Nowhere

My discovery of the Burning Man community started back in 2006 when, after I joined Couchsurfing.com, I hosted an old-time burner who gave me this curiosity to find out more about what BM really was. At that time I had heard about this crazy event in the desert but I had no idea that it wasn't just a festival. I started to grow a big interest and, thanks to tribe.net, I also started collecting info, experiences, stories and comments. Fate was working for me and, after I decided and booked my first trip to London, I found that the London Decompression was going to happen in the same week. Immediately I decided to go there and check in person if the stories that I had read were true. One of the first people that I met was the first person who told me about Nowhere. London Decom was amazing and as soon as I got back home I started to plan my first Nowhere with the Ninja Nowhere Academy and my first Burning Man with the Black Rock City International Burner Hostel.

What I found is hard to explain by words but I can tell you something: One of the most amazing discoveries that I made was the possibility to create a time and a space where completely different people could live together and enjoy themselves being who they really were and not what society and the conventions were asking them to be. A community where you can be yourself and, no matter how weird, they will still like you for who you are. An event where the Art was for everyone and from everyone and was as inspiring as the day by day life.

During my first Nowhere in 2007 I met some of the Burning Man organizers and during my first Burning Man I decided to volunteer as a Regional Contact for BM. This decision was pushed not just by the fact that I was loving more and more the Burning Man community, but also because in the months while I was searching for info I found that this reality was completely unknown in Italy.

Explaining what Burning Man really is and sharing that spirit with the people of my country has become a mission since then. I was lucky enough to find some other Italians with the same idea, especially thanks to Matteo whose I met just before my first burn when we both were going to Black Rock City for the first time, and all together we have started to work trying to create a community in Italy.

As soon as we started to communicate with other Italians interested in what Burning Man is we found that, of course, there were already some who were been there before us. The most amazing thing was to find out how many people were, like me, just waiting to discover something like this. I learned that sometimes you have to make the first step, but then you are going to be surprised about how many people are happy to walk with you.

In 2008 we finally decided to create our own Italian regional event. Our idea was to mix the philosophy of Burning Man and Nowhere with the Italian culture. We decided to organize a weekend, the Italian Burning Weekend. Because food is very important in our country we thought it could be wonderful to cook some Italian food all together and since then we have tried to keep this aspect in the Italian Burning Weekend even if sometime is the hardest part. Starting the event hasn’t been easy, we had many projects and not much experience. In three years the event has becomes better and better but we are still learning and trying to improve, it’s definitely a never-ending process. Since we started we have to have as many people as possible working on the event, our idea was to prepare a space were the people could come and bring what they want. Often the energy and the ideas of the people have been surpassed our dreams and I can say that most of the success of our event has been because of the wonderful people who have joined us every year.

What I found in Burning Man and Nowhere has radically changed me in the last years, changed my vision of the present and of the future, given me big hopes in humanity and convinced me that we can change the reality around us every day. In the last years I have met some really amazing people and I have opened my mind and my heart more than it was possible before. It gave me this feeling that we are not alone and that there are people who can be like your family all around the World.

Dario runs "Flapping Tongues", our translation team, to make sure you get your Nowhere communications in YOUR language. Tell him how much you love him for it here: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We sure do.