Time Travel Through Creativity
I read something online recently that posed the question, “If you could make and receive one wish, what would it be?” My immediate answer was: I wish I could go back in time.
As soon as I thought it though, I questioned it. I automatically heard my inner voice ask, “Is that true?” And the answer was, “Yes, of course it’s true! Hush, you!” Okay, well that was my ego’s answer. But the REAL answer was, well…um…still yes, actually. BUT I realized almost instantly that I CAN go back in time…any time I want to. Anyone can. How, you may (or may not ask, but I’m going to mull around about it anyway)? Through the powerful portal of creativity.
We’ve all experienced it. We’re having a good ol’ time with friends, and then all the sudden a song comes on the radio (THE song) and we’re mercilessly thrust into a time capsule that rockets us back to a heartbreaking moment we experienced in the past and without us giving consent (rude!), our mood changes from happy and carefree to sad and uneasy. Or the opposite. We’re feeling like hell, wallowing in despair, but then we hear that familiar and special tune that instantly transports us to a blissful moment, and we couldn’t stop ourselves from smiling and brightening up even if we tried.
This can hold true for many forms of creativity, but I’ll probably stick to music here as my point of reference and see where this goes. The healing power of music is not a secret or any new ah-ha thing. But I couldn’t help myself from peeking into the rabbit hole until I leaned far enough in that I slid down the other day when this subject pricked my curiosity like Aurora’s finger connecting with an enchanted spinning wheel. Huh…I think I just mixed Disney references with Alice and Aurora, but there you have it.
It’s almost like one of those things that seems so obvious and so widely accepted, that we easily miss the actual MAGIC of it. Like, yeah, yeah music is healing, and? Music makes our brains instantly relive a moment in time, anyway? Music transports our souls through time and space, so? Music changes us and alchemizes our deepest rooted behaviors and patterns, yawn. But when you stop to actually think about it—dip your toe into the cosmic rabbit hole and try not to fall in (good luck)—it’s like, wait…WHAT?! Pardon? Scusi? Music is an actual literal time machine. No big deal. Carry on.
If you pause right now and really think about it—think about those moments music has transported you to another time and space—think about how the balance of your emotions and actual human experience shifted, and seemingly completely out of your control—isn’t it a bit startling and actually spectacular?
The thing is, when these powerful shifts (or travels) happen, we change. We’ve got firsthand perspective of alchemy in action. We literally transmute the emotional ground we were walking on to an alternate reality within. By the end of that song travel, we return as a changed being. It’s as if listening to a song is akin to a hypnotherapy session, guiding us back to a memory to feel the feelings we experienced during that pivotal moment in order to heal any unfinished business in the present. But in the case of hearing a song, it can be a much quicker process than sitting on a therapist’s couch or participating in a guided meditation. It’s an instant flashback. A wide open opportunity to heal. A quantum timeline leap. A fast track pass to alchemy.
I personally have a deep love and respect for music, and cannot deny its ultimate truth and significance. It’s felt in my bones and in the reverberative layers of all my soul’s lives. I liken the power of music to the force of the Universe itself, and I often contemplate in awe and reverence about its limitless capacity to love and heal.
I wonder, what if we utilized its energy more intentionally? Music, yes—but also creativity in general. What if we consciously implemented creativity’s blatant invitation to step into its silver DeLorean, complete with its flux capacitor, tune into its 1.21 gigawatts of energy at 88 miles per hour, and visit any moment we wish to go back in time to and take care of business? Change the outcome (ourselves). I mean, we could end up being completely different people, all within the same day. No one would know we actually just spent seconds or minutes or hours or days in another dimension far away, via our headphones. We change ourselves, we change our world. So upon return, my oh my, how different our world could look…
Press PLAY: We sail away on the sound waves of melody into another space to experience “then” as we are “now.” How powerful is that? We transmute energy as necessary with new wisdom and perspective. Press STOP: Now we’re back to the future, but we are not the same. We’ve alchemized something that needed to be experienced again in order to fully let go, change, learn, grow, rise. We give ourselves a second chance. We get a do-over. We rewrite the story (the song?). We are our own genie in a bottle granting our own sweet wish, which was ready and available to us all along. We never even needed to ask permission. We just needed to listen, and let the music drive.
And not to get TOO rabbit hole-y…although if you’ve been reading my blog then you know that’s where my posts inevitably end up going so—fine, I’ll own it—to GET rabbit hole-y, what if those moments when that song comes on the radio or pops up on your Shuffle out of millions of songs, are not a coincidence? What if the Universe is carefully dropping the needle at the pinpoint perfect and most imperative moment to reach you with a message? A message that it knows you need to face in order to transform those swords in your heart back into music notes, like they’re meant to be felt. To turn up the volume in order to turn on your light.
Maybe Spirit has some amazing and glorious manifestation all ready to bring into your life tomorrow, but in order to fully present itself to you, you’ve just got to heal this one little thing first. And the quickest and simplest way to do that is to listen to this one little song.
