Frank Warren’s PostSecret has boomed from a personal art project to a cult phenomenon to an international voyeuristic roadshow. The Varsity caught up with him on his May 31 appearance at OCAD, and he told us something he’s never told anyone before.

TV: PostSecret is known internationally. What are some of the other countries you’ve received postcards from?

FW: Afghanistan, South Korea, China, they come from all over, they come from different continents, they come in different languages. I have a postcard right now, trying to figure out what it says.

TV: How do you deal with foreign languages?

FW: Just Babelfish, but this one appears to be in Hebrew or something, so I don’t know how to translate it.

TV: Do you give these postcards special attention, because they’re from other countries?

FW: I don’t think they get more attention, no, I think they reveal something about the nature of our secrets, that they’re international, that they’re universal and everybody has them.

TV: About how many secrets have you received so far?

FW: I’ve received well over 100,000 postcards.

TV: How many per day?

FW: Between 100 to 200 every day.

TV: Does the post office have some kind of a special delivery system for you? Do you get your own truck?

FW: I have a good relationship with my mail carrier. Her name’s Cathy and I asked her one time if she had ever seen favorite postcard, a favorite secret. They’re not supposed to read the postcards, but she said her favorite one was one that read, “I used to work at the post office and we used to read everybody’s postcards, are you guys still doing that?”

TV: Do you keep all the postcards at your house?

FW: Well, you know my home address is on the cover of the first book, so wife gets anxious if I talk about what’s in the house.

TV: Ok, I understand, backing off. Do you ever get overwhelmed or desensitized due to the volume of postcards you receive, or do you ever get paranoid and start thinking that people are just making it all up to get attention?

FW: No, no I don’t. The postcards really have a ring of authenticity to me and at the same time I don’t think that every postcard I receive is true. But I don’t think that every book in the library is non-fiction either. I think you can find value in all the postcards and all the secrets and even if it isn’t necessarily true for the person who wrote it, it might be true or revelatory, revealing for a thousand people who see it on the website that week. I think of the postcards as art, and just like art, they have value to change lives whether they’re fiction or non-fiction.

TV: It’s more about the message than where it came from, maybe.

FW: Yeah, sometimes the postcards tend to say things like, “When I wrote this, it was false. But by the time you post it, I’m hoping it’s true.” So sometimes I feel as though the project is a process that people use to come out for themselves, to share their own secrets with themselves. So in some ways, one secret can be false one day, and true the next.

TV: A lot of the secrets are quite scandalous. Have you ever received a postcard that you weren’t sure what to do with? Whether it’s something controversial, or something legally problematic?

FW: Hmm. Well, I share everything that seems authentic and real and so I don’t try to censor myself at all, and you know, secrets are sometimes secret for a reason. They can be offensive, they can be crude, they can be obscene, they can be politically incorrect. I don’t think of my position as one where I should be regulating or filtering. I feel it’s my job to share and represent a sample of what I receive every week on the web site.

TV: Do lots of people ask you to be an intermediary, to pass a message along to the creator of a postcard? Do you ever get those kind of requests?

FW: Yeah, I get that a lot. I remember one postcard I posted, it said, “I think about you all the time, this is our last chance, please don’t let it fall apart,” something like that, and I got dozens of emails from people saying, you gotta tell me the postmark on that card, cause I think I know who it’s from.” And I would email people back, I would say, “You know, I can’t give you the postmark because I had promised everybody anonymity, but if I could offer you any advice, I would suggest that you interpret the card in the way that makes your life the most interesting.”

TV: What’s something that has surprised you lately?

FW: “You think I’m a great teacher, but I can’t even remember the names of the students in my class. I just make up the grades.”

TV: People who have sent in multiple secrets are often disappointed when they don’t see them on the site. What would you say to them?

FW: I’m afraid those people are disappointed because they’re mailing in their secrets with the sole intention of getting it on the website. I get about a thousand a week, and I post about 20, so-but I also get lots emails from people who say that, “Not getting my secret posted was the best thing, because that prompts me to take action on my own secret, and I changed my life.” So it’s up to the sender. The sender can disappointed, or the sender can use it as an opportunity, a first step, to take further action on their secret and change their lives.

TV: You’ve called yourself an accidental artist. Your company provides document delivery services-how did you get into business in the first place and how did you transition from business to doing art projects?

FW: When I was a student at UC Berkley, I copied journal articles at the library as a job to work my way through school. And when I graduated I just started my own business doing the same thing. Going from business to art, I think had to do with reaching a point in my life where I’m looking for meaning and purpose, and finding a new creative outlet.

TV: What was your major at UC Berkley?

FW: Social science.

TV: What led you to the idea for PostSecret?

FW: I think I was struggling with secrets in my own life, from my childhood, at some level beneath my own awareness. And so PostSecret was a way I found to work my way through a difficult part of my personal history.

TV: Is that why you have the artwork criteria, because you feel that art helps people work through their problems?

FW: I think that art and healing can be the same thing, and I also think that art allows you to express deep feelings and emotions when at times the words …

TV: At the bottom of your site, you have a link to National Hopeline Network, and you let the All-American Rejects use the site in return for donations to them. What is your involvement with this organization?

FW: I volunteered for the hotline for a number of years. PostSecret has generated quite a few donations to the Kristin Brooks Hope Centre, and we continue to.

TV: I wanted to ask you about some of your previous artwork. With the Clopper Lake bottle project in 2004, which was featured in the Washington Post, you insisted on anonymity and you were only known as Hobby Horse. With PostSecret, yours is the only name that people know. What changed for you? What made you want to, or willing to be known and to post your home address on the internet?

FW: How did you find out about the Clopper Lake project?

