How To Build A Time Machine

A Step-By-Step Guide

Everyone wants to time travel.

From Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol to Doc Brown in Back to the Future, traveling through time is something that has captured our imaginations since, well, the dawn of time.

But why are we so fascinated by the concept of breaking time? Of bending it to our will? After all, as Albert Einstein once said:

Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

Except he never said that. Ray Cummings wrote it. But I digress.

No matter the reason, human beings are obsessed with traveling through time. And as a fellow human, cursed with the desire to write, please, and be commended, I have taken it upon myself to put down the instructions for how you ~ yes you ~ can build your very own time machine. It’s simpler than you think, and you can do it using the very device that you’re reading this on right now. You won’t even have to get off the toilet.

So, without further adieu…

How To Build A Time Machine

To begin, we need to understand the concept of time.

You may have heard things like “time is a construct” or “time heals all wounds”, both of which mean nothing in particular and neither of which is very helpful at the moment. Wikipedia, in all of its “don’t reference us in your research paper” wisdom, defines time as the following:

the continuous progression of our changing existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future

Yawn. I guess being the world’s biggest encyclopedia doesn’t mean that you have to be exciting. Who writes this stuff? Anyway…

So what is time?

Time is here, right now. And now it isn’t, but then it was. And soon it will be, but then it won’t. But there it was and here it is.

It’s happening and happening and there’s nothing you can do about it. Time will make you happy and sad and every emotion you’ll ever feel, and that - right there - is why we want to control it. Because if we could only control time then we could feel those feelings we once felt or know the things that could stop us from feeling a certain way in the future. We’re so obsessed with our feelings that we want to control time, all of the time, all of the time. Imagine that.

But I didn’t write this to lecture you with Dr. Seuss-sounding definitions and discussions about emotions. I promised you a time machine, damn it. I need to deliver!

So yes, I can help you build a time machine, I can help you reverse the flow of time. I can make that “irreversible succession” reversible. But there is one caveat.

My time machine only works in one direction, and that direction is backwards. That’s not a problem though, and here’s why:

The most common things that people say on their deathbeds start with this phrase. For example:

I wish I had spent more time with my loved ones…
I wish I had told people that I loved them more…
I wish I had lived my life authentically…
I wish I had seen the Browns win a Super Bowl…

While each of these things is depressing in their own unique way, they’re also very similar in what they represent. They’re reflective. They deal with and dwell on the past. Their past. Their feelings. Their emotions. The things they wish they had done.

These soon-to-be-dead folk don’t, very often, say things like this:

I wish I had seen my great great great great grandchildren…
I wish I had lived in the year 3,000…
I wish I had seen the sun explode…

These are all statements about the future. And while it’s true that many dying people express wishes about wanting to see their loved ones grow and flourish, or that “they had more time”, I do not think that these wishes are generally as strong as the reflective ones I listed above. Why?

Because wishes about the future are more like dreams. They’re something you have never experienced and never will. It’s nice to talk about them, but it’s another thing to live them. On the other hand, wishing you had lived your life more authentically is a much deeper wish. Because you actually lived your life, and you know firsthand how you lived it. You may not have lived it authentically, but you lived it. It’s visceral and enduring.

So that’s why I don’t think it’s an issue that my time machine only goes backwards. Because backwards is somewhere we’ve actually been. The rest is just a dream.

So how does it work, my time machine?

Does it use gems or wires or cars with weird doors?

Not quite.

It uses the greatest thing that the universe has ever created.

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Have you guessed it?

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..

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That’s right.

Music.

Music is the voice of the universe. It’s the sound of the wind in the trees, the birds and the bees, the lemonade springs where the hobo sings. It’s peace, harmony, violence, and discord. It has always been and probably always will be. In many ways, it’s the closest thing we have to a God.

It is also the key to unlocking time travel.

Music leaves a deep cognitive impact on us. It is the hand that sculpts the clay of our memories. It shapes our personal narratives and emotional states and ties us to specific times and places. And it doesn’t merely sculpt the clay. It helps us recover the art we once made.

But enough with the metaphors.

