Music box

A music box in a dream is the dream's image of a single piece of the past held inside a machine, waiting to be released. The tune does not change; the box knows one thing and plays it whenever the lid is lifted. The dream brings the music box when something old in your life — a memory of a person, a fragment of childhood, a love long ended — is being lifted out of storage and played, exactly as it was, in a present that has otherwise moved on. A music box opened gently and closed again is the dream affirming that the visit to the kept thing was right and did not have to last. A music box wound and left playing alone in an empty room is the dream noting that the past is now performing without an audience and is using time the present needed.