Des Moines Register
03-18-07
Postcards bring secrets to light in ISU project
By MICHAEL MORAIN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Pssst.
Hey, you over there. Listen up a sec.
"I threw away the My Little Pony."
"I forgot to feed the goldfish... but kind of on purpose."
"I was high on meth for three days when my principal called me in to tell me I was
a National Merit Scholar. (They had no idea.)"
Starting tomorrow, these little confessions and a few dozen like them will be on
display as part of a community art project at Iowa State University in Ames and it's not too late to join in.
The guidelines are simple:
1. Grab a postcard.
2. Write down a secret - anything you'd like, just as long as it's true and you've
never told it to anyone.
3. Mail it to the Student Activities Center (Memorial Union, East Student Office
Space, Ames, IA 50011).
The show's organizers at the Student Activities Center modeled it after a project
created in 2004 by Frank Warren, who distributed self-addressed postcards
inviting people to mail anonymous secrets to his home in Maryland. Warren plans
to present a lecture at Iowa State on April 5.
Of the 3,000 postcards he passed out - to strangers in subway stations, left in
stacks at art galleries or tucked between pages of library books - about 100
returned. As word spread, however, people started making their own cards to
add to Warren's growing collection.
"Jack-in-the-boxes freak me out."
"I gave my vegetarian sister a meal with beef."
"I wished on a dandelion for my husband to die."
By the time the project caught the attention of the national media, Warren's
mailbox was overflowing with proverbial spilled beans.
With the more than 100,000 cards now in his collection, he has published three
best-selling books, created two traveling exhibitions and a weekly blog
(www.postsecrets.com), which is still going strong.
The blog, in fact, won several honors at the 2006 Webby and Bloggy awards and
continues to attract millions of visitors per month.
The PostSecret project even inspired the All-American Rejects to sing "Dirty Little
Secret," which climbed to No. 9 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart last year.
More than a few cultural experts have tried to pinpoint PostSecret's appeal. Why
do people want to send anonymous postcards to a complete stranger in
Maryland? What's the, uh, secret to the project's success?
Clearly, the urge to unload some unknown tidbit about our personal lives something bad or dirty or simply weird - is very human.
Even the process itself can be charged with exciting tension. Keeping the cat in
the bag for a while increases the thrill of letting it go.
"I believe the motives are as raw and complicated as the secrets themselves,"
Warren writes in the introduction to his most recent book, "The Secret Lives of
Men and Women." "People have told me that facing their secret on a postcard
and releasing it to a stranger have allowed them to uncover passions,
experiences, hopes, regrets and fears that have been too painful to otherwise
acknowledge."
Because the postcards are anonymous, there's no way to verify whether the
secrets are true, but Warren doesn't seem to mind.
"I have tried to create a nonjudgmental 'place' where every secret is treated
respectfully," he writes. "In this safe environment, where there is no social cost
for exposing a guarded secret to millions, it might be easier for someone to
confess an embarrassing story, hidden act of kindness or sexual taboo."
After the project took off, Warren started to see patterns emerge. Along with the
mundane - "a lot of us pee in the shower" - he started receiving a number of
notes about suicide.
To help, he posted a link to a national hot line on his blog (www.hopeline.com or
(800) SUICIDE). Later, when the service ran into financial trouble, Warren posted
a note that triggered an outpouring of support: More than 900 donors pitched in
more than $30,000 in one week.
Besides the benefits for the people who divulge secrets - a stamp costs a lot less
than professional therapy - PostSecret's greatest bonus might be for the
onlookers.
There's something oddly reassuring about discovering, for example, that
someone else thinks "Little Richard is creepy as hell."
No matter what secret you're guarding, someone else can probably relate.
"I am more worried about aging than I am about dying."
"I deleted the pope's funeral unwatched off my TiVo to make room for an episode
of 'Survivor.'"
"There was no deer. I was just driving too fast."
The more bizarre the individual secrets, the more ordinary the whole collection
seems. A New Zealander wrote him a note that might just put a finger on why the
PostSecret became such a phenomenon:
"The things that make us feel so abnormal are actually the things that make us all
the same."
So go ahead. Confess. Get it off your chest, already. Nobody will ever know.
Or, more likely, they already do.
Reporter Michael Morain can be reached at (515) 286-2559 or
mmorain@dmreg.com