By Keisha McDuffie/ne news editor
No one could predict the magnitude of what a few anonymous postcards could do, until now.
Frank Warren, artist, author and volunteer, passed out 3,000 blank postcards with one request written on them “send me your secrets.”
The request resulted in the receipt of more than 20,000 postcards from all over the world—Australia, Ireland, Hong Kong and India just to name a few—since its inception in November 2004.
The postcards have become the content of three books: My Secret: A Postsecret Book, Postsecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives and The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A Postsecret Book.
Postsecret.com, the official Web site, has had a record-breaking number of hits—63,123,575 to date. Every Sunday, Warren posts new postcards on the site.
Now the project has arrived at Tarrant County College.
The NE Campus humanities division is sponsoring Private Lives: Personal Secrets Revealed, a project inspired by Warren and his Postsecret idea.
The NE project involves four areas—speech, drama, music and art—and has three phases. The first concerns the actual postcards themselves, spreading the word and, more importantly, receiving postcards back.
Students and faculty are distributing the blank cards throughout the community. They are pre-addressed so they can be returned to NE Campus.
Participants can reveal one secret per postcard, as long as it is true and has never been told before. They can use any kind of mailable material, but they must be brief, the fewer words the better, and use clear, bold lettering.
Participants should let the postcard be their canvas. The secret can be happy, sad, or a regret, fear, fantasy, unseen kindness, hope, confession, belief, erotic desire, funny experience or childhood humiliation. There is no right or wrong secret.
Phase two is the interpretation of these postcards. Interpretations of the postcards will be expressed in every way imaginable by students in the four programs.
“ After looking at all of the secrets revealed, speech students will use the postcards to discuss and to examine self-disclosure,” Lisa Benedetti, associate professor of speech, said. “Drama students will write monologues, and music students will create music all inspired by the postcards and what they reveal.“
Phase three will debut April 2 on NE Campus. A traveling art exhibition, theater performance, speech interpretation performance and music performance of these postcards will culminate in Private Lives: Personal Secrets Revealed.
“ This is a collaborative effort to inspire the communication of others and express it through art,” Benedetti, said.
The NE humanities division is inviting anyone, on and off campus, to send in his or secrets anonymously.
Anyone can pick up complimentary postcards in the fine arts office, The Collegian office and the student activities office. Postcards must be postmarked by Saturday, March 10.
For more information on the project or postcard locations on other campuses, contact the NE fine arts office at 817-515-6497.
