Thursday, August 9, 2007

secrets and humanity...

WARNING: the contents of this post might push a few boundaries that you may not be prepared to cross.
Tonight, I watched this interview here highlighting Frank Warren's website and subsequent books called POSTSECRET which can be found here.
Frank has invited people to send him thier deepest, darkest, wildest, secrets on a postcard. He recieves a thousand or so each week and posts only 20 on his blog site. If you go there you will see this...

or this...

and even this..

but like I said - there is stuff on his sight that you might find disturbing. And I suppose I have to admit here to at least some level of voyeristic inclination into other people's thoughts and realities. But I am far more intrigued and motivated by what this sight has to say about the human condition. The premise of having a place where the things you choose or dare not say are openly displayed but not quite revealed makes this idea something unique in the its approach to human social, emotional, and mental well being.
A post card is a very small place to encapsulate any idea and as is suggested in the interview it often, I suppose, leaves much more uncovered than it reveals.
Tomorrow, morning I will chew on this as I go for my walk. I'll be thinking about confession, trust, privacy vs. transperancy, and a whole lot more I suspect...

3 comments:

Natasha said...

I heard about this (or if not this particular one, something very very similar) a few months ago and it was fascinating to read the responses - from light and funny to very deep. You could nearly feel the guilt radiating out from some of them. Very interesting. It made me wonder what I would put on my postcard...

Bonnie said...

Definately I will check it out, maybe when there are not small children looking over my shoulder....:-)

Sterling said...

I've been dropping by PostSecret regularly for a few months now. As a reader I find the site intriguing, kinda like rubber-necking while driving past a car crash. I think that it's probably healthy that people are expressing some of their deepest secrets but it also is sad that they do not have someone in their lives that they can trust enough to talk to. I think I can relate.