Marfa, Texas: A City or Art?

A few weeks ago, one of my best friends, Hana, invited me on a Texas yoga retreat with her and although the thought of traveling at the time seemed nearly impossible, I figured future Emily would be slightly less sad and perhaps more enthusiastic about a trip. And it was a good calculation because although I am still terribly sad, I’m functional and open to enjoying an adventure with one of my besties.

Why a yoga retreat in Texas in the summer, you might ask. Isn’t Texas in September a million degrees? Why yes it is. Or, rather, it’s 107 degrees, which feels pretty close to million. Hana has some friends who run a yoga studio outside of Seattle. They also manage a few unique AirBnb properties that they’ve built themselves. One of those properties is a modern, off-the-grid cabin perched atop a cliff in the Chihuahua desert of an area known as “Far West Texas”, which is extremely close to the Mexico border. The trip for Hana and I started in DC, and after a flight to Houston, another to El Paso, meeting up with our group, all of whom live in the Seattle area, and then a three hour nighttime drive, we arrived late in Marfa Texas, where we’d stay for two nights.

What I knew of Marfa I mostly learned from the TV series “I Love Dick” in which Kevin Bacon placed an iconoclastic academic whom Kathryn Hahn’s character lusts after against the backdrop of a liberal arts writing program plopped in the middle of a desert populated with especially arty people who do things like lay naked on blacktop in the scorching sun and and publicly sunburn and call it performance art. I also heard there was a Prada store. (This turned out to be not true. It only looks like a Prada store, but like so much else in Marfa, is actually art.)

I’ve since learned that Marfa’s remote Wild West vibe was a draw for a New York artist named Donald Judd, who built an artist compound/studio there in 1971. Now, the wildly photogenic city’s art scene draws in some major celebs, including, recently, Lady Gaga and Kim Namjoon of Korean supergroup BTS.

Hana and I visited some of the art galleries, and indeed, they were very, very good. I loved the freight train photography of Texas-based artist LeAna Clifton, the meditative word art of South African artist Guy Sealey, and the abstract paintings of a Lazlo Thorsen Nagel, who uses Japanese ink to explore how light exists even in what appears to be total ink black darkness. I’m not in my usual sharp trip planning state of mind which is my excuse for missing the Chinati Foundation, which is a huge concrete structure that houses modern art, as I’m only just learning that it exists in Marfa.

Arriving to Marfa, I was struck that many things looked like the 1950s/early 1960s. Lots of cool old cars, lots of ranch homes with metal yard furniture and chiminea in the front yards.

Our group stayed at an AirBnb called the Hudson House named so to commemorate when Hollywood heartthrob Rock Hudson lived in the house while filming the movie Giant (with Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean). After some morning yoga (this is yoga retreat after all), the group spent a day touring the sites of Marfa, of which there are not many – some coffee shops, a large courthouse building, a 1930s hotel, and a handful of art galleries and boutiques.

We also lounged in hammocks at the most Instagrammable campground/RV park in the world.

After, the group got delightfully lubricated at a Texas roadhouse style hipster bar that definitely should have had saloon doors but did not.

That evening, a man came over to our table at dinner and told the group he was a poet, or perhaps he used the word troubadour, and could he please recite something for us? He proceeded to spin a Charlie Daniels-meets-Marcel Proust rhyming Western yarn that was so lyrical and evocative, I welled up. After he left the table, I felt the tears really coming and knew there was no stopping it. Not wanting to cry openly around all these folks I had only just met, I skedaddled and walked home alone on a dusty Texas road under a half-moon sky. I felt too sad and teary to go with the gang to see the famed “Marfa lights” which are unexplained blobs of light that appear in the distance each and every night. I’ve been writing lots to process and to ground myself during this disorientating time and I’ve already penned a few starts to songs (despite having zero musical aptitude).

Cowboy singing at the table/bout his fireside past/sends me down a dusty road/in a moonlit trance/I’m looking for answers/I’m digging for meaning/don’t show me no mountain lights/no unexplained gleaming.

I didn’t quite “get” Marfa and why anyone would want to live under the blazing sun in so remote of a place, but looking at my word count and all the many photos I was compelled to take during the quick visit, I have to admit, this place is a total vibe and there’s something undeniably inspiring about it.

To quote Lisa Turtle from a Saved by the Bell episode in which she wore glasses to impress a smart guy: “What is art? Are we art? Is art art?”

Is Marfa a city that has art, or might the entire city be art in and of itself?

The next morning, we were off further into the hot hot desert where we’d start the yoga retreat portion. More on that soon.