Post secret 프로젝트 : 비밀을 적은 엽서
Strangers Share Secrets Through Postcard
나는 매일 VOA의 Daily news 기사로 전화영어를 하고 있다. 기사 내용이 정치, 경제, 사회, 문화 등 다양한 주제를 다루고 있어 영어기사내용을 나의 짧은 생각과 함께 공유하려고 한다.
얼마전 전화영어로 다뤘던 주제는 Warren이라는 사람이 10년째 진행하고 있는 PostSecret이라는 프로젝트 내용이다. 이 프로젝트는 사람들로 하여금 자신만의 비밀을 엽서에 적어 Warren에게 보내면, 웹사이트에 익명으로 업로드되는 방식인데, 전세계에서 엽서를 보내오는 등 큰 인기를 끌고 있다고 한다. 지금까지 백만 통이 넘는 편지를 받았다고 하니, 그 인기가 실감도 안난다. 난 아직 안읽어봤지만 <나미야 잡화점의 기적> 이라는 책도 이것과 좀 비슷한 주제를 다룬 것 같더라.
어쨌든 Warren은 처음 3000개의 엽서에 자기 주소를 써서 사람들에게 나누어줬다. 그게 점점 퍼지다보니, 사람들은 엽서를 꾸미기도 하고 자기만의 스타일로 만들어 보내왔고, 이 기쁘고,슬프고,웃기고, 화나는 이야기들은 익명으로 사람들에게 공개됐다.
정말이지 멋진 프로젝트라고 생각한다. 의도도 워낙 좋았지만, 이걸 십년이나 꾸준히 프로젝트를 진행해온 것도 Warren이 정말 대단하다고 생각한다. 나도 Warren에게 엽서를 보낸다면 무슨 내용을 보낼까? 상상만해도 괜히 웃음나고 즐거워진다.
Strangers Share Secrets Through Postcards
Some people collect stamps. Others acquire art. Frank Warren collects secrets.
Strangers from around the world send him postcards with their confessions, their disappointments, and their hopes for the future.
It all started about 10 years ago.
“I wanted to find out if people had secrets and if they did, if they’d share them with me,” Warren explained.
So he printed up 3,000 self-addressed postcards with his home address on one side and a blank space where people could write down a secret — “something they never told anyone before” — decorate the card with artwork and mail it to his home anonymously.
He handed out the cards to strangers on the streets of Washington, D.C., and waited.
Flood of postcards
“I didn’t know if I’d get 10 or 20 or none at all,” he confessed, but he needn’t have worried. The response exceeded his wildest expectations.
“As they came to my mailbox with secrets on them, I would scan them and put them on the web,” he said, and soon, more than a million people were visiting his website, PostSecret, from all around the world, and the idea started to spread virally.
“So people from Ireland, Japan, South Africa, the U.K., Greenland, Australia; they started buying their own postcards and making their own postcards and mailing their secrets to me, sometimes in different languages,” Warren said.
In the 10 years since, he’s received more than 1 million of them, many with colorful designs, original artwork or photographs. Sometimes even written on everyday objects like ballet slippers or balloons.
And they’re still coming.
Secret messages
The messages range from the funny and joyful to the sad and heartbreaking.
“Dear birth mother, I have great parents. I found love. I’m happy,” reads one postcard that features a newborn baby on the same side as the message.
“I give decaf to customers who are rude to me,” reads another, which was written on an actual paper cup from a popular coffee shop chain.
Said Warren of the endeavor: “I believed that if I could create a safe,nonjudgmental place where people could share these hidden fantasies and fears and hopes, desires, humiliations and funny stories, hidden acts of kindness, it could really be something special.”
His project, PostSecret, has become something special.
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