It’s no secret that music and memory are strongly interconnected. Who remembers the viral video that showed unresponsive seniors stricken with dementia suddenly “reanimating” when they heard their favorite songs? While a little outdated and uncomfortable to watch, these videos deeply influenced me, and they were likely what put me on the path toward building my first time machine.

So what is my time machine, and how did I build it?

My time machine is a playlist.

More specifically, it’s a playlist of songs.

It’s a playlist of the most impactful songs from every year of my life as far back as I can remember. Since 2017, it’s grown more consistently (thanks to Spotify Wrapped) but beyond that date the number of songs “in my time machine” dips. Many songs have no “assigned year”, but are included simply because I remember them leaving an impression on me at some point in my life - like when my family would belt “Salami!” during car rides (our version of “So Lonely” by The Police), or when my brother and I would dance to “Just The Two Of Us” from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me in our Sesame Street pajamas.

The two examples I just gave are extremely important, because they’re what distinguish a time machine from any old playlist. The songs in my time machine are tied to a visceral memory, moment, person, or place. They are, for all intents and purposes, those things. My time machine is not a “Liked Songs” playlist, it’s a curated compilation of time. And the best part is, anyone can make their own.

Do you remember the first song you danced to? What about the first song that made you cry? When you had your first kiss - was there a song playing? Is there a specific song that reminds you of the Summer of 2008? These are all great examples of building blocks for your time machine, and everyone’s will be beautifully different (except for the last one, which is “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay for every single person on Earth). When these building blocks are combined together, they create a soundtrack to your life (s/o Kid Cudi), something you can play at any moment to immediately be whisked away into the past. It’s an experience that may sound cheesy, but it really does work.

So.

That’s my time machine.

It’s deeply personal and deeply effective at transporting me back in time. I can play any song in my time machine and tell you the memory, moment, person, or place associated with it without a second thought. I can travel through time in the blink of an eye by simply pressing play. And so can you.

You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you?

I promised I’d teach you how to build a time machine, not spend all day talking about mine. So here’s how you can get started.

How To Build Your Time Machine

1. Prepare To Make A List

Building your time machine will take effort and organization. If either of those words make you wince, grow up. Nothing comes easy, especially building a time machine.

You’ve probably made lists before, so find the way that you do it most effectively and use that method. It could be handwritten, on a spreadsheet, in your notes app, whatever. Just make sure it’s easy for you to use and update. I use Google Sheets.

If done correctly, building your time machine is an ongoing process that will continue for the rest of your life (if you want it to), so it’s best to be organized from the onset.

2. Choose Your List’s Attributes

Attributes will help you organize your time machine and sort through it later. They can be as simple as the name of a song. Or they can be the name of the song, the artist, the year of your memory associated with said song, and a note about that memory. I personally like the game of trying to place everything in chronological order, so I write down the song title, the artist, and the year I think it was impactful in my life. You can think of these attributes as column titles in a spreadsheet, because they likely will be.

3. Compile Your List

This is the hardest part. It’s also the most important.

Begin by racking your brain. What’s the earliest song you remember hearing? Why do you remember that song? I guarantee there was a person, place, memory, or moment associated with it. What’s the next earliest after that? The next earliest? The next?

Move forward through time, writing down the songs as you go. Don’t do this while doing anything else. Give this activity your full attention. It demands it. It deserves it. You’re building a time machine after all.

Lean on resources when you can. If your music streaming service has a playlist of “Your Top Songs” each year, reference those playlists. Rummage through collections of your old iPods, CDs, tapes, and records. Try to remember the posters you hung on your wall as a kid. What was that song we always sang in the gym class locker room? Phone a friend. Text your parents. Think about birthdays, holidays, “firsts”, “lasts”, and all the moments you spent with people who are no longer here. Be sure to include every single song related to every single relationship you’ve ever been in ever, including breakup songs. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.

Write down all of the significant songs you can remember. It may be a jumbled stream-of-consciousness mess at first, and that’s fine. You can organize it later. Focus on remembering. Recall. Total Recall. Any good songs in that movie? Probably not.

This should be a fun activity. Potentially moving as well. Building your time machine can be just as emotional as using it, possibly even more. You’ll be surprised by what you can remember and how it makes you feel.