TV: I read through some of your past interviews, and the link was given in the transcript.

FW: And the questions is, why did I go from anonymous to non-anonymous?

TV: Yeah.

FW: Well the point of the Clopper Lake project was to create this mystery, you know, where were these bottles coming from? And to have an article written about it in the paper that would kind of be mysterious. In part to spark people’s imagination, and I like the idea of art finding people, people not going to a museum and being self-selective but art randomly finding people anonymously. I thought there was something beautiful about that. This project is a little bit different. I don’t think it really would have worked if I had remained anonymous, but the mailers are anonymous, and there’s still that element of anonymity in the project.

TV: Maybe then it would be tough for them to trust in you and protect their anonymity.

FW: Oh I think that’s what makes the project be able to survive, is the fact that I’ve been able to build this trusting relationship with strangers, they know that I’m going to treat their secrets with respect, dignity, and I can be trusted to protect their anonymity, and part of it is using my home address. People understand that sharing my home address on the web site, on the book cover kind of makes me vulnerable first.

TV: How are you and your family dealing with fame?

FW: For me, the best part is having the opportunity to travel to college campuses to talk to students about the project and share stories, and also to hear the stories they share with me. So that part of it is wonderful and very gratifying.

TV: Why campuses in particular?

FW: Well, I do go to bookstores and museums also, but I really enjoy talking to young people. I think young people are the most interesting. I think their struggles at times are heroic, and when I was growing up, that was the point in my life when I felt the most alive. So I like to stay in contact with that.

TV: There’s been so much positive press about you – have you received any criticism or negative feedback?

FW: I really haven’t, which is a big surprise. Early on, the only negative feedback I ever got was really from religious fundamentalists. Things like “Jesus is the only person you should share your secrets with,” but besides that, everything has been positive, and I’ve been amazed because some of these images I put up on Sundays are pretty strong. There’s going to be one coming up this Sunday that’s pretty strong. But for people, for whatever reason – I think it’s because they understand that these aren’t gratuitous, that there’s a meaning and purpose behind it.

TV: But I feel like your role is very different – Jesus was a saviour and you’re not offering to solve anyone’s problems.

FW: I agree, I see myself as a facilitator, I really hope that – sometimes Catholics will think I’m competing with confession, or psychologists and psychiatrists think I’m competing with therapy – all I’m trying to do is offer another way for people who might want to take that first step in addressing a secret in a way that they feel is appropriate for them. So I’m not trying to say this is the only way or the best way, but I think it’s a new way that works.

TV: Any special reason you picked Sunday to post the secrets?

FW: I feel there’s a real spiritual element to the project. Some people have emailed me and said that they feel a strong connection or fellowship with the people who mail their secrets, so I like that part of it.

TV: In an interview, you said, “I was talking to a producer from Oprah a while ago and I said I think I become aware of the issues that will be on Oprah 2 or 3 years from now.” What, in your opinion, are issues that we can’t talk about now but will be able to in 2 or 3 years?

FW: Yeah, it’s tough to talk about some just because they haven’t been framed in a way that allows people to talk about them, in a way that’s within the culture. For example, 20 years ago, if somebody had talked about cutting, how teenagers sometimes cut themselves, it was difficult to even broach the subject. Or 50 years ago, if people had talked about eating disorders, it would have seemed like craziness, not a legitimate medical condition. So there are some issues that I think are difficult to talk about at this point. One might be the idea that sometimes when children are abused or sexually abused, part of that abuse is appealing to them because they like the attention, for example, if they’re neglected. And then later on in life it creates this conflict between the idea, of course that they were abused, but the other idea that part of that abuse was attention they craved. And another idea might be, the flexibility or the dynamics of our sexual orientation. Sometimes a person will come out as being gay, homosexual, or lesbian, but then years later they’ll decide that maybe that wasn’t the right path for them. And in a sense they’ll want to go back into the closet. But they’ve established these lives and friendships that all identify them as being homosexual. And so it’s difficult at that point for them to change and go back to who they were or develop in their own sexuality. I think that’s another issue that’ll be talked about in the future.

TV: That you have to be sexually classified as one or the other so people can know what to do with you.

FW: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right, whereas the reality, at least on the postcards and secrets I’m getting, is that it’s a journey, and it’s possible to be one, and then the other, it’s possible to think you’re one and realize later that you’re not. It’s difficult for our social networks and groups around us that we surround ourselves with, for them to understand that, so that puts pressure on people to stay in the closet or to stay out of the closet.

TV: Do you think the secrets are a way for these issues to make their way into the mainstream?

FW: What it allows us to do is be less stereotypical of people, and understand the full complexity of our lives, just in terms of our sexual orientation, but also in terms of our emotional happiness, our careers, our religion, all these things where it’s just so easy to box people and to render people in smaller ways and less full ways than they actually are.

TV: You’ve been interviewed so much and I’m sure you answer a lot of the same questions – is there anything you’ve always wanted people to ask you, but they never did?

FW: That’s a good question. A lot of people ask about secrets that have to do with crimes and criminal content, but nobody asks about secrets that have to do with self harm and suicide. And by far, I get more secrets about that than I do about crime. I think that indicates something about our culture, and how we are, in sense, keeping the issue of suicide a secret from ourselves.

TV: Last question to wrap up – you’ve said your secret is that you hope the secrets never stop coming. Would you care to share a secret today that you’ve never told anyone?

FW: I do have a secret that I’ve never told anyone, but I’m not ready to share it yet-just saying that is a secret in itself, I don’t think I’ve ever told that to anybody. Our whole lives are about getting more and more comfortable with the secrets we share with people, so I’m still on that journey.

Frank Warren’s fourth book, A Lifetime of Secrets, will be coming out in October.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.