There Is No Such Thing As Nowhere :: Marfa Myths 2017 By J. Woodbury, images by Alex Marks — March 21, 2017

“You have to really want to be here,” Keith just has this seemingly magnetic pull. I don’t Abrahamsson says, overlooking the small West know how to articulate what about it gives Texas town of Marfa. you the feeling that it’s a special place, but it does have that quality.” We’re sitting on the deck of a stone and adobe house just off Highway 90, positioned atop Marfa’s specialness is a reminder that there’s no a hill. Since 2014, the label Abrahamsson such thing as “nowhere.” Despite its relative founded, Mexican Summer, has hosted the geographic remoteness – it’s located about six annual Marfa Myths festival here with arts hours west of Austin and a three-hour drive nonprofit Ballroom Marfa. Initially a single from El Paso – Marfa feels alive in an indefin- performance at local venue El Cosmico, the able way, pulsing with a vibrancy most small, gathering has bloomed into a four-day multi- mostly isolated communities in America can’t disciplinary happening, dedicated to blurring anymore, their industries and prospects dried the lines between cinema, literature, art, and up. Though regular injections of New Yorkers, music. Angelinos, and big city entrepreneurs – via festivals like Marfa Myths, the Marfa Film Below us, a rooster crows and a couple dogs Festival, and the Chinati Weekend – bring fitfully bark. Abrahamsson, wearing a denim clout and cash to the town, it’s not a hectic jacket and faded Levis, leans back in his chair place. Which is precisely why everything feels and considers my question: What keeps him so charming: Things happen here, at their own coming back to Marfa? gentle pace.

“It’s kind of hard to articulate,” Abrahamsson That sense of slowness – a luxury afforded by says. “But it does feel like the town has this the town’s everyday inhabitants – is crucial to magical something. I don’t know if it’s the the festival’s feel. Marfa has beckoned art- remote location, or the super-dramatic land- ists since the 1970s, when conceptual artist scape and sky. There’s something about it that Donald Judd moved to the town looking to But more often than not, it’s impossible to deny Abrahamsson’s assertion that there’s something magnetic at play in Marfa. Like on Thursday evening, when Texas psychedelic pioneer Roky Erickson and his band tore into “You’re Gonna Miss Me” at the Marfa Visi- tor’s Center. Though their rendition lacked the rage and energy his band the 13th Floor Elevators brought to their original 1966 recording, knowing even a little of Erickson’s history, replete with heroic doses of acid and duck out of the crowded New York arts scene electro-shock therapy shamefully administered and score massive swaths of cheap land. Judd’s in Houston and Rusk, made the moment legacy – preserved by the Chinati Foundation feel courageous and remarkable. The follow- and the Judd Foundation – permeates the ing morning, in a gallery lined with original town, which is home to a number of curi- posters from the 13th Floor Elevator’s early osities, both satirical (Elmgreen & Dragset’s days, historians Paul Drummond and Johan “Prada Marfa”) and potentially supernatural Kugelberg explored the impact and influence (the phantom Marfa Ghost Lights, which can of Erickson and his original band mates on be viewed on east of town on Route 67). American psychedelia. Serving as an aperitif for their forthcoming book about the group’s It’s not all magic. Marfa is a real place full of history for Mexican Summer’s publishing real people, not an imagined concept. Just wing Anthology Editions, the talk was as elec- outside of town floats a massive blimp, hov- trifying as the performance itself, illuminating ering above the desert landscape scanning the American singularity of the band’s story. for drug traffickers, a telling reminder of the town’s proximity to Juarez, and to the border In addition to its retreat-like aspects (Abraha- trouble that occupies space in the minds of msson calls the festival “a chance to temporari- many Americans. Across from Marfa Myths ly escape the urban doldrums and our inverted headquarters, where festival goers can peruse reality” in his introduction to the festival’s vinyl and pick up Topo Chicos, I watch the official zine), the freeform nature of Myths is cops bust someone at the local gas station, cir- its primary appeal. There’s little stylistically cling his truck and handcuffing him. Most of connecting Los Angeles jangle rockers the the residents are game to indulge the art world Allah-Las to the Norwegian dance poetry of types, but sometimes hesitantly. Sitting at the Jenny Hval, or uniting the spiritual jazz/Afro- bar at Hotel Paisano, where James Dean and pop of Idris Ackamoor and his Pyramids to Elizabeth Taylor stayed while filming Giant, I the soft pomp of Connan Mockasin’s set with listen as two local kids sipping beers crack wise the Jazz Busters, but the variety doesn’t feel at the haughty nature of one festival attend- forced or awkward. It’s intrinsic to the experi- ees’ demands of the overworked bartender. At ence, woven into it. Bad Hombres, a local eatery, the menu states non-locals will pay a higher fee for breakfast As is the ideal