Also, don’t think that this list can or should be compiled in a single day. Sure, you may be able to scrounge together 40 or 50 songs to use as the initial building blocks for your time machine, but this process is an ongoing one. Know that and embrace it. Be ready to come back and add to it time and time again as you remember new things and are reminded of the past. This can and will happen often, sometimes when you least expect it, so train yourself to notice when it does. Did this cafe just play my grandpa’s favorite tune? Why was I so obsessed with this show’s soundtrack? Where do I remember hearing this song that just played on the radio? I had completely forgotten about it…

Dig and dig and dig for as long as you can until you’re too tired or emotional to continue. Once you reach this point, take a breath. Rest a few minutes and admire your work. That was pretty cool, wasn’t it? Well just wait. Here’s the fun part.

4. Build Your Time Machine

Your time machine can be built in many ways, and depends entirely on what you want it to look like and where, when, and how you want to use it.

For some of you, the simple list you just compiled will be good enough. Congrats! You just built a time machine without even knowing it. What’s next? Curing Tuberculosis?

For the rest of us, a list isn’t good enough. We want to be able to experience our time travel - we want to listen to the music. There are several options for this.

The easiest is to make a playlist on a music streaming platform. This could be Spotify or Apple Music or TIDAL or Napster (yes, it still exists).

Again, this is the easiest option (and the one I’ve relied on thus far), but it has two fatal flaws. First, your time machine becomes reliant on the whims and idiosyncrasies of artists and Big Tech. What if Apple Music doesn’t have the song you’re looking for? What if musicians get pissed at Spotify again and performatively remove their songs from the platform? What if the song has never been commercialized and doesn’t exist on streamers?

That’s where a tool like YouTube comes in handy. Neil Young gets mad at YouTube? Who cares - Jimmy from down the block uploaded his entire discography 15 years ago. Spotify doesn’t have the alt version of a song you’re looking for? YouTube probably will. The music you want to include doesn’t exist online? Record it and upload it yourself. Then your music video playlist can be your time machine. Be warned though - you’ll want to find a method for avoiding all of Google’s ads. They’ll interrupt the experience and, eventually, drive you mad.

Of course, there is a better option - one that’s expensive and time-consuming and, dare I say, old-fashioned (*GASP*) But it’s also more experiential and allows you to build a time machine that doesn’t rely on the internet to work. After all, the internet could be dead soon. It may already be.

I’m talking of course about buying music and storing it on devices. Paying for the components of your time machine and owning it all yourself. You could buy the songs on iTunes and sync the playlist to your phone. You could rip the songs from old CDs and burn them onto new ones. Hell, you could steal the songs online, pay thousands of dollars for a cutting lathe, and make your own vinyl records. I’m not here to be your moral compass, I’m here to tell you what’s possible.

Eventually, I want my time machine to look like the old Maxell cassette tape commercial - a room with a comfortable chair and a sound system so loud that it blows me backward. Except instead of Maxell cassette tapes, my time machine will be on CDs organized by decade.

For now, mine is a playlist on Spotify.

You can see it if you want, but it won’t mean much to you. This is my time machine, not yours. It’s written in my language, you’ll never understand it unless I explain it to you - and while that’s a very fun way to connect with someone, it’s not why we’re here today. Let’s build your time machine!

Begin by adding all of the songs from your curated list to a playable playlist in chronological order (oldest songs first). Don’t worry, you can always rearrange it later, but I think starting with some order allows you to more easily travel to a specific moment in time. Want to hear that song you loved from Harry Potter 2? It’ll be in between the ones that you loved from Harry Potter 1 and 3. It’s good to know where these songs are relative to the others, at least to start. Besides, you can always hit “shuffle”.

I find it’s easiest to add songs to your time machine at the end of the year when you’re reflecting back over everything that happened in the past 365 days. The number of songs you add to your time machine can vary greatly from year to year. Some years a lot of big things happen and you form a lot of deep memories, many of which have memories, people, places, or events associated with them. Other years, nothing really crazy happens, so you may only have a few songs that remind you of that time in your life or a trip you took. When reflecting, the significant events should jump out at you without much work, and so should the songs. But if you have a bad memory like me, it may take a little jogging.

