He had to say yes. But what starts with secrets and ends with The Beatles can only be summed up as the strangest emotional journey of composer Mario Vairas career.
Approached this past September by Vancouverites Justin Sudds, TJ Dawe and Kahlil Ashanti, Vaira was asked to lend his musical abilities to a production they were staging called .
Originating as a community art project in Maryland in 2005, creator Frank Warren intended PostSecret to allow the unburdening of thoughts that were too heavy to carry alone any longer.
He dispersed plain white postcards in public spaces with the instructions to tell him a secret. It had to be true, anonymous and something never revealed to anyone else before. He was hoping to receive 365; he has collected more than 500,000.
is now the worlds largest advertising-free blog at more than half a billion hits. The award-winning site has translated into best-selling books and feature exhibits at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art.
Heavily influenced by his background in suicide prevention, Warren selects 20 secrets a week that he feels have importance, and posts them on Sundays. He has never thrown away a single postcard.
In 2010 Sudds, Ashanti and Dawe started working with Warren to adapt PostSecret for the stage. By 2012, they had it (almost) complete; all that was missing was the live music.
Vaira, a Juno-nominated producer and multi-instrumental songwriter, was a natural choice. After workshopping with the three men and Warren leading up to Pick of the Fringe, he sketched the musical mood of the sold-out play by taking an unexpected look at some of his own experiences.
Youre presented with these lifelines that people have sent out, because some [secrets] are quite desperate. And you realize that someone has really meant this and all they wanted to do was get it off their chest and start finding a way to open up.
The duty that I felt after reading [the play] was I wanted to be a long-distance support. Not to be the wind beneath my wings, he laughs, shifting self-consciously in his chair. I wanted to find a way to frame them and support them and elevate them so that they could exist for a little bit longer than just being on a postcard.
Then he read a postcard that could have been written by him.
It appears in Act 1, saying simply, I save voice messages from people that I love in case they die tomorrow and Ill never get the chance to hear their voice again.
As he quotes from it, seated in front of the production console of his North Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»studio, his lips tighten in grief. He looks down to play with something on his armrest.
He discovered, in his own archives as he combed for ideas, long-forgotten voice messages from his own loved ones that he too had saved the discovery made all the more poignant by the sudden death of close friend and fellow Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»musician Randy Ponzio, whose body was found in a Downtown Eastside hotel in November of last year.
The piece he composed to accompany that particular confession has only six chords. He wrote it in one take while listening to the messages he had kept going over, he says, the things he has lost and things he is still trying to hold on to.
And while that scene might sound sombre, the purpose of PostSecret in all its forms is to forge a community of support. And by the end of the play, Vairas music builds into a looping layer of guitar chords, seemingly chanting you are not alone as the audience risks reaching out to each other.
Warren has nothing but praise for Vairas contribution. Wanting to rehearse only the bare bones of the music, Vaira made the rest up on stage, riffing off audience reaction. If they laughed, he played a happy tune; if they were reflective, he took the music down accordingly.
After the success of the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»dates, the newly titled PostSecret: Unheard Voices went on tour. They travelled to theatres in Bethesda, Saginaw and Cincinnati, donating their time to telling the stories of strangers to strangers. On the road, away from his wife Robyn (of childrens band Bobs & Lolo), he retreated into the anonymity of supporting musician to give the secrets their space and ponder the past year.
I was playing to Randy a lot, he states, his voice rising as the words struggle to escape his throat. To try to have a conversation with him. And if I didnt get closure, maybe I got a little more clarity. Through a wavering half-smile, though, he concedes it might still be a work in progress.
There are only two pieces of music in the play that were not composed by Vaira, and it was during one of those moments that he had his most powerful revelation. Standing in the darkness on stage, staring at the secrets for what he guesses was the 10th run through that scene, Vaira was struck by Sir Paul McCartney singing three words.
Its probably the first time Ive heard the words let it be. Like, actually heard them. And thats a hard lesson to learn. There are things we cant change and things we cant make better sometimes, and Im going to have to accept them for what they are and let them be. And try to move on with love and respect and honesty. Thats all you can do.
Vaira says he still hasnt submitted a secret of his own, but perhaps, after this experience, he no longer needs to.
PostSecret: Unheard Voices is not currently touring. For updates on 2013/14 plans, follow ).