of collaboration. Each year, tacos heaped with eggs and bacon than full- Mexican Summer invites artists to take up res- time residents (they are worth it, and honestly, idencies during the festival, and pairings have I’m not even sure I was charged extra). At resulted in collaborative records by Mockasin differing points, I heard a shout from a motor- and Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange and ist to “slow the fuck down,” and a command Ariel Pink and Weyes Blood. This year, Gustav from another to speed up. Ejstes and Reine Fiske of Swedish progressive rock band Dungen worked with Jeremy Earl novelist Eileen Myles’ presented the “Dirty and Jarvis Taveniere of Woods, previewing Gay Movie Night” film series, is mere blocks their upcoming recording with a flute and away from Ballroom Marfa, where the Strange electric piano bolstered jam on Saturday night Attractor exhibit debuted. Curated by Gry- at The Capri. phon Rue, the show featured stunning works, particularly Robert Buck’s “‘At the end of Atlanta-based artist Lonnie Holley, upon the day…’ (Holding area, U.S. Customs and completing a set of emotionally dense, fiery Border Protection Nogales Placement Center, avant garde cosmic blues in which he stated an Nogales, AZ, June 18, 2014” and Douglas intention to “tear down the wall” and “build Ross’ “abstraxi,” a 47-foot tapestry dividing steps to the moon,” invited Tonstartssbandht, the gallery. Donald Judd’s primary residence, a krautrock-leaning New York/Florida duo to open for self-guided tours, is located just the stage to attempt to find their way into his blocks from the Saint George Hall, where Julia spontaneous tapestries. While Holley and the Holter offered spectral piano reveries. Simply band sounded better separately, the creative walking around the town took on unexpected gambit was laudable. Only an attempt can resonance. Friday night, I lingered outside yield results. And the pairings weren’t limited of the town’s NPR affiliate, Radio Marfa to to musical combinations. While electronic listen to the late night Afrobeat program; composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith performed Sunday morning, the pealing church bells of her overwhelming set, video art by Rose Kallal St. Mary’s stirred up emotions tied to hymns was projected behind her, dovetailing with seemingly encoded in my spiritual DNA. her multilayered, processed words and vocal abstractions. In this way, the festival and the town where it’s hosted have blended. Natalie Mering, who At its best, the festival feels like a collabora- records under the name Weyes Blood, has at- tion with the town of Marfa itself. It’s entirely tended the festival since its inception, says that walkable. The Crowley Theater, where poet/ over time, the Myths has developed a deeper relationship with its home. and Marfa resident Rob Mazurek stood at attention in the crowd; a tiny child offered up “…I’ve been here enough times to kind of see some blend of interpretive dance and ecstatic the cross between the two worlds – the New lunacy. Myles, capturing a quick snap for her York art world vs. people from Texas and Mar- Instagram account, summed up the mood fa,” Mering says. “I think in the beginning, it perfectly, as only a poet could: “weepy & I seemed like this really gentrified zone, and it want to live forever” didn’t really make a lot of sense, but I think over time, the two cultures seem to be amal- It’s a treasured thing to be a guest some- gamating really well…” place. It’s a way of getting out of your own life, of immersing yourself in the company For Myles, who splits her time between Marfa of strangers and counting on their kindness. and New York, the town is a perfect place Aligning your story, however momentarily, to write. “It’s sort of weird, but it feels really with theirs. Crammed, harried, and stress- familiar in some strange way,” the author says, ful, music festivals so rarely foster this kind sipping coffee from the Saint George Hotel on of connection. But a different spirit drives the patio of the small stucco home she owns Marfa Myths. Whether it comes in the form here. The town doesn’t feel culturally isolated of a transcendent musical experiences – the to Myles. Due to its art world cred and the sound of Pharoah’s horn, Smith’s spiritually presence of the Lannan Foundation, there’s edifying vistas, Roky Erickson barking about plenty of readings and performances. “It kind a two-headed dog – or in quieter moments, of clusters socially and disperses,” she says. like my chat with a resident at Marfa Burrito, who leaned in quietly and suggested the pollo But those clusterings tend to be remarkable. asado with added frijoles, the feeling can be As was the case on Saturday afternoon, when transformative. legendary jazz saxophonist and bandleader Pharoah Sanders took the stage at the Saint “It’s so nice to have you here,” she told me as George Hall. Sanders eased into his set, but I thanked her and dropped a dollar in the tip it wasn’t long before his unmistakable wail jar. “It is so nice to have visitors.” had the entire room enraptured. Looking out, Ackamoor could be seen closing his eyes and swaying; Kugelberg seemed to have left his body; Sanders’ occasional collaborator