Imagining Marfa

Images :: Google Earth

Marfa, Texas :: Image – Google Earth

Dutton, Montana

I’ve never been to Texas. My wife has visited Texas a few times, her parents lived there decades ago, our daughter has a good friend outside Dallas, and I know someone who spends half the year somewhere in the state. I’ve only heard stories about it, or watched movies and television shows based there. I’ve seen a lot of images over the years too, horrifying and soothing. I’ve read articles about Austin, and I used to watch Austin City Limits frequently. When I see pictures of Marfa’s main streets though, it feels like a bunch of small Montana towns I know — Dutton, Havre, and Big Timber — some with a few hundred people, and some with a couple of thousand.

I was listening to a podcast and the show’s celebrity guest mentioned Marfa, Texas. He’d been there recently and spoke about how much it’s changed from when he visited a few decades ago. It’s become a remote outpost for artists and galleries, initiated by Donald Judd in the 1970’s, who moved in and shifted its energy. Even with that kind of contemporary change, I still wonder how anything can be sustained in towns that size. Then I remember that most small towns didn’t begin because of retail opportunities for the residents, or tourists like me, unless they have a Corn Palace, or a giant truck stop near the highway. They exist because it’s a place for the people who live nearby to drop off crops, buy propane, and replenish their water supply — they’re literal weigh stations. If you look to the edges of the towns, there’s usually a cluster of silos, and depending on the size, maybe even a few clusters of silos. Sometimes the smallest towns only include a hardware store, a small tavern, maybe a cafe, and a couple of gas pumps. If it’s larger, there might be a post office, a bank, a courthouse, a Chinese, or Mexican restaurant, with surprisingly great food, and an insurance agent who occupies a vacant storefront one day a week because they travel from town to town.

If a local farmer, or rancher, drives through and decides to see if anybody they know is there, they rarely need to go inside anywhere to check who’s there. They know just by identifying the trucks parked out front. People often work alone when they live in isolated places like this, so conversation is welcome, even craved sometimes. You might see two trucks parked in the middle of main street next to each other, facing opposite directions, without their engines running, while the occupants talk. Conversations that last awhile and typically revolve around the weather, commodity prices, their families, and updates on the repairs each of them has been making to their equipment. It’s hard to keep everything that’s on their minds to themselves. It’s hard for their spouse, or their kids too, to be burdened with the same worries and frustrations day after day, so, they drive through town looking for others to talk with.

So, I can imagine what Marfa might feel like without visiting it. The air might be thicker and smell different than in Dutton. The color of the soil might differ, construction materials and building silhouettes might be different too because it’s Texas, not Montana. Except for all of the painted stars, cement stars attached to exterior walls, and forged steel stars hanging from mobiles around Marfa, I think its heartbeat is just like Dutton’s.

Songs :: Transcendental Blues by Steve Earle, Out of Touch by Hall and Oates, My Hometown by Bruce Springsteen, All My Days by Alexi Murdoch, and On The Nature Of Daylight by Max Richter

© C. Davidson

One Way to Bring Them Back

Panasonic VR Goggles :: Original Photo-Panasonic

I have a lot of questions I wish I’d asked my folks. Sometimes I don’t remember the answers to the ones I did ask, so I’d like to revisit those, followed-up with a barrage of spin-off questions. There isn’t a comprehensive list, but there’s a growing list and as I get older, it gets longer. How did each of them cope with catastrophes, like when siblings died, and how did each family find their way through it? How did my mom manage the hardships of wheat farming in Central Montana? Did she and her siblings explore the nearby Highwood Mountains often? What were the group critiques like when my dad was in architecture school? Were there design themes that stood out? When did they both discover their passion for the arts? What courses did my mom enjoy in music school at the universities? What songs did she sing at her final recital and how many? How did they manage the lean times while parenting five kids? What time of year was it when they first met? What was the weather like? What time of day was it? Was it love at first site, or did it take time? Did they take hikes in the Bridgers? Have they reconnected with siblings on the other side — their mothers and fathers? Is there another side? Have you visited my dreams and sometimes while I’m awake? Were you there while I painted during that pre-dawn morning? It felt like you were in the room because I walked towards my computer and saw a picture of you appear as part of my screen saver loop. Were you with me while I drove east through North Dakota during a nighttime blizzard?

So, even though they’ve both passed, all of their ‘known’ history, their data, including passions, accomplishments, disappointments, and desires, can be loaded into a virtual reality program where sophisticated algorithms will process, anticipate, estimate, and fill in any data gaps, then generate an interface that will put the three of us in a space together. Something like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I imagine sitting with them somewhere familiar, like on their deck under the giant willow tree, the cabin porch at Seeley Lake, or the lodge in the White Mountains.

Because if their data, my data and our shared data is merged, our conversation might feel real, it might be like they’d returned. I’d be waiting with my VR Goggles on, a recorder and a legal pad for taking notes. In addition to answering my long list of questions, they could tell me how they’re doing and what it’s like where they are. Maybe then I’d never concern myself with what happens after death, because they would know, and they would tell me If it’s a space filled with light, something infinite and nest like at the same time, or confirmation that his outstretched arms actually did have hands made of roses. After our long conversation, maybe even hours, and before they left, my mom and I could hug and laugh and I could look into her eyes for as long as I wanted. I might feel my dad’s hand rest on the back of my neck, like when he felt close, or proud, or wanted to help mend a disagreement between us. I think it would feel like nothing had been lost.

Songs :: Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel, We Watch the Stars (Berlin Sessions) by Fink, Dear Mama by 2Pac, You’re Missing by Bruce Springsteen, and Wynter’s Promise by Kirk Franklin

© C. Davidson

Tomah(awk)

Tomah Train Station :: Photographer Unknown

Apple Picking :: 1967

When the train approached the station thirty-seven years ago I was excited. I was at most of the stops we made crossing the country because I’d never been to any of those places. We were in Wisconsin and I missed the conductor’s announcement, but I saw the station sign next to the tracks a half mile out and it said Tomah. I thought the sign was wrong even though I only saw it through part of a moving train window. I assumed it was supposed to read Tomahawk, with the ‘awk’ letters missing. My grandmother, Florence Scott, grew up in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, and I wanted it to be Tomahawk. I even started an ink drawing about it the next day titled Tomah while we where in Ohio en route to Rhode Island. Eight years later I drove by the Interstate 94 exit sign to Tomah on my way to Chicago from Minneapolis. I’d been mistaken for years. If laptops, Wi-Fi and Google had existed while I was on the train in 1983, I might have discovered my assumption was wrong, but those things didn’t exist then.

Whenever I imagine her hometown and her childhood with her sisters Georgia and Belle, it’s mostly fiction. I don’t remember most of her history there, but I know what Wisconsin feels like because we live near it and spend time there. I know what a small town with a lake nearby feels like too because I’ve lived in similar towns and watched TV shows like The Walton’s and the opening to the Andy Griffith Show when I was a kid. Maybe she had experiences like that. My parents told me that she was strong, direct, and didn’t suffer fools. I remember her hospitality and grace, like when she made me poached eggs for breakfast, how she managed family during holiday dinners and Easter egg hunts, and when my cousin and I picked apples from her tree on Saturday and were rewarded with root beer floats from A&W. I remember other moments too, but never how my grandmother felt, or how her childhood and teen years shaped her.

She visited me in a dream when I was an adult and long after she died. She wore a distinctive blue and white floral-patterned dress that I remembered from my childhood. When I told my mom about the dream, she remembered that dress too. My grandmother and I were in a small dimly lit room. We looked at each other and after a minute, she walked over and gently touched my arm. I can still feel her hand and and remember how the hazy light warmed and brightened slightly when she told me “everything is going to be alright.”

Songs :: Tell Me All the Things You Do and The Way I Feel by Fleetwood Mac, White Lily by Laurie Anderson and Here by David Byrne

© C. Davidson