A few days ago I had something I wanted to say. Badly. Fortunately for me, I have a forum to do so, which is, of course, the little corner of the Internet you are currently looking at. So as usual I started typing away during my commute and before long I had finished the piece. I devised a title for it (it was to be called All the world’s a stage), it tied in with previous subjects (for instance, the idea of hyperreality) and it was about something most people could relate to. So from an objective point of view there was nothing wrong with the blog entry. Still, for some reason it felt wrong to post it. And after long deliberation I decided to do something I had never done before: I decided to self-censor and not publish the piece. At the time I didn’t quite know why, but today I suddenly figured it out.
It came to me when I was thinking about the very first sentence of this piece (yes, please have a second look at it). While typing it, I hesitated for a moment between the verbs say or tell. Which made me realise that I should not have written 'I had something I wanted to say', but 'There was something I wanted to tell someone'. Indeed, there’s a big difference.
The problem was that I didn’t have the nerve to tell the person in question. I still don’t. So I was faced with an impasse: I couldn’t say it on our blog and I couldn’t tell it in person. Which basically comes down to having a secret. Usually people define a secret as something you shouldn’t tell anyone. But think about it, isn’t the worst secret the kind you can’t tell anyone?
Luckily there is a solution. During one of my nocturnal wanderings along virtual shores, I came across this site: http://coloresque.net/secrets/. It’s actually a virtual art project called Share a secret, which consists of a very simple premise. The site offers you a text box, through which you can share whatever secret you like. You won’t get a response and it’s completely anonymous. The only condition, the site states, is that you tell something that’s true.
Try it. (And be truthful.) I did it, and there’s something quite remarkable about it.
What, you may ask? I won’t tell you. As I learned from this experience, some things are best left, indeed, a secret.
It came to me when I was thinking about the very first sentence of this piece (yes, please have a second look at it). While typing it, I hesitated for a moment between the verbs say or tell. Which made me realise that I should not have written 'I had something I wanted to say', but 'There was something I wanted to tell someone'. Indeed, there’s a big difference.
The problem was that I didn’t have the nerve to tell the person in question. I still don’t. So I was faced with an impasse: I couldn’t say it on our blog and I couldn’t tell it in person. Which basically comes down to having a secret. Usually people define a secret as something you shouldn’t tell anyone. But think about it, isn’t the worst secret the kind you can’t tell anyone?
Luckily there is a solution. During one of my nocturnal wanderings along virtual shores, I came across this site: http://coloresque.net/secrets/. It’s actually a virtual art project called Share a secret, which consists of a very simple premise. The site offers you a text box, through which you can share whatever secret you like. You won’t get a response and it’s completely anonymous. The only condition, the site states, is that you tell something that’s true.
Try it. (And be truthful.) I did it, and there’s something quite remarkable about it.
What, you may ask? I won’t tell you. As I learned from this experience, some things are best left, indeed, a secret.
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