When books get opening title music

Ask any author about a book of theirs they love and they’ll tell you it should ultimately be a hit movie or TV show. Why? Two reasons. First of all, it’s the only way to get widespread and global mainstream appeal for a book in this day and age.

How many books arrived as hits to such an extent Hollywood scrambled to adapt them? The Da Vinci Code? Harry Potter? The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? Am I missing any? It’s much more likely an enterprising producer will love your book and want to adapt it, driving attention and sales after it becomes a cultural fixture like Fight Club, Gone With the Wind, Room, Big Little Lies, Brokeback Mountain or Trainspotting.

But secondly, and more importantly for the purposes of this blog, it’s to see our work come to life. Seeing what you’ve been imagining/obsessing about for so long made flesh with real sets, actors, music and props would be a quite unmatched experience.

And Falling is no different. The acknowledgements section dedicates this book partly to musical artist Enya because I was a fan of her early album Watermark. It suited the moods and styles I wanted to convey in Falling perfectly, and I consequently played it so much during the writing of the first draft it would have worn out before too long if it had been a cassette or vinyl LP.

And the track I loved the most was Cursum Perficio. According to the Wikipedia page about the album Enya and her producing partners liked the Latin phrase after learning in a documentary that Marilyn Monroe had it inscribed on her doorstep. The English translation I found online was ‘I complete the course’, obviously a testament to the endurance of the human spirit (ironic considering poor Marilyn’s fate).

I had no idea about any of that back then, but I came to believe it was the perfect title track, playing over the opening titles when Falling finally became a movie or show. In fact I wrote a short essay about why it suited so perfectly and the visuals I envisioned around the time I was writing the book, which I present for your consideration here;

The title track, by Enya, attracted me firstly because of its power. Even though the track is slow and mellow, it really creates a sense of dormant power, lying just underneath the surface.

I found the song a simile for the bridge itself. Its thousands of tons of metal are so huge and potentially destructive. We’re all used to it, but somewhere in the back of our mind is the power lying underneath and a feeling of waiting for it to erupt. This parallel is also a summary of the theme, when the bridge and its power do erupt.

Physically (chronologically), the track was perfect as well, as it was divided into two parts. The first part is slow, low and trembling with power, as I’ve mentioned, and suited the opening sequence, of the facts and history of the bridge in wide, strong classical type.

The second part, a little faster and with a sense of urgency to the underlying power, is perfect ‘tracking’ music, where I envisioned the camera panning along the arch, through the centre, down the face of the pylon, along hundreds of giant rivets and straight down onto passing traffic, all as the credits appear, the crew title and name on top of each other and moving slowly in different directions.

At the end of the track, when Enya repeats the word ‘Eterna’ four times, it appeared to me as a metaphor for the eternity of the bridge, and I saw it in silhouette, black and brooding with a bloody sunset sky (appearing as the director’s name comes onto the screen), about halfway up, leaving a black space underneath.

Then, along with the ‘wave’ sound at the very end, the word FALLING appears in long, bold type, strong and old world, as if a wide light is cast from one end to the other (the F disappearing as the G appears). The entire opening track was to contain and establish the feeling of destructive and dormant strength.