Random Thoughts & Ramblings: PostSecret

So there is this blog out there called postsecret. (http://www.postsecret.com/)

The blogmaster posts scans of postcards sent in anonymously to him. Each week he posts a dozen or so of these postcards, each with someone’s deepest darkest secret. Sometimes these are sad other times happy, and sometimes just plain creepy.

Every week (on Sunday) he posts new postcards and as best as I can tell if you miss a week of postings there is no way to see them as the site does not appear to have any archive.

I was reading some more about the blog, it was made by an artist as an exhibit, something about exhibiting the human soul…

Here's what the site had to say.

PostSecret Introduction by the artist Would you write down a guarded secret on a postcard and mail it to a stranger?

In November 2004, I started the PostSecret Project (view Related Links below). I invited people at subway stations, movie theaters, art galleries and restaurants to write down a secret anonymously on a postcard and mail it to me. There were two requirements: The secret had to be true and it had to be something that had never been shared with another person.

Over 1,000 people have mailed me their secrets and each one tells a different story with a unique voice. Some are written as though a confidant is whispering it into your ear through cupped hands. But not all secrets are expressed passively. Sometimes while reading a secret, the postcard I hold seems to writhe and flail like a freshly caught fish struggling to escape my grasp and re-enter the cold deep water again.

Secrets can provoke with their raw emotion or by expressing a politically incorrect idea never heard in everyday conversation. They can appear self-contradictory, ambiguous or shocking. They can challenge us to look past the individual suffering to see the shared humanity. But most of all, secrets can surprise us.

One secret written on the back of a photograph reads, “I steal small things from my friends to keep memories of how much I love them.” Is this sentiment tragic, funny, heartwarming? Your reaction may surprise you. It may be different from your spouse or friend. It may even change the second time you read it.

Seeing the soulful revelations of others can evoke in us the secrets we avoid – the ones we chose to forget. Not long after I started reading the postcards I was reminded of a childhood humiliation that had gone untold for over 30 years. I wrote the experience on a postcard, shared it with my wife and daughter, addressed it to myself and physically “let it go” into a mailbox.

The healing I felt from expressing, mailing and sharing my secret helps me look beyond some of the painful details included in the secrets I read everyday. It lets me understand the relief and solace that can come from releasing a secret. It allows me to see why someone would write down a guarded secret on a postcard and mail it to a stranger.

About the ArtistWith absolutely no formal training, Frank Warren is an artist approaching his creative endeavours with a clear mind, prompted only by the heart and soul. Stumbling through the genesis of concepts yet arriving at the compelling with an apparent oblivious ease, Warren even goes so far to describe himself as, "an accidental artist."

Whereas real world public and community art invites interaction and display on the streets or within public spaces, Warren has created his own virtual public space. Intertwining the real and virtual by extending a global invitation for anonymous contributors to send post-card secrets to his U.S. postal address, which are then digitised and uploaded to the PostSecret web-site - a delicate alliance of traditional practices and a contemporary medium.

Piquing Defunktion's interest, PostSecret's juxtaposition of droll confessions and uncomfortable secrets presents a wonderful opportunity to arouse and amuse the inquiring mind. Updated regularly by Warren (as long as those with secrets keep on confessing), PostSecret is a site to keep a curious eye on whilst browsing the web. Defunktion is proud to present this exhibition of sixteen selected secrets from Warren's archive.

http://www.defunktion.net/exhibitions/

There's a book too! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060899190/002-2648785-5748030

(One site makes the comment "bless me, blog, for I have sinned.")

These ones are the most... special...