Tonight at 7 p.m. in Emile Asplundh Concert Hall, PostSecret Live is coming. PostSecret is an online community of secret tellers. Each week, people send in their secrets via postcards anonymously. Secrets are then posted to postsecret.com every Sunday.
I caught up with Frank Warren, the creator of it all, outside D’Ascenzo’s Gelato earlier today. He had a lot to say about the project.
Warren’s inspiration came from an unfulfilling job.
“When I started, I would say I had a boring job and I was trying to look for something fun or meaningful to do after work and on the weekends. A few months passed after I started it, and I realized there was a deeper reason. Somebody had shared a secret with me that had made me look inward and uncover a secret I had been keeping from myself, and so that’s when the project took on a whole new meaning for me.”
I asked him what motivates him and he told me, “It sounds weird, but I feel like I have a relationship and responsibility to the community of people who have trusted me with their deepest secrets, and I feel very fortunate that over a million people have trusted me with their true confessions, and I don’t want to do anything to screw that up, so I try and honor that trust every day.”
When asked what his most shocking secret received was, he gave a jaw-dropping response: “I got a secret from a woman who wrote, ‘My husband won’t have sex with me anymore so I masturbated with a cucumber and served it to him for his salad that night.’”
With the live events, Warren’s goal is to transform the virtual, safe, non-threatening and respectful environment.
“I’m going to open up the archive and share the most shocking and romantic secrets, and the secret that got me contacted by the FBI. I’ll share the secrets that have transformed people’s lives. I’ll give the audience a chance to come to a microphone and share their secrets live in front of everyone. That’s always really emotional for sure,” said Warren. “I’ll talk about my own secret—in some ways the secret that started the whole project. I’ll share voicemail messages that people have shared with me, final ones from loved ones who died, and that’s really emotional, too. For me, the live events are the most gratifying part of the whole project.”
Everyone has a secret, and PostSecret live gives a chance for students to open up.
“Sometimes it’s the people that we are closest to that we keep the deepest secrets from—and that could be a great burden that many of us carry,” said Warren.
PostSecret Live comes to West Chester on Tuesday, March 28 at 7 p.m. at Emile Asplundh Concert Hall. Tickets are available at the door.
Amanda Saleh is a third-year student majoring in communication studies with minors in journalism and Arabic. She can be reached at AS821872@wcupa.edu.