country and bluegrass musicians, though the Hall’s work obviously spotlights some of the best players in those genres, from Clark Kessinger to Hazel Dickens, Red Sovine to the Lilly Brothers. Lipton, though, has been a burrowing detective, sussing out performers, composers and arrangers in genres from classical music and jazz, to opera and voodoo lounge music. (And the Hall’s high-class induction ceremonies at the state Capitol Complex are not to be missed.)

Acting on advice from other states and their own experiences in establishing such institutions, Michael and crew have gone slow in committing to the high-ticket, high-obligation effort of building a bricks-and-mortar home for the Hall. Instead, they have — wisely, as the results have demonstrated — focused on research and education, painting a surprising portrait of the unexpected musical diversity you find coming out of West Virginia when you look deep enough.

The Hall of Fame recently established its first small, permanent exhibition space in the foyer of the theater inside the Tamarack arts and craft showcase near Beckley. I met Michael there earlier this year and did a musical SoundSlides on the exhibit and the Hall’s mission. The Hall of Fame recently redesigned their website and the audio slideshow landed a prominent place on the home page. I do a lot of multimedia work, but I especially like this piece in no small measure as I was able to work in such wonderful music, with excerpts by avante-garde composer (and Charleston, W.Va. native) George Crumb, a bit of the work of Maceo “Sweet Georgia Brown” Pinkard of Bluefield and a closing sample of the great singer-songwriter Bill Withers of Slab Fork. Click the image above or here to view the Soundslide.

The following is only for those interested in under-the-hood details of sound and audio online. Much as I like this audio slideshow, it’s not my favorite version of this piece. I used Joe Weiss’s super program Soundslides to make it, one of the best ways to present online still photos set to music or narration. You can also use the program to create what’s known as the “Ken Burns Effect,” the slow panning across a photograph as if a camera on a dolly was focusing in or pulling back from the shot, which Burns pioneered in his PBS documentaries on the Civil War, baseball and other topics. Problem is that when you convert a SoundSlides to YouTube, where you’re bound to find more viewers in this busiest of online souks, you lose the Ken Burns effects. So you have to make-do with not-as-good workarounds. Take a look at the YouTube slideshow on the Hall of Fame site and note the circular George Crumb score’s rotation and static shots of Maceo Pinkard and Bill Withers. Then, take a look at the original Soundslides and see how much more fluid those segments are in their Ken Burns-ian glory. Also, the original Soundslides are much bigger, with crisper resolution than the way YouTube compresses things. Here’s the original: