by winston » Sat Jan 09, 2010 1:45 pm
Do You Have a Secret? by Alexander Green
Why do we find secrets so fascinating?
We all have them. Yet we hanker to hear more, to be in the know. People everywhere want news that is privileged, unpublished, classified, scandalous, esoteric or personal. Information - above all - that is not generally known.
Marketers know this. That's why newsstands everywhere are papered with magazines offering diet secrets, sex secrets, success secrets, celebrity secrets, fitness secrets. Investment letter copywriters churn out endless marketing based on "secrets of great wealth." My book publisher, John Wiley & Sons, even suggested that I title my latest collection of essays, The Secret of Shelter Island
What is the secret of Shelter Island? Can you keep a confidence? Good. So can I.
Frank Warren can't, however. He's kept almost none of the thousands of secrets he's been told. And that's a good thing.
Six years ago, Warren launched the PostSecret project, an ongoing community art project in which people anonymously mail him a personal secret on a homemade postcard. No restrictions are made on the content of the secret, only that it must be truthful and never have been spoken before.
A lot of us, apparently, can't wait to spill the beans. Warren has received more than 400,000 postcards, each revealing a sender's hope, fear, desire, or epiphany.
Some cards appear as though they were created during an impulsive moment. Others are invested with painstaking detail and look like sacred objects.
Warren displays the best of them on his PostSecret website (updated weekly) and his five PostSecret books. I recently stumbled on his exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and was taken with it.
What's the big deal about secrets - some heartbreaking, some insightful, some just plain nutty - from anonymous folks? You be the judge. I jotted down a few of my favorites to share with you.
I quickly discovered, however, that typed words on a page don't deliver the emotional wallop of the handwritten cards themselves (this is an art project after all.)
Fortunately, Jen Ross and Kathy Osborne in Graphic Design were up for a last-minute challenge. Below they've created facsimiles of a few of the PostSecrets I found thought-provoking:
I recommend visiting Warren's exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum if you get a chance. It's a soulful experience. Each card is individual and yet, at a deeper level, this community of confessions reveals our connections, even to those whose secrets we may find surprising or appalling.
The voices speaking through them offer you the opportunity to recognize your own secrets, to realize you are not alone.
In his latest PostSecret book, Warren writes, "This project has shown me that art can be like a new tongue that allows us to speak and pray in ways that might otherwise be impossible.
And if we listen, we may come to understand that we are always on a spiritual journey - even when we feel most lost."
Source: Spiritual Wealth
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"