Square- Original Music Video

This is my latest music video for an original song that I wrote called Square, available on my SoundCloud here.

Story:

I wrote this song while I was unemployed in late 2021. I had been working