So God skips to the RIGHT song, signaling that recognizable rhythm and meaningful melody at the RIGHT time, just for you! A gift. A favor. What kind of self-sabotage are we really creating when we fight back: “Stop! WRONG song. WRONG time. NEXT!” It seems we’d be swimming against the flow of the natural sound waves that we’re meant to ride, denying a divine gift and therefore pushing our beautiful manifestations away even further.
This is not to discount the immensity (the intensity!) of surrendering to the process of spiritual and creative alchemy. It’s not an easy task to sit down and do the healing work, even if that work is “just” listening to a little song all the way through, start to finish. It can be quite an arduous task. Simple does not always equal easy.
But I’m realizing we shouldn’t shoot the messenger (the music). The music is not the sword stuck in your heart. The memory is. When we face the music (as consequently Jeff Lynne’s ELO album of the same title has literally invited me to do recently), we take a ride down memory lane and experience the past vividly, but in a new way. We experience (re-experience?) ourselves in a new way. We see ourselves and love ourselves in a new way. We hold space in the composition for compassion.
Maybe we can’t ever remove those swords from our hearts. They’re part of us now. But we can transmute them into eighth notes of creativity. And they become something different. As a result, we become someone new. Vibrating a new tune. I think experiences indeed make us who we are, but we still have the power to decide just who that is.
But what does it mean when you just don’t want to hear it?
Wherever there is an opportunity to alchemize, there’s also resistance. (At least in my stubborn spirit’s experience). Music is the love of my life, but we sure can sometimes be cruelest to the ones we love the most. This is that portal-song coming on the radio, only for me to quickly change the station. The first couple notes greeting me on Song Shuffle, gently inviting me into the time machine for a ride, but me hurriedly pressing SKIP. That familiar memory-drenched melody knocking on the door, only to reluctantly be turned away with its head hanging low when I scold it, “Nope. Get lost. Just BEAT it!” (Bad pun intended—so sorry). The pretty inflections once so cherished that I used to jump up and down with excitement to hear, now all but haunting notes that have become the prickly swords wedged in the sinews of my heart.
But, as I wrote about in my blog post The Leaning Tower of Alchemy, “We tend to avoid facing our shadows, scared of the dangerous monsters that hide in the dark… The danger is actually in the ways we trick our minds to run in the first place. The shadows are not chasing us to hurt us. The shadows are reaching out to be embraced.” So, what are we really denying ourselves when we skip that song? And how is that affecting our creative intelligence? How is it stunting our alchemic process? What would happen if we forced ourselves to get in, buckle our seatbelts, and listen to that damn song, ugly cry (so be it) and all? Where/when would we go, and how would we be upon return?
No matter how self-aware we might think we are, there are always nooks and crannies inside our hearts that we brush away. Things we convince ourselves to run from. Oh I’ll deal with that later. Or, I’m not ready for that. Or my personal favorite, I’m fine. But God knows our hearts. And sometimes the Universe will send us Earth Angels to remind us of what we need to hear.
I recently had a colleague/friend call me out on just such an occasion. When he asked me about my new music, I strategically kept brushing it off. “Yes, I definitely can’t wait to finish my new album! I’ve just been so busy and focusing on this other work right now, I had to put that on hold for a bit. So anyway!” (Which of course is true to a large extent. Only so many hours in a day, yada, yada). Throughout the conversation, he kept bringing it up and I could feel myself getting uncomfortable (drop the album, man!).
After I attempted to dodge the subject a couple times, he asked, “So what’s one thing you need in order to get your album done?” I tried to find an excuse (I mean, a reason). I stuttered and stumbled until finally I admitted, “Um…my heart’s not really in it right now. They’re really personal songs from a personal time, and I have…resistance. I can’t seem to play them.”
Like the Earth Angel he is, he wouldn’t let me off that easy. “So what’s one thing you can do by next week to face the resistance and do something for the album that you so want to make?” I confessed that I sort of needed to start from scratch—come up with a new plan altogether. To which he repeated, “What’s just one thing…?” As I struggled, feeling put on the spot and exposed, trying to find words but not able to come up with an acceptable answer, he broke the ice by laughing at my apparent internal battle (some angel!) when I finally demanded of the interrogation, “What is this?! What the hell is this?!” I say all this fun-spirited by the way. True angels care enough to hold us accountable in looking out for our highest.
We had a laugh about it, but the conversation wouldn’t leave my mind all night, his questions echoing in my thoughts. Oh no, I realized. Damn it. He’s right. What am I really resisting by not creating that album? What sword am I afraid of driving further into my heart if I sing? What new version of myself am I denying? What song am I skipping? My own.
The next day my friend apologized for putting me on the spot and I told him that wasn’t necessary. Actually, I thanked him. He gave me a kick in the ass that I needed to jumpstart a train of curious and crucial thoughts of self-exploration. It was like he was a mirror in that conversation, and all I could see was the truth (AKA my lies). I could just hear how my own thoughts had been sabotaging my growth: Focus on the work because the work can’t hurt you, not like the music can. Work doesn’t force you to feel. No painful memories attached here. It’s safe!
