Speck syndrome

In Make Your Art No Matter What, Beth Pickens references “speck syndrome,” a.k.a. existential alarm caused by awareness that our lives are mere specks in time. Speck syndrome (a playful term for real stress) can make us grasp for control or, at the opposite extreme, escape to nihilism. A third option is to accept this paradox: we can be complete, whole, irreplaceable and also tiny, insignificant, inconsequential. Isn’t that amazing?!

In the video below, which I made in 2019, I explore this paradox and the hope it offers, through the frame of Charlottesville’s Unite the Right violence. (And, yes, that random screen grab for the cover is hilarious. I had to keep it.)