Matthew McConaughey has a theory.
Not birthplace, mind youconception.
Hes even thought about running experiments to test this.
Credit:Miller Mobley
Wouldnt it be interesting to take people back to where they were conceived and have them spend a month?
And then you could ask: How is your life?
How are your thoughts?
How is your creativity?
How do you feel?
For Matthew, this is literal ground zero.
Credit:Miller Mobley
Not that there arent other reasons for him to be feeling good.
To answer Matthews questions, then: Life?
Firing right and left.
Credit:Miller Mobley
I get here, and even my metabolism flies, he says.
Its a place he visits often to recharge, reflect, rejuvenate.
Home Field Advantage
But Matthews here might just as easily be applied to all of Texas.
(He also teaches a film course at the school, his alma mater.)
And that was him briefly floating the idea of running for governor.
Texas isnt just in his blood; it can seem, at times, tobehis blood.
Credit:Miller Mobley
We had a beautiful house that wed built together and put a lot of love and care into.
We were raising our kids there.
I was growing everything in the yard.
I had bees making honey.
In other words, they were putting down roots with their three children.
But she recognized that Matthew was anchored to older, thicker roots.
When a family crisis occurred, the McConaugheys decamped toAustinto help his mother and two brothers.
During their several-week stay, Camila noticed something different about Matthew.
Shell say, The gravity is very different in Texas.
Its lighter, gentler, freer.
She noticed it easing her husbands steps, buoying his moods, widening that grin.
Home field advantage is a real, quantifiable phenomenon in sports.
For various psychological reasons, athletes perform better on their own turf.
Maybe theres a corollary there for the rest of usor at least for Matthew.
Camila, for her part, thought she was seeing it.
Theres a ripple of marital laughter, 12 years later, as they remember that stoplight moment.
Matthew readily admits that the Malibu-to-Texas transition was harder for Camila than it was for him.
The only places in America she had ever lived were New York and Los Angeles, the glamour nexus.
Matthew had friends and family in Texas; she didnt.
Raising Their Spirits
Camila Alves was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Her mother was an artist, and her father was a farmer and rancher.
It takes me right back to how I was raised.
Her new home, as it turned out, echoed her first one.
In Texas, says Camila, we were going to the church that we like to attend every Sunday.
Sports became a stronger tradition for the kids
Ritual!
Before finally settling on the formula for their Pantalones tequila, the couple went through 47 versions.
No ones ever seen how she works with me, Matthew says.
Its never been out there.
Its always been in the house behind closed doors.
So this is the first time were doing it out front.
A mile here in Texas feels like a mile, he says.
An hour feels like 60 minutes.
Time slowed down, Matthew says.
The clock was right, the body clock.
But its also the hospitality, the courtesy, the common sense, the lack of drama.
Camila, however, has a theory of her own.
The gravity, she says.
The gravity is right.
When we tasted iteration number 47, we both immediately knew it was the one, says Camila.
Their partners are fourth -generation agave growers and second-generation tequila producers.
