Frank Warren can't keep a secret.
That would defeat the point of PostSecret, the art project Warren spearheaded in 2005 to celebrate the deepest and darkest of the estimated 200 secrets he receives every day.
Warren spilled a few secrets of his own to about 1,700 people Tuesday night at the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
His introduction was brief.
"My name is Frank, and I collect secrets," he told the audience.
Warren said his fascination with secrets stems from his own observation.
"I think we all have secrets," Warren said. "And I like to imagine each one of us here tonight keeping them in a box. We make a choice - we can bury it deep down, or we can find it, bring it out into the light, open it and share our secrets like gifts."
The original concept behind PostSecret arose from a dream Warren had while taking a trip to Paris in December 2003.
"I was looking for a way to take the parts of myself I was hiding from others, and I found it through the courage of strangers," Warren said in a press conference before the event.
Now, anyone can anonymously contribute his or her secret by sending in a 4-by-6-inch postcard.
Warren encourages creativity when visually expressing the secret, emphasizing the project's artistic nature.
"Sometimes I get postcards with artwork that's been so painstakingly created, or secrets themselves with words so carefully chosen, they read like a song or a poem," he said. "And for those people, I think there is a deeper reason [for sending the secret]."
Warren has received secrets ranging from shout-outs to former lovers to cries for mental help.
"Some [secrets] are funny, some sexual, some hopeful," he said. "Some are filled with despair and darkness."
Some secrets never get sent.
One woman wrote Warren about a postcard she opted not to send, instead tearing it to shreds and vowing to overcome her secret.
"I like imagining what that secret would have been," Warren said. "Sometimes when we think we're keeping a secret, that secret's actually keeping us."
At the end of his presentation, Warren encouraged members of the audience to share their questions and, if brave enough, their own secrets.
UF psychology junior Victoria Reynolds was one of the students who stepped up to the microphone.
"It was nerve-racking, kind of liberating and also a little bit embarrassing," Reynolds said. "My knees were shaking, but I had moral support [from my boyfriend]."
Warren described the outcome of PostSecret as transformative and said he's still surprised at the positive response he receives nearly five years after he began the project.
"I accidently tapped into something that had been there the whole time," he said. "[It's] something full of mystery and wonder that I still don't completely understand."
Warren was paid $25,000 to speak, Accent officials said.
