My Secret Life, The Audiobook, Homepage

MY SECRET LIFE
An audiofilm of the infamous 19th Century erotic masterpiece

"Has anybody but myself faithfully made such a record?.....it would be a sin to burn all this, whatever society may say it is but a narrative of human life, perhaps the everyday life of thousands.....if the confession could be had" ........Walter

My Secret Life: Image courtesy of Christie's Fine Arts

My Secret Life, the anonymously written erotic memoirs of a Victorian English gentleman who refers to himself simply as 'Walter' is one of the most idiosyncratic books ever written. In this vast confessional, the author chronicles his sexual exploits, throughout the course of a life devoted to the pursuit of carnal pleasure. As the author's sexual and moral behaviour is revealed we are left with a uniquely entertaining insight into life behind the closed doors of Victorian society. My Secret Life is funny, sorrowful, suspenseful, obscene, titillating, exciting, bizarre and highly erotic...in it we are privy to the thoughts, emotions and memories of one of the most unusual, unsung and colourful characters of the Victorian era.

The Making Of 'My Secret Life', The Audiofilm from dominic crawford collins on Vimeo.

Walter was most probably born in London during the first half of the 1820s and began keeping a diary of his sexual experiences from his early twenties. Some time during the 1880s the hand written manuscript documenting his lifetime's erotic experiences (amounting to over one million words), was smuggled out of England to be privately printed in Amsterdam. The obscenity laws in place at the time meant that the risk in doing so was enormous, the reward however was the realisation of one of the most extraordinary and unusual books ever written.

Now, some one hundred and thirty years later, this unique text is undergoing a reincarnation as an 'audiofilm' (an audio book scored in the manner of a film). What was the work of a lifetime for 'Walter', the book's anonymous author, has now become the work of a lifetime for composer Dominic Crawford Collins, who is narrating, scoring and producing the complete unabridged one-hundred-and-eighty-four chapters of which the eleven volumes consist and releasing them over the course of the next ten or so years.

Nude: 1855

MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS from VOLUME 1

Volume 1 Music Preview from dominic crawford collins on Vimeo.

Dominic Crawford Collins on My Secret Life
In the early 1820s a man was born in London whose obsession it became to document, at extraordinary length, the emotional and physical vicissitudes of his entire erotic life. A vicarious pleasure in re-living his former escapades was no doubt obtained in the process, along with the knowledge that, through the writing of his diaries, he was creating his own legacy. Although Walter's identity is uncertain, he was not, as is the prevailing opinion, the erotic bibliophile Henry Spencer Ashbee, who was born a decade later. Nor is the diary a work of fiction in any degree.

On the contrary, My Secret Life is an intensely personal and at times painfully introspective and honest confessional. Walter's decision to commit to the page and share, unflinchingly, the more unsavory elements of his character demonstrated great courage. His decision to print rather than destroy his diaries has been vindicated by the appreciation and enjoyment of them to this day, where from our enlightened vantage point we can see them for what they are; a unique and brilliant account of life behind the closed doors of Victorian society. Amongst its pages lies a relatively undiscovered treasure trove of real lives, lives encountered from a very different perspective to those depicted by contemporaries such as Dickens, Bronte and Mayhew; lives illuminated by the oblique light of the author’s prurient eye. Its detailed description of the hidden side of British and European life in the 19thC furnishes materials for the understanding of the Victorian age than cannot be duplicated from any other source, informing us clearly of what Dickens and Hardy often alluded to but could never articulate.

My own decision to narrate and score the entire unabridged text, comprising 184 chapters and 1.5 million words, reflects not only my passion for the work but a burning ambition to create something of lasting value myself.

Ultimately I hope, through the contribution of my music in the service of the dramatic narrative, to have created a legacy of unparalleled scale that will entertain and engage long beyond my time, much in the same way as the original book has.

Nude: 1855

In both literature and film the Victorian era continues to enthrall and enchant a global audience with preconceptions largely established by writers such as Dickens, Austen, Bronte and Mayhew. Walter's detailed account of undocumented aspects of Victorian life looks beyond the margins that they established and is as a result as refreshing as it is eye opening. Fearless in candidly confronting all aspects of his character, he took a courageous and liberal stance which was in many was ahead of his time.

The intimate nature of his diaries and his portrayal of himself and his surroundings place My Secret Life well outside the realm of Victorian pornography as established in publications like 'The Pearl'. Walter's mantra might have been adopted from Jean-Jaques Rousseau in his ‘Confessions’: “My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself.' Like Rousseau's Confessions, My Secret Life is also noted for its detailed account of the author's more humiliating and shameful moments.

My Secret Life was originally sold privately to an esoteric circle of fellow erotomaniacs and due to its hardcore erotic content remained banned from mainstream publication for nearly a century, until it was finally released in the USA by Grove Press in the 1960s . However improbable it may seem in our own enlightened times, in the same decade in the UK a publisher was imprisoned under the obscenity act for releasing several of the chapters.

The historic importance of My Secret Life is elegantly summed up by Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith & Tipping the Velvet -
‘I first came across “My Secret Life” while researching nineteenth-century sexual underworlds. I read it alongside various pieces of Victorian pornography, but Walter’s 11-volume sexual memoir is much stranger, more endearing and more compelling than mere porn.
A brilliant storyteller who was prepared to go literally anywhere for a fuck, he gives us a Kinsey-esque cross-section of nineteenth-century erotic life, leading us unblushingly into all those urban spaces – the bedrooms, the brothels, the privies, the darkened parks and omnibuses
– which lurk just beyond the margins in the work of more respectable London writers like Dickens and Wilkie Collins. It’s fascinating, eye-opening stuff.’

Dominic Crawford Collins on My Secret Life
Set mostly in 19th London with lascivious escapades across continental Europe and America, not only are the settings inspirational but the dramatic nature of the actions and emotions described perfectly suited to the interpretation of a modern day film composer. The creation of a meaningful score for 'My Secret Life' has meant a very clear understanding of the emotional development of Walter's character. As a result each chapter has become an entity in its own right with a distinctly different and individual musical score intended to take the listener on an entertaining and emotional journey.

The music has the effect of shifting the balance between action and emotion and allowing scenes that might appear overtly licentious to take on new degrees of meaning and subtlety. In drawing musical inspiration from these distant lives I am endeavoring to bring them into the minds and hearts of a modern day audience. I have approached the scoring of it in exactly the same way that I would a film, allowing the written words to inspire visual imagery which I in turn score. Unlike any other audio book that I have come across, it's one in which the music plays as significant and almost as substantial a role as the text itself. In the music I have strived to capture the spirit of the book and its protagonist; subtly drawing the listener into 'Walter's world', exploring the author's innermost thoughts and experiences in a dramatic and lyrical musical context and providing the listener with a truly immersive erotic audio experience.

As a composer, the ability for music to interpret aspects of Walter's character and bring emotions to the fore was what attracted me to the project; that along with a longterm love of the book and the erotic exploits of this marvelously idiosyncratic character.

I like to think that in undertaking this project, Walter's erotic aspirations have become my own musical inspirations over a century later. In creating music inspired by Walter's life I am ultimately scoring a soundtrack to my own. No doubt in years hence when I listen back to earlier chapters, as with an old photograph, memories of my own past will be brought to mind..... for such a personal legacy I am indebted to Walter, whoever he was!

This production of My Secret Life is currently being archived by the British Library, Drama & Literature Recordings in London & The Kinsey Institute for research in sex, gender & reproduction, Indiana University.

Dominic Crawford Collins is a leading film and TV composer having scored over 150 hours of broadcast television, with perennial favourites such as Ballykissangel and the BBC Natural World series amongst his many credits.

His works for the concert platform include 'The Colour of Distance' symphony (the largest ever composition that combines orchestral music with natural sound) recorded in DTS 6.1 surround sound at Abbey Road Studios and narrated by actor John Hurt.

A full list of Dominic's credits is available at www.dominiccrawfordcollins.com