Once all of the songs have been added to your time machine playlist, CDs, or pirated vinyls, you can turn it on and fire it up. Get ready for the journey of a lifetime. Literally. Put your affairs in order, kiss your loved ones goodbye, and always, always, leave a note. Let’s do this.

5. Travel Back In Time

While the decision to travel back in time is usually always intentional, your destination or desired outcome doesn’t have to be.

If you feel like crying today, go to your time machine and play songs that made you cry in the past. If you feel like being nostalgic today, play songs that vividly remind you of a time, person, or place so strongly that you can close your eyes and feel like you’re there all over again. If you feel like diving headfirst into the past with no regard for what may happen, hit shuffle.

Personally, I think that the effects of the time machine are best felt when “using it” is the main thing you’re doing, or at the very least one a small few “main things” drawing your attention. You know when you listen to music and then when you really listen to music? You should always try to make your time machine experience the latter. It should be actively listened to, like it’s a person you’re in a conversation with. In a way it sort of is. It’s someone speaking to you from the past, and that someone is you.

So there you have it. There’s your time machine.

You did it.

Now you can travel through time whenever you want.

But please, a word of advice.

Use it sparingly.

There is a major risk with this sort of time travel.

What is it?

Apathy.

The more you use your time machine, the more you get used to it. The more we get used to something, the less special it feels. The less special something feels, the less we care about it. And I want you to care about your time machine. You will want you to care about your time machine. We want our time machine to feel novel and meaningful every time we use it. Here’s how we can do that.

Never let the time machine become something you use every day. Fight the urge to listen to this playlist too often, or you’ll get sick of it. People get sick of songs all the time. Heck, at one time you were probably sick of most of the songs that make up your time machine. Obviously, that goes away with time, but why tempt fate? Always remember that the past is still in the past, you’re just visiting. As Alfredo, the wise projectionist from my favorite film Cinema Paradiso once advised:

Non ti fare fottere dalla nostalgia.

Don’t give in to nostalgia.

Dive in for quick dips to the past, then get out and dry yourself off. Make plans to jump back in tomorrow. Or next week. Or maybe only once a month. Whatever feels right for you. But not too often.

Don’t spend too much time in the past. This isn’t The Butterfly Effect, you can’t change anything there to effect the future. You can only observe and remember and ruminate. Don’t dwell. Visit. Enjoy. Then gracefully exit. Using the time machine should never make you feel so sad or nostalgic or anything that you can’t wipe away that emotion after you stop using it. Be kind to yourself and be smart. Don’t depress yourself with memories.

Time travel, like most experiences, is best when shared with other people. Listen to your playlist with others, especially people who were there for some of the associated memories (or are, themselves, the memories). Share with them what the songs remind you of and why, it’ll make the experience more fun and it’ll bring you closer to one another. Encourage them to make their own time machines and share them with you.

If there’s one feature I wish music streaming platforms had, it would be “Notes”. Areas where you could write little notes next to each song in the playlists you make. Imagine how cool it would be to use a friend’s time machine and understand why each song is included in it, even if the person’s not there to explain it to you. That would be wonderful (and make it a lot easier to explain why my time machine has so many Mamma Mia! songs). Maybe in the future this will be a reality, but for now “notes” is just another column on my spreadsheet.

I don’t really know how to wrap this up. This post has taken me several days and at least 8 hours to write and feels deeply personal and very different from anything else I’ve ever made. I know some people will find it weird or corny, but I know that others will really enjoy it. If you’re one of those people, all I ask is that you take the time to build your own time machine. You’ll love the experience and the result. If you do make one, let me know. I’d love to take it for a spin.

Most importantly, have fun using your time machine. Be grateful that we live in a time that allows us to make and use something as awesome as this. Never forget that what we consider to be a simple playlist would be thought of as magic by 99.9% of people who ever lived. The tale of humanity is a story of love and sadness advancing ever forward. Take a moment to break away from its incessant surge to stop and look back at the past. Cherish it. Hear it. Live it. It’s all that we know. Truthfully, it’s all we ever will.

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