Burning Man helped distill what being Nexus meant

So I wanted to elaborate a bit on this Tweet:

.@BurningManGLC helped distill my life mission & values as Nexus to the ROCK cXn. Connecting: Resources Opportunities Communities Kindness
— JR Nexus Russ (@AWayofLife0) April 26, 2015

This distillation of values to the R.O.C.K. cXn has been absolutely descriptive and iterative in the process.

The R.O.C.K. cXn (because cXn is an abbreviation used for connection, just in case you hadn't seen that before).

Still seems a little weird to see it so succinctly defined, to the point where I was wondering if I might have just liked it and/or thought about it because the Washingtonian in me loves acronyms.

[I will admit, I LOVED that an abbreviation for connection was 'cXn', as I've played with spelling 'Nexus' with only the X capitalized, so 'neXus'. But I digress...]

And while I do like it for that, for the acronym, I do realize that "the R.O.C.K. cXn" really describes my own path and journey as an artist and arts administrator.

One example where that is more than clear has been this effort to create a documentary about Nation, a significant club and venue in the DC area, which closed in 2006.

Oh, and here is the FB page, in case you're interested.

DC's Shiny Disco Ball: A Nation Documentary

So, a major challenge and opportunity is how the venue was a place where multiple, disparate communities came together, not always at the same time, but nevertheless it was a kind of home to all of them, the goth/industrial crowd on Thursday, the rave/EDM crowd on Friday, and the LGBT crowd on Saturday.

But because of that, some folks only have a particular association and affiliation with Nation. And so, part of getting folks interested in and building up support for the project has been explaining to the folks that it's not just going to be about the gay scene there, or the rave community in the DC area, but this very special place where we all gathered pretty regularly.

Anyway, just wanted to put that out there. As it's really been informing my efforts, both professionally at work as well as personally with all of my other endeavors, some of which have been gathering dust but are now moving forward.

Thank you for letting me share!!

- JR aka Nexus