Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really

Hear the gravel-toned wisdom of Tom Waits, poet of the shadows, who said: “Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who’s connected with it, the studio’s gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that’s left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.” These words carry not only the romance of music, but the deep philosophy of memory and immortality. He speaks of how a song is more than sound—it is a vessel that moves through time, untouched by decay, a fragment of life preserved when all else has perished.

At the heart of this saying lies the mystery of time travel through music. Unlike monuments, which crumble, or letters, which yellow, songs remain vibrant as long as there are ears to hear. A recording captures a fleeting instant: a voice in its youth, an instrument trembling with energy, a mood born of a specific night. Decades later, though the players have long departed, the moment returns as if freshly alive. Thus, a song is a bridge across time, carrying us backward into the lives and emotions of those who once breathed but are no more.

This truth has been seen throughout history. When we hear the ancient chants of Gregorian monks, recorded in stone cathedrals centuries past, we are transported to the echoing halls where candles flickered and prayers rose. When we hear a scratchy vinyl of Billie Holiday, her voice cracked with sorrow and longing, we are carried to the smoky clubs of Harlem in the 1930s, tasting the grief and hope of another age. In this way, songs are not merely entertainment—they are portals, threads that sew together the dead and the living, the past and the present.

Waits reminds us that everything else fades—the studios vanish, the musicians die, the instruments rot—yet the song endures, suspended in a bubble of eternity. It is the same mystery that made the ancient bards immortal. Though Homer himself is dust, the rhythm of his epics still beats in the verses of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Just so, when the voice of a singer long gone fills our ears, it is as though they step back into the room with us, their soul made present again.

There is also here a lesson of mortality and legacy. Every performance, every song, is a moment that can never be repeated, yet once recorded, it becomes timeless. A musician may never know the generations who will sit in their rooms decades later, headphones on, weeping or rejoicing to sounds captured in a single afternoon. In this way, art defeats death—not by stopping time, but by sending a fragment of life forward, across the centuries, into hearts yet unborn.

Consider, too, the tale of Beethoven, who in his later years could no longer hear the music he composed. And yet, his symphonies survived him, reaching beyond his silence into the future. Today, when orchestras play his works, it is as though the deaf composer’s hand still guides them. He, too, travels through time—his suffering, his genius, his joy—all carried in the vessel of song.

The lesson, then, is this: create, for creation is immortality. Whether through music, through writing, through words spoken and remembered, what you give in your time may live beyond your flesh. And for the listener: honor the gift. When you hear a song from the past, do not treat it as mere sound, but as a visitation from the dead, a fragment of eternity placed in your hands.

Thus, Tom Waits’ words echo with ancient wisdom: songs are time machines, carrying the essence of vanished worlds. When you next press play, know that you are stepping into another age, another life, another soul’s moment of truth. And let it remind you to leave your own gift behind, that future generations, seventy years hence, might hear your voice and know that you lived.