I was driving home yesterday when I switched radio channels from a regional Top 40 station to the Eighties Sirius XM channel. The show was going through Billboard Top 100 from 1986 and No Easy Way Out, from the movie Rocky IV, which was released in the autumn of 1985, came on. The song brought all sorts of memories and feelings to the fore - excitement, hope, nostalgia, regret. It was around the time that Rocky IV came out when I took my first Taekwondo belt promotion test. In fact, I watched the movie the night before test day. For me, who would go on and follow a martial artist's path and continue Taekwondo training for decades to follow, the Rocky IV soundtrack and No Easy Way Out, in particular, took on special meaning simply because of that random and unexpected connection. As quickly as those memories from the autumn of 1985, my first year living in the United States, they left me and Rocky V and the song Measure of a Man and the memories and feelings associated with them took their place. In my head were memories from 1991, when I graduated from Rutgers University, broke up with my college girlfriend, and had the rest of my life ahead of me.
It's interesting that two songs from different Rocky movies have such a strong connection to my life and the chronology of my hopes, dreams, successes, and failures. I assure you that there are non-Rocky and non-soundtrack songs that bring back memories of other important times and events of my life. And, don't worry. I'm not (not now, anyway) going to present you with a list of songs that make up my life but, if I did, I wonder what would be in it. An album is, what, twenty songs or so? Maybe it's a few less, sixteen or fourteen. If I do compile a soundtrack of my life, what songs would I include? Would I focus on monumental events in my life, like my wedding, and include my wedding song? Or, would I find a song for every year or decade that sums up what I did or felt or songs that represent my overall mood for each year?
As I get older - as I've gotten older - and closer to my waning days, I look back more than I did in my thirties or, even, forties. Would coming up with a soundtrack to my life be merely hubris or would it be something worthwhile to leave my son? As a writer, I think it makes for an interesting exercise. Writers create worlds and lives and creating a soundtrack to a life can help form character, motivation, and dramatic need. As a man, husband, and father, I think it's a fun and meaningful endeavour. It can be a musical illustration of a person's evolution.
No Easy Way Out and Measure of a Man will definitely make the final list of my soundtrack. So, too, I think will one or two Human League songs and several from different Broadway shows. What about yours? What's in the soundtrack of your life?
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