I’m listening to Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack to Rambo III (Intrada edition), which I picked up during last year’s stay in Paris. It’s one of my favourites, Goldsmith is brilliant at combining ethnic sounding sythesised music with a symphonic orchestra. I had never owned a copy of the soundtrack before, although I had taped highlights (complete with dialogue and explosions) from a video of the movie. I had not listened to that tape for over a decade and the CD contains much music not in the movie. Yet as soon as I listened to the CD the music felt as if I had listened to it all my life, instantly familiar yet completely fresh.
The music, especially the "Afghanistan" theme triggers feelings, echos of sometime in my past. I cannot recall the situation that those feelings relate to. Questing, a tinge of meloncholy. Perhaps dreams of unfulfilled love, hope for thought in a hostile land. Not related to the awful movie, but perhaps of life when I saw it.
The soundtrack of Rambo II, listened to years before I ever saw the movie, that has distinct memories. I would listen to resting in my bunk after school, looking out the rear window into the dense bush of the hill behind our house. The music and the landscape were even incorporated into a dream, one where I said goodbye to a schoolyard infatuation. I would daydream of escaping Queensland and returning to Melbourne, a journey on foot. I would stand at the edge of our front yard, listening to "Day by day", looking towards a distant range in the southwest, mentally walking towards it.
First Blood’s soundtrack has fewer associations. Walks in tropical bushland, the city of Brisbane. Little significance, yet still dreaming of escape.
Still dreaming now, hearing the music. Seeking, and making, a better life.