Frank Warren, creator of PostSecret, sat idly in the front row of the Great Hall of the Memorial Union last Thursday as the capacity crowd enjoyed the “Dirty Little Secret” music video by The All American Rejects. Warren now uses this video to open his lectures across the country that cover the creation of PostSecret and the power of secrecy.

Although PostSecret, Warren’s creation, has received a seemingly endless amount of press and now carries three published books full of secrets from around the world, no one seemed to notice Warren sitting quietly in the front row because most of them do not know his face.

Warren claims he has become an artist accidentally, humbly giving all the credit to the now more than 100,000 people who have sent him their secrets, which have made their way onto his Web site and many into his books.

“I think really the ultimate reason why it started was that I was struggling with a secret in my own life, and by inviting strangers to share their secrets with me, I was able to find the courage to face a secret that I dealing with at a level kind of beneath my own awareness,” Warren said as he thumbed through the copies of his books that lay at his feet, signing them for those who would be attending his lecture just hours later.

Warren dubs himself “like a kid on Christmas day,” speaking of how he sometimes checks his mailbox two or three times even before the mail has come to see what exciting new surprises await him from strangers all over the world.

“I can go through 200 postcards in a day and still wanna see more after I get to that last one, so for me there is something about secrets that’s kind of insatiable,” Warren said.

PostSecret exploded onto the scene in 2004 and recently there has been talk about making a movie following Warren’s life and the creation of PostSecret. But when Warren conveyed the idea to his wife she remarked, “A movie about your life, how boring.” Comments like this from his family keep him humble and grounded, Warren said.

While Warren thoroughly enjoys giving lectures and traveling near and far to speak to people, an unknown fact to many is that Warren actually has a fear of public speaking.

“I went to school at Berkeley and I was in the honors program, and the last thing we had to do in the honors program to graduate with honors was to defend our thesis in front of the class, and I was so nervous to do that. I was so scared of public speaking that I just didn’t do it, and because of that I didn’t graduate with honors,” he said.

The lecture lasted an hour as Warren spoke of PostSecret’s creation, which began with him handing out 3,000 postcards in Washington D.C. of which he got 100 back and placed them in a local art exhibit. After the exhibit closed, Warren thought this would be the end of his experiment. However, the secrets kept coming, only now they were coming in Hallmark cards and even began to be handmade. He now receives 200 postcards a day and he is meticulous to read each and every one before choosing a handful to place on his Web site the next Sunday.

Being that Warren has remained anonymous to most without a lot of pictures of himself available to the masses, most come away from the lecture with many discrepancies as to what Warren actually looks like, compared to what they thought he would be like.

“I kind of thought he would be older, like in his 50s,” said Jaclyn Nielsen, senior in apparel merchandising, design and production.

Warren’s lecture touched the hearts of many, as he showed a special selection of secrets that he called his “Secret Secrets,” a number of postcards that could not be published in his books because of the copyright of many of the images on the postcards. A particular secret that brought a hush to the crowd, and gasps from some, featured a picture of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, with the bold statement of “everyone who knew me before 9/11, believes I’m dead.”

The lecture brought people from all over, some traveling from as far as Nebraska, but more importantly it left each person in attendance with a collage of thoughts and feelings as it came to a close.

“The whole time all I could think about was trying to figure out what my secret was,” Nielsen said.

Warren’s project continues to grow and seems to have no end in sight as he plans to release his fourth book in October, “A Lifetime of Secrets,” which will encompass secrets from people between the age of 8 and 80. The book will show the contrast between both young and old minds.

“It kind of traces a whole story arch of the human life and shows a story, hopefully of compassion and hope that’s told through our secrets,” said Warren.

As for the goal of PostSecret and what is in store for the future, Warren said, “I wouldn’t really say I had any goals at the beginning, or even now, it’s just been kind of a journey that I have been happy to follow where it leads.”