Confessions

On a quick sortie into town yesterday I passed by a booth set up in the Market Square. Someone was standing outside the booth encouraging frazzled Christmas shoppers to come in and take part in a film. I didn't look too closely for fear of being collared and persuaded to join in, but it looked very much as if people were being encouraged to come off the street and offer confessions to a camera -- perhaps later to be selected, edited, and made into some kind of 'exploration' (is the term I imagine would be used) of .. well, what? Of what people can be persuaded to say if you stick them in a box in the Market Square and point a camera at them. An artificial situation which panders to the extrovert. (And, as far as I could tell, there weren't many takers yesterday.) The I wondered: What would I have said if I had gone in? Nothing that I really think I have done wrong, I decided, in part because I wouldn't want anyone I have wronged to hear my confession in the wrong way, namely if by some misfortune they ever sat through the finished film. And if I simply wanted to express a confession to the air, just to have said it, then I wouldn't want to do so with a camera in my face. So I would probably have made something up, or else confessed to something extremely trivial. Neither of which would make for an interesting film.

But if you want to confess something to the world or, more likely, eavesdrop on other people's confessions, then there are lots of ways to do so on t'internet. Go here, for example. Or here. And then wonder what would lead people to write in and confess.