I was telling myself to focus on other work (because of many valid and sincere reasons, true—and my other work is creative too, just sayin’!), but I was also focusing on other work because I was avoiding an opportunity to heal through music. The biggest opportunity—my own music! MY story. My own soul dying to be sung, felt, and alchemized so she could sing again but as a new voice. A new me.
I’d love to tell you that I picked up my guitar that very day and recorded my entire album and went along my merry way, but alas, I’m not quite there yet. But glimmers of awareness and truth are progress, like catching a glimpse of a fish’s silhouette passing just underneath the water’s surface. I haven’t caught it yet, but it’s there. I see it.
In the spirit of progress, I will however share a small (huge) accomplishment to offer a little ray of light to this story at least. A couple weeks after this reflective conversation, the same friend (also a music maker) and I were talking and he said that he had planned to spend the day on admin tasks, but ended up calling his own self out after realizing he hadn’t spent time creating music in months. So he put the admin stuff on hold and took a couple hours to get lost in creation. When he told me this, his own mirror ended up mirroring me again. This was becoming a crazy fun-house of mirrors! After hanging up, I thought, oh hell…I haven’t picked up my guitar in months either. The resistance was real. Screw it, I thought, and grabbed my old six-string friend.
I ended up writing a new song that night—my first new song in many moons. A song about daydreaming of a beautiful faraway place, which I could reach just by believing. I recorded it and sent my friend the song, thanking him with deep gratitude for reminding me to carve out some time in the day to create. It felt great! I had so much fun doing it. It wasn’t revisiting my unfinished album, but it was a start. I was creating music again…and sharing it too. At least a little bit. Baby steps. Kid steps, even.
This experience reminded me of something else as well. It’s important to take time to heal on our own sometimes. Isolate and handle it. But a big part of healing is also being around other people so that you can recognize things about yourself that you might not recognize on your own, or might not be daring enough to face without a friendly interrogation. Someone kind enough to hold up the mirror for you that may be a little too heavy for you to pick up yourself. An outsider’s caring song request, putting you on the spot. Friends who can guide you back to an imperative nook that you bypassed. And sometimes a reminder that you (incredibly) have a musical time machine at your very disposal. Independence has its purpose, but so does interconnection.
When we visit a song that’s meaningful from our past, we’re really visiting ourself from the past, aren’t we? Just think of the many beautiful benefits we can receive if we show up for ourselves with love instead of fear. Returning to the present moment with such grace is a sweet gift we can allow ourselves to unwrap. Even returning to the act of making music reminded me of the joy that comes from simply creating. No attachments. No expectations. No blood-stained swords from the past. No associations. No resistance. Just the lightness of manifesting a melody in the present moment. Just joy.
As writing out posts like this often does, I’m able to see in black and white the tough-love lessons that Spirit is egging me on to accept and grow from (write a blog about my spiritual and creative journey, I said. It will be fun, I said). I understand more than ever the gravity that creativity (and specifically, music) has on my healing odyssey. I cannot have one without the other. One cannot manifest without the other. Creativity is a huge part of my spiritual/human purpose. It’s who I am. I feel to create and I create to feel. It’s just the way.
And maybe picking up my guitar is a trigger for feeling all the feels—the acoustic sound hole like a magical portal to my own personal time machine. In which case, I realize I’d like to work on being braver in picking up my guitar more often. To gradually melt back into the experience of the vibration of those six strings playing the strings on my heart with comfort and bittersweet medicine. Dissolving the hardness of those swords a bit, sewing up the pierced holes with melodic threads and patches. Softening. Allowing. Harmonizing.
Like the powerful and loyal and wonderful friend that music is, it’s always patiently waiting on the curb with its engine running, ready for the moments when I decide to spontaneously jump in and hit the road. The driver telling me, “Get in loser, we’re going timeline jumping.”
Perhaps the real key is not inputting a specific destination into the navigation, but rather, allowing the music to guide us wherever our hearts are meant to visit (or revisit). We might drive down familiar streets, or take a detour and cruise backroads we’ve never been down before. Or have we? Déjà vu IS a thing. I wonder…
At the end of the day when I dream on it, my wish to go back in time is not motivated by regret. It’s inspired from the desire to let Past Me know that everything will be okay. To give her a comforting hug from Future Me. And I could only be Future Me by the experiences of Past Me, so maybe I’d even thank her. Though all the “Mes” have been through their share of not-so-great-stuff (as I’m sure we all have), I still search for the beautiful music in between the lines. I never want to stop listening. And I never want to stop creating in response.
So. “If you could make and receive one wish, what would it be?”
Me: I wish I could go back in time.
The Universe: Wish granted. All You have to do is press PLAY.
Sometimes we have to go backwards in order to move forward I guess. Maybe I’ll travel one note at a time…take the scenic route. Anyway, I’ll whistle while I work. The age old truth of course is it’s all about the journey. Might as well enjoy the soundtrack—heartbreaks and victories alike. Hope you keep spinning your own soundtrack. I’m working on my new road trip playlist right now.
