El Cosmico Weekend 2010: Met the Last Cowboy in Texas, got chased by the Marfa Lights and other tales from the Teepee. [PICTURES]

Marfa’s the kind of town that makes you wonder, “Why do we live in cities again?”  The crisp, clean open air, the quiet sounds of wind blowing through grass, the small town feel of community and togetherness… sigh.  It’s one of the FEW places that makes me dread coming back to Austin.

This year’s El Cosmico Trans-Pecos Festival of Music and Love was, yet again, magical.  That’s it.  It’s the only word that accurately describes it all.  While I don’t have time to recount every moment of this weekend, I’ll leave you with some photos and a few highlights.  Enjoy.

El Cosmico 2010 Highlights:

• We saw the Marfa Mystery Lights. According to Apache legend, you must be “chosen” to see the lights.  Our first night, on the way to the observation center, a big beam of light from above lit up the road behind our car for just a second.  Maybe it was lightning.  Later in the distance we saw the colorful Marfa Mystery Light show.  It was brilliantly astounding.  New York guy we were hanging out with wasn’t too impressed though.
• I met the last, real cowboy in Texas. His name was Tye, and he looked like the Marlboro Man, except with a better mustache and more handsome.  He was tall, wore denim on denim, boots, a hat, and had all us out-of-towners staring at him.  One night, as I was struggling to open my Topo Chico at the bar, he ever so smoothly turned to me and said, “Here let me get that for ya.”  He popped open the topo, handed it to me and tipped his hat.  What a guy!
• Girl In A Coma=Awesome. If Gwen Stefani and Selena could have a baby, that child would be Nina Diaz of Girl In A Coma.  Those girls can rock it.  Their approach to music is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.  They can dissect familiar sounds and blast them back out in a deliciously new way.  When they covered Selena’s “Si Una Vez” in a punk rock style, I just about peed my pants with excitement.
• Can Amy Cook be any more gosh darn cute? That voice and that sound was destined to hang over the Marfa desert.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Amy Cook at Zilker, at Waterloo, at Jo’s-anywhere!  But when you hear her under the Marfa stars, surrounded by mountains and the clean desert air, you can’t help but feel like fate brought it all together for one magnificent night.
• The Teepee Happening. This year’s teepee happening project compared the teepee to a sailboat and the desert to the beach.  Apparently West Texas was once a beach shore.  If Teepee had thoughts and dreams, it would dream of its past life as a boat.  The winning artists projected oceanic imagery and sounds onto the teepee to let us imagine what life may have been like once upon a time on a beachy Marfa.  When looking out from the teepee, listening to sounds of the ocean, and what appeared to be sand and beach grass, I forgot I was in the desert.

As always, I’ve left a piece of my heart in Marfa, TX.

[Check out last year's coverage of our trip to Marfa for El Cosmico]

Photos courtesy of Evan Mathews from over at Hella Filthy:

Click here to see more photos from our trip to Marfa for El Cosmico Weekend 2010—->

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