In this socially engaged and collaborative project, the topic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is explored artistically. A poem and sculpture depict and contemplate the lived experience of OCD and how it relates to contemporary times. The project grew out of a friendship between Mick, the alias for someone who has OCD, and Dana Fennell, a researcher who studies OCD.
Articles by Mick Jones
Growing up during the Cold War, Mick Jones found much to worry about: nuclear annihilation, Soviet espionage, domestic violence, overpopulation, pandemics, resource depletion, pollution of air and water—but he refused to limit his concerns to such popular problems. Inspired by Roger Bradfield's classic tale The Flying Hockey Stick, Mick began his obsessive-compulsive career at age five by making sure to exit via the same door he entered anywhere, so that the imaginary line trailing him would not become tangled. Graduating from this behavior, Mick developed a habit of prefacing all his statements with "I think," in order to avoid inadvertently giving voice to an untruth. In high school, Mick augmented this conduct with a constant concern over contamination—both to avoid contaminating those around him and to keep from being contaminated by them. He has worried that he might accidentally hit someone while driving, that his words might have offended someone (generally when they haven't; he seems not to notice when, in fact, they have), and that the new plastic shower curtain is poisoning him with its fumes. He eventually found his calling as a tutor of mathematics, where precision and checking one's work are virtues.