IT'S ALL VERY INSTRUMENTAL
The instruments come flying on Bill's porch or before his wall of amps | jan25.2024
PLEASE HEAD TO HARTSVILLE for some harmonic convergences in the new video episode below from theHARToftheMATTER, devoted to the life, times and weirdly wonderful mindspace of Bill Hart, one of the more fascinating folks we know in the Appalachian outback. In the latest installment below from our sort of slow-motion documentary of Bill’s life, you’ll see several glimpses of his remarkable proficiency, artistry, woodworking and wizardly know-how in birthing musical instruments — or adapting existing ones for more magnificent lives. Plus, you'll hear dollops of William's own musicality. Of late, our man has been through the ringer with health matters of some significance. So, this musical montage, including a cameo from Major the Horse in search of crackers (although birdseed will do, in a pinch) goes out to him with love and gratitude. And to you, too.
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SOUNDTRACK: "Blue Mountain Lake Waltz" by Heidi Muller and Bob Webb from "Dulcimer Moon." | FOR CD and MORE MUSIC: HEIDIMULLER.com
VIDEO: Douglas John Imbrogno | WRITING & VISUALS SITE: theSTORYistheTHING.com
GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: David Imbrogno | HundredMountainJournal.com
SOME PRIOR HARTSVILLE VISITS WE RECOMMEND
SYNOPSIS: Bill and I head into the hills in search of Major the Horse, planning to shower him with carrots, sodium chloride, and other treats. Only … where in the hills has the insubordinate, headstrong beast got himself off to with his horse-gang? As we wait and Bill intermittently hollers into the hollers for his horse-friend, he unspools the tale of the neighbor woman who used an industrial-size frying pan to draw a definitive line in the sand of her homelife. Or maybe right there on the ground. Pay heed, future aggresors. Ka-SWORP!!!
READ ON: ‘Missing Horses and Killer Skillets’
SYNOPSIS: It’s not often in the cosmic scheme of things a 9-year-old gets invited to an atomic bomb explosion by his Dad. True story. Bill’s father was a rising Naval star in Bill’s growing-up years. Posted to Hawaii in the early 1960s, his family came to live at the mouth of Pearl Harbor. When people asked his father what he did, the fellow would answer: ‘I live at Pearl and I work in a pineapple field ...' It’s true, he did get to his job through a pineapple field. But the door to his office was undergound — 10 stories down through lava rock. In a bomb-proof shelter. And he had a hot tip for how his boy might get a really good view of a 1.2-megaton atomic blast out over the Pacific Ocean that night. Codename: Starfish Prime. ‘Just head to beach, son …’
LISTEN IN: ‘An Atomic Experience’
SYNOPSIS: Major is a handsome horse, probably too self-aware and personable for his own good, given that he’s a horse and all. But if his cameo in the video above stirs a desire in you for more face-time with Major, know this. Bill has gone off into the hills looking for him more than once, as you’ll see at the link below. Then, there are the times Major wants to get too close to the humans. Like, when he wants to leg it right up onto the creaky floorboards of Bill’s old porch, as if stopping by for a cocktail.
READ ON: ‘Horsing around, but not on the porch.’
Thanks for reading, viewing, and watching. We co-published today’s video to my companion websites and substack newsletters — TheStoryIsTheThing and WestVirginiaVille. Feel free to share these Hartsville dispatches into your own connected spaces and share the peace outwards. In times of tumult, with mean-spirited characters hungry to spread their meanness and widely infect others, it is important to lift up the example — and the lives — of what the ‘human’ in ‘human being’ means. | Editor Douglas John Imbrogno