Sharing secrets helps healing

Please do not send Frank Warren a postcard saying “I pee in the shower.”

Because this is… Please do not send Frank Warren a postcard saying “I pee in the shower.”

Because this is the most frequently sent postcard, it isn’t really a secret anymore.

Warren, who receives 100 to 200 anonymous postcards with secrets on them a day, knows what makes a juicy secret. He also knows how to keep a secret. He has even been dubbed “the most trusted stranger in America.”

On Monday, Warren spoke in the Assembly Room of the William Pitt Union, which grew quite crowded. Afterwards, he answered a few questions from the audience.

PostSecret started in November of 2004 as an art project in Washington, D.C. Warren handed out 3,000 self-addressed postcards inviting people to share their secrets. The cards came in.

“It’s interesting to see the things people reveal when they don’t know who they’re revealing them to. It’s much more honest that way,” Ashley Morgan, a sophomore at Pitt, said.

As an avid fan, she has been checking the PostSecret Web site for two years and hopes to get her roommate, Morgan Costello, also a sophomore, in on her excitement.

“I’ll probably be addicted to it now,” Costello said. Then, after a pause, “It makes me think about what I’d write.”

Since Warren gets a constant flow of submissions, he has to be selective in which postcards make it onto the Web site or the compilation books.

“I usually try to pick a wide variety,” he said.

This variety has come to include sexual, philosophical, funny and dark secrets.

“They have to have a ring of authenticity to them – something I’ve never seen before,” he added.

Of course, reading the darker, sadder secrets can get to Warren.

“I have cried,” he admitted. Warren remembers one saying “I smile sweetly and pretend to sympathize with my friends who are always fighting with their mothers. I would give my left arm just to have my mother alive to fight with.” This particular secret brought tears to his eyes.

“When we are keeping a secret, sometimes that secret is keeping us,” Warren said.

Even Warren has dropped a secret into the mailbox regarding a humiliating incident from when he was in elementary school. His wife and 12-year-old daughter also want to be involved in the project, sneaking letters out of his pile and adding their own, but he always catches them.

Perhaps one of the reasons PostSecret has become so universally loved is that it is art, but not elitist art. Warren mentioned that the postcards in one of his exhibits hung across from Monet paintings.

“You don’t need specialized training to do this project,” Warren emphasized. He said that, for him, as it is probably true for many others, “It’s really expanded the scope of what I’ve considered art.”

Leaps of faith are required from both Warren and those who submit their secrets. On his part, Warren has put his home address on all three of the books and does not allow advertising on the Web site. For their part, the submitters trust Warren, who feels “very privileged and not at all burdened.”

Many more people were introduced to it through the All-American Rejects’ music video for “Dirty Little Secret,” which features numerous submissions. The director of the video called and said he was willing to pay $1,000 for permission. Instead, Warren insisted that $2,000 go to 1-800-SUICIDE, a suicide and crisis hotline.

Though PostSecret is a huge success, Warren does not take the credit. He credits the thousands of people who submit their secrets on anything and everything, including sonograms, report cards and Starbucks coffee cups. Even as he receives e-mails praising his work, he maintains he is not the true artist.

“I feel like this project has found me,” he said.