Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

i know your secret

After a busybusybusy couple of weeks, Rob and I decided to have a “date night” tonight, starting with dinner at Georgetown’s Pizzeria Pardiso. Afterward, we walked across the street to the former Staples that’s been converted into an art space, where a new PostSecret exhibit just opened yesterday.

For the uninitiated, PostSecret is a Web site that features postcards sent to Germantown, Md., resident Frank Warren in which the anonymous writers reveal their deepest secrets. Many cards are surprising in their creativity — and in their savage honesty. Many “secrets” fall into certain themes — depression, childhood abuse, infidelity and the like. In that vein, proceeds raised from the exhibit and the new Post Secret book go in part toward Hopeline, a suicide prevention organization.

(I have to admit, I’m a bit curious about the contrast (if any) between postcards contributed before and after PostSecret became a big thing. I wonder if some people “make up” secrets and send in postcards just in the hopes of seeing them appear on the site.)

The exhibit is a mix of huge postcard enlargements mounted on the gallery walls and actual submitted postcards that dangled from the ceiling and hung in plastic sheets from a long clothesline that stretches through the center of the room. Many postcards are deeply confessional — there’s a certain sense of bold liberation afforded by anonymity — and as impressive in their creativity as they are devastating in the wrenching stories they tell. It’s definitely something worth seeing. (The exhibit is open in D.C. through Jan. 8.)

At the end of the exhibit was a table with blank postcards for people to write in with their own secrets. I pocketed one of the postcards, but I don’t know what “secret” I’d write down — or even if I’d ever want to submit a card at all. The creative challenge is tantalizing, though — as is the promise of anonymity. I’m just not interesting enough to have big secrets, nor a burning desire to confess anything. I can’t even claim that as a secret to mail in: One of the postcards in the exhibit featured a handwritten note about how the sender couldn’t think of anything to say, so maybe that’s their secret.

After we’d spent about an hour wandering the exhibit, we went to the table at the front of the room to purchase a copy of the book. While one man rang up our purchase, we exchanged pleasantries with the other, who, fiddling with a pen in his hand, told us that the exhibit would be travelling to Philadelphia sometime mid-2006. I suspected that the man we were talking to was Warren, but I flipped to the back flap of the book (on the pretense of flipping through the book) for the author’s photo to confirm that notion. There was a painful lull in the conversation, broken only when Warren spoke up, “Would you like me to sign that?”

Awkwardly, I said, “Yes! Please! Thank you!” and handed him the newly-purchased book, in which he inscribed the words “Be Well.”

Despite the fact that I’m a regular PostSecret reader, I found myself at a complete loss for words in this whole encounter, so what could have been an interesting conversation instead proved to be yet another stilted exercise in, “Smile politely while you think of something polite to say. Thinkofsomethingtosay. Anything. Anything! Nothing’s coming to mind. Whoops, my opening to say something witty has closed. Have to salvage this somehow. Um. Gah. Thank you?” And then, of course, the perfect questions to ask come to mind only after the encounter is over, and all I have left is red-faced embarrassment about my social awkwardness.

Maybe that’s my secret.