Message to the Future: Hidden Wisdom in Your Songs

James Keelaghan has a song called “Message to the Future” that lists a number of ways people write time-capsule messages to themselves, including by becoming parents. I believe that as artists, we send out messages to our future selves all the time.

In the same way that dreams send out coded messages from our unconscious to our conscious minds, our songs carry particular signals meant for us and us alone, in addition to any other audiences they reach.

With a little practice, you can learn to discover layers of meaning in your songs that you didn’t even know were there, and that can guide you in your life’s journey. In other words, a song might become a psychic “hit” for you—even if it never earns a penny!

Here’s where to look for those hidden messages:

Words that have more than one meaning

A song of mine is called “I Would Recognize You Anywhere”. When I wrote it, I meant the word “recognize” to mean “to identify someone by sight”, specifically a family member. However, one fan of the song “misunderstood” the word to mean “to affirm, honour or validate”— an alternate meaning I had never even considered. Since then, I have come to understand that the theme of “recognition-as-validation” is central to my life story and family history. As a result, my understanding of the song has become deeper and more nuanced, as have my performances of it.

Recurring symbols

The first time I ever used a house key as a symbol in my writing, I was about six years old. As an adolescent, I had trouble over lost keys…then, in my marriage, a house key became the central image in a story told and re-told to describe recurring conflict. As a musician, I even have a chronic insecurity about not knowing what “key” I’m in! It’s not surprising that one of my personal favourite original songs is called “Keys”. Meditating on that symbol and how it’s manifested itself in my life leads me to new insights. Playing the song is part of that meditation.

Songs you rarely play

Look carefully at any song that embarrasses you or that you never felt was “good enough” to play in public, any song that reveals something about you that you’d rather others not know, any song you rarely (or never) play in public that is alive for you privately. These songs may hold clues to areas of growth or understanding you may be avoiding. When you embrace these songs (whether or not you decide to play them in public) you also embrace parts of yourself that have been disowned.


A song from your long-ago past

If you have been writing songs for some time, you may discover that a song written a long time ago was a symbolic representation of circumstances you didn’t fully understand at the time. Propelled by our unconscious, the songs we write send us messages that our conscious minds cannot—and sometimes it takes years to decode them!

Recently, when I realized that a painful adult situation is a mirror of an unhealed aspect of my childhood, I suddenly remembered a song I had written as a teenager. Without consciously knowing what I was doing, I had described in poetic language the predicament I was in then and that I now find myself in as an adult. Even though I had been a precocious writer as a child, I didn’t have the maturity to consciously understand my situation—but my unconscious mind wrote a song that now sheds light on my life story and helps guide my growth.

If you find yourself in a time of personal challenge or discernment, look to the spiritual and subconscious dimensions of your songs as additional sources of wisdom.