The Future Ain't What It Used to Be

By Will Shine

---

After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the music to load.

---

'The Future Ain't What It Used to Be' 
​
I slipped and fell into the ocean
And a big fish swallowed me
But then he spit me up and swam away in great disgust
And said, 'The taste ain't what it used to be.'

I went and saw a fortune teller
Asked her if I'd ever grow old
Well, she looked back at me and explained, despite the fee,
'Those weren't the kind of fortunes that you're told, no.'

Can't you see, can't you see?
This ain't the way it was meant to be
Read the book, ask your folks, consult the prophets of old
The sky is falling down, the whole world is upside-down
Yeah, the future ain't what it used to be
Oh, the future ain't what it used to be

They say the times they are a'changin'
Yet they seem to stay the same
Don't see the point in rearrangin'
If everything is going up in flames

Can't you see, can't you see?
This ain't the way it was meant to be
Read the book, ask your folks, consult the prophets of old
The end is drawing near, we have everything to fear
Yeah, the future ain't what it used to be
Oh, the future ain't what it used to be
​Yes, the future ain't what it used to be

---

Below is an excerpt from a conversation between Will Shine (WS) and Josh Seligman (JS), editor of Foreshadow, about Will's music and work.

JS: What inspired you to write the song?

WS: I wrote it while I was a student at Fuller [Theological Seminary]. In fact, I wrote it as the summation project for a theology and culture class.

I loved talking to you about it the other day because you heard something different in it, which is great because hopefully, that's not to pat myself on the back, but that means it functions in a properly artistic capacity, that it was multireferent, it has hermeneutical potential, meaning it could be interpreted in different ways, and that's great.
​
As I wrote it, in my mind, it’s really around a lyric. And it’s a playful musical setting. It has a very  playful Lyle Lovett kind of vibe -- a folksy, country-rock kind of a shuffle. I’m really an instrumentalist first, I think in my mind at least, and then definitely a lyricist and all that stuff second. So I’m imagining textures and stuff to help carry this message, and that’s what came to mind, this whimsical tune with a lot of conventional trappings, harmonically speaking, to get into the weeds musically there for a moment.

But in terms of lyric, it’s a satire piece entirely for me. It’s sung from the first-person perspective of someone whose really entrenched doctrinal stances, their belief systems, are uprooted when the future ain’t what it used to be, when all of their senses of what were supposed to happen or come to fruition, or the experiences that they thought they could bank on and what they thought was true -- it’s not what it was supposed to be. It didn’t work out that way.

In part I had in mind Harold Camping, who ran billboards around the country, and we had him in San Diego when we were finishing college, about predicting the end of the world and the date, and it just wasn’t that, you know what I mean? It was so ridiculous. And the guy made tons of money off of people who fell or that and were convinced that this was what was true and so divested themselves because the naysayers, the prognosticators of doom had spoken and this was what was true.

I’m thinking of the series the HBO series The Leftovers for a media relationship, a great series that kind of deals with this too.

But yeah, it’s just to satire that, to spoof that, the disappointment that comes when you realise fortune tellers really aren’t actually telling you your fortune, and prophecies that you thought meant one thing really don’t mean that thing, and they don’t even want to play anymore with you, the whale spits the guy out.

JS: I really like that line. It starts out with that line. Jonah comes to mind, and then it’s the joke, ‘The taste ain’t what it used to be.’ So these people that you think are prophets, they’re not the real thing. On one hand, heaven and earth -- God’s glory fills it all. And yet on the other hand, we’re still in this fallen world, and there are prophets that often don’t speak on behalf of God. There are prophets that, whether it’s intentional or not, they are false prophets. They don’t speak the truth.

WS: I think nobody really has the corner on the truth. I think that’s part of the suggestion. The person in the song, their world is ending because the way they thought it was supposed to go isn’t what’s actually happening, so now the world really is ending. And I think that’s part of the thing that evades prophecy and people when they think about prophecy. People think prophecy is about in general predicting the future, and that’s not really what prophecy is. It’s really about addressing the present, I think. In the biblical prophetic tradition, it’s about really addressing what’s happening right now. Clairvoyance is about the future. Maybe it’s just semantics. I think prophecy is about really dealing with the present. And a truly prophetic voice helps bring us somewhere into the future by giving us a better sense of what is presently going on. Again, the person in the song, their false notion of what prophecy is, is foiled, and now their world, from their vantage point, is falling apart. They cannot reconcile the fact that the things that they thought should be happening, or would happen, are not.

JS: This connects back with what we were saying earlier about how we become who or what we worship. Maybe these false prophets are worshiping a false future, so when that doesn’t come, they come crashing down.
​
As the editor of Foreshadow, I see our work as prophetic in the sense that, in our worship of God, we see a vision of a union between the future and the present, a union between heaven and earth, a union between God’s future and the present that we live in. And in that union, that changes how we live and how we operate in this world today. 

Stay tuned for an upcoming interview exploring Will's music and work.

---

Will Shine is a musician, thinker and friend. He holds a Bachelors in Music from Point Loma Nazarene University and an MA in Theology and the Arts from Fuller Theological Seminary, California. You can learn more about his work at www.itswillshine.com.