Amanda Holloway
Q& A with Jeremy Nix, The Balance King
First off, thank you for letting me feature you! After doing even cursory research on The Balance King it is obvious that you’re in the midst of a very active and exciting chapter of life. You have so many great projects in the works, congrats!
Thank you, Amanda, it’s an honor to be featured by you for the EU! What you observe is the periphery of verdant foliage, which could not thrive without the loving support of family and friends, and being a member of a superlative team – in a word, ubuntu.
So, for starters, tell us all the nuts and bolts and behind-the-scenes info we should know about how this collaboration came about with MoCA Jacksonville.
The collaboration with MOCA that is embarking on Thursday November 21st, was sparked during a recent meeting between MOCA’s Assistant Director of Community and Public Programs Matthew Patterson, cultural maven Damien Lamar (Taste Test Radio, Neon Motherboard, Garden Club of Jacksonville, formerly Hemming Park), polymathic visionary Zaiche Johnson (who represents The Balance King as New Company), and myself. We share the common motivation to energize the inner core, professional set, and young-at-heart, around cultural instruments infused with contemporaneous, international essence. Following that meeting, we have been in close contact with [the museum] hashing out the details. Everyone at MOCA is stellar and incredibly gracious to work with; the whole process has been fantastic.
The event on November 21st is the commencement of a series of Thursday evening programs, with my deejay residency falling on the Third Thursday of every month. The other weeks of the month will feature a rotation of exceptional professional and student artists. Come to the inaugural Thursday evening event at MOCA on November 21, 5-7pm, unwind with your friends and colleagues over happy-hour specials, revel in nonpareil octave selections, enjoy MOCA’s newly renovated cafe, and stay for extended evening hours at the museum, which will be open until 9pm.
You are a Renaissance man with your hands dipped into a plethora of various professions, titles, and enterprises around town and beyond. How do you feel that each different field and interest of yours influences and relates to one another?
The nexus of my life’s endeavors is unquenched curiosity, nourished by the anthem of perpetual evolution and transformation. I strive to retain the wonder and humility of a child, against the entropy of calcified ideologies and habits!
I absolutely love your philosophy behind food and why you eat and cook how you do. Would you please elaborate on your personal ideals as they interweave so beautifully between physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional health?
The foundation of all spiritual praxis, the seminal commandment from which all others derive, is love and treat others as yourself. For me personally, this stems from the cognizance of the holistic nature of being. It is not simply about treating “the other” as “the self”; rather, there is no concrete distinction of the other and the self that holds up under scrutiny. Taken to its apogee, this includes non-human animal life, plant life, and the life of material substance like minerals, water, and the air. Collectively, we constitute the omneity of life, and the well-being of any discrete locus is intimately entwined with the health of the whole. Ardent pursuit of self-care in the physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional planes, is the mechanism of serving our communities. Synchronously, tending healthy environments and curating systems that enable meaningful degrees of freedom, is a trajectory to individual empowerment.
Lastly, on a more personal level, who is Jeremy? What would make readers want to walk up to you and have a conversation? How do you relax? Where are your favorite Jacksonville hang-outs on the weekends?
“Jeremy” is an ephemera of psyche in the ocean of stochasticity, yet it is precisely our transience that bestows momentary interpersonal connection with poignance. The audacity of vivacious imagination and dynamic compassion are primary traits that inspire kinship within my sphere. I summarily reject the notion of hustle mentality and corporate labor memes, my quasi-hermetic nature is most acutely sustained in wild and untamed latitudes; the incandescence of a non-Euclidean conversation, self-dissolution through inner reflection, the labyrinth of concrete-plexiglass jungles, excavating frontiers of knowledge, the cellular asylum of petrichor, all find their place in my habit.
What’s next on your agenda?
I am curating the sonic ambience for Wildcrafters, which will be Jacksonville’s first nonalcoholic bar, and developing collaborations with several eminent Jacksonville institutions. At this time I can’t reveal too much, but 2020 is going to be an exciting year [for] The Balance King and New Company, replete with uncharted excursions in transmissions of abolitionist wavelengths!
I would like to extend immense gratitude to Matthew, Nan, Caitlín, the entire staff at MOCA, for partnering with us on the new Thursday evening series at MOCA. I would also like to express massive thanks to Zaiche Johnson, Liz Tran, Damien Lamar, Hope McMath, Mike Neff, Isaac Brown, Stephanie Reyes, Maiya Elaine, Xavier Watkins, Diane Fields, Jihan Grant, Autrelle Holland, and Yhang Quintero, for the work we have done and continue to do together, and for being an amazing team. Finally, I would like to send love to my family and the community, I am because they are.
To learn more about The Balance King or New Company, please visit Instagram @thebalancekingreigns and @newcompanypresents.
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