Spoken word event ‘The Ghost Writer Confessions’ reveals student secrets

The anonymously submitted secret that second-year undeclared student and poet Lydia Janbay chose to write about is one she could personally connect with.

Janbay is one of seven UCLA students who will perform spoken word revolving around anonymous secrets submitted by fellow students Wednesday at Royce Hall Terrace in “The Ghost Writer Confessions.” The event is hosted by the Student Committee for the Arts at UCLA and will precede PostSecret creator Frank Warren’s “PostSecret Live” event at Royce Hall.

Janbay’s performance will be about abortion, something she said is a family-polarizing topic.

“I think that a lot of people spend their lives wondering about others that weren’t born,” Janbay said. “Before my mom had me, my mom miscarried twins, and so I do think that it’s hard not to think about how it’s affected other people more than you.”

In order to prepare her poem, Janbay said she did a lot of research on personal experiences related to abortion and had to thinkabout the characters she had written with a performer’s perspective.

Former Daily Bruin A&E contributor, third-year ethnomusicology student and event organizer Anthony Cerrato used to work as a ghostwriter of poems and love letters for a wealthy benefactor.

“I used to write poems on the street on a typewriter, and he walked past me one day when I was in Pasadena and he gave his phone number and said, ‘I might have a job for you,’” Cerrato said.

As part of the SCA, Cerrato said he wanted to mix his experiences as a ghostwriter into this event and bring light to mental health awareness for students.

“I took what I used to do for a living and something I’m really passionate about like spoken word poetry and molded them into one so that UCLA students (could) … say their problems expressed and shared in a community that’s accepting of it,” Cerrato said.

Second-year political science and English student Kevin Alvarez is an SCA staff member organizing the event. Alvarez said secrets were collected two ways: The first was through an online Google Doc link and the second was with Cerrato sitting outside Royce Hall Thursday with a typewriter, exchanging secrets for poems.

Cerrato did not read any of the secrets at the time of collection and was unable to disclose any of the secrets. However, Alvarez said that the range of the secrets depended on the method by which they were collected.

“The ones that were submitted online were a lot lighter versus the ones that were submitted in person that were exchanged for poems. Those were a lot darker,” Alvarez said.

Alvarez submitted a secret, but does not know if his will be performed because the student poets decide which secret(s) inspire them to write.

“This is going to be one of those art experiences that is really heavily human. It’s an event that’s all about the darker parts of the human psyche – the good, the bad and everything else,” Alvarez said.

Janbay also submitted a secret, but does not know if his will be performed. None of the other performers know one another or their poems, as they did not practice together.

Not all of the submitted secrets will be performed through poetry, but all will be posted on a bulletin board set up during the event for people to read. Students will also be abletotype out secrets and post them to the board.

“I think that people’s secrets are the most humanizing thing about them and this event will be one of those times when we’re all brought together without even knowing,” Janbay said.