Frank Warren’s PostSecret at Miller Auditorium tonight

By Laura Citino
Western Herald

The saying may go that secrets are no fun, but Frank Warren looks to refute that tonight when Western Michigan University hosts his internet blog phenomenon PostSecret at Miller Auditorium.

Since beginning in January 2005, PostSecret has expanded beyond a picture blog, the likes of which are omnipresent on the internet. Warren’s brainchild reaches out into the larger community both with its regular events and collaboration with Hopeline, a 24-hour suicide hotline. There have also been 5 official PostSecret books, the latest of which, “Confessions on Life, Death, & God” went to number 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List.

PostSecret is simple in concept but complicated in its social implications – people anonymously write their secrets on creatively-decorated postcards and send them to Warren, who then posts them on his website, www.postsecrect.blogspot.com. Warren is the sole founder and curator of his website.

The secrets on this online art community range from sexual deviancy and mishaps to deep family secrets to the irreverent idiosyncrasies present in everyday life.

“It was both a creative idea but a simple one,” Warren said. “I asked people to mail me their secrets.”

When Warren began his PostSecret project, he was working as a volunteer with Hopeline at 1-800-Suicide, and was inspired to offer strangers a similarly safe place in which they could divulge troubled memories, hopes, dreams, and secrets in a creative format.

He started printing off his own postcards and handing them out to people on the street.

“I started receiving a handful of postcards every day,” Warren said. “Then the idea spread virally online.”

The Web site now receives over 3 million visitors every month, and Warren’s collection of the secret lives of strangers totals over 250,000. According to Warren, he always wondered what would happen if he created a safe place for people to tell the secrets that can weigh so heavily on us all. PostSecret has created its own close-knit Web community.

“The relations people have with the website get translated over to real life at our PostSecret events,” Warren said.

During a PostSecret event, Warren brings his Web site to the public, performing for audiences all over the country. Much like the breadth of the secrets themselves, a PostSecret event can be unpredictable and wholly dependent on the secret-tellers.

“Each time I try and do something different,” Warren said.

Warren typically begins by fielding general questions about PostSecret: why he founded this project, how it began, how it works, etc. He will share stories behind some of the secrets, and even allow audience members to stand up and share their own secrets. Understandably these events veer into sensitive emotional territory, which Warren sees as a form of catharsis.

“The release of a secret can be a transformative experience,” Warren said. “It is a very significant process.”

One interesting aspect of the PostSecret events involves the so-called “banned secrets,” those secrets which were deemed too inappropriate by Warren’s publishers to be included in the PostSecret books for various reasons. According to Warren, the possibility of explicit content in the secrets is simply the nature of the beast.

“The thing is, these are authentic secrets and they are secrets for a reason,” Warren said.

The anonymity of the internet allows both the secret-tellers and secret-readers a freedom of conscious to express whatever secret they wish. That comes with the territory of a changing society, where technology allows for both the distance of anonymity and the closeness that comes with freely sharing the most intimate parts of ourselves.

Warren believes that sort of paradox generates an empathy between strangers that is almost impossible in real life.

“On the Web, it’s like the wild wild west,” Warren said. “You realize how society is changing. People are rewriting the rules.”

PostSecret’s visibility has been steadily increasing over the years, especially with collaborations such as the All American Reject’s 2005 music video for “Dirty Little Secret,” which featured various PostSecret secrets. The proceeds from the video went to Hopeline, which remains the only advertisement on the PostSecret blog. That video and others will be shown and discussed at the PostSecret event tonight.

Because of his unique project, Warren has been privy to the private lives of thousands of strangers who trust him with their deepest secrets. His favorite secret, though, remains not one that plumbs the depths of tragedy or darkness. Early on he received a Starbucks cup in the mail, on which that particular secret-teller had scribbled, “I serve decaf to customers who are rude to me.” For Warren, that sort of everyday secret is what embodies the spirit of his project.

“The secrets help us recognize those same sorts of things in ourselves,” he said. “They remind us that our own lives are really interesting.”

Warren strives to highlight the rich interior life of the average person through the concept of secrets: every single person has embarrassing, sad, hilarious, ridiculous, and heart-wrenching stories to tell. Warren likes to remember that the word “secret” is very close to the word “sacred,” and reminds his audience that PostSecret serves both an internal and an external purpose.

“The process of writing a secret on a postcard can be like coming out to yourself,” he said.

The very nature of truth is that is works on different levels, which PostSecret exemplifies. Warren has had secret-tellers follow up with him later on, explaining how the telling of their secrets in a public, though anonymous, forum helped to transform their lives in ways they could never have imagined. That includes not only their own secrets, but the secrets they read of others that visitors to the website were able to see themselves in and identify with, the beauty of the project.

“If [telling your own secret] doesn’t help you, it might help a dozen other people,” Warren said.

Warren promises to explain all this and more tonight through his own stories, pictures, and of course, secrets that he is eager to share with Kalamazoo. Attendees should be prepared to laugh, maybe cry, and at the very least take a deep look inside and consider what sorts of secrets lurk within all of us.

“Through this project I’ve seen that there are two kinds of secrets,” Warren said, “the ones we keep from others and the ones we keep from ourselves.”

Frank Warren and PostSecret come to WMU’s Miller Auditorium this tonight, Nov. 4 at 8 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the Miller Auditorium box office.

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Posted by heraldstaff on Nov 5 2009. Filed under A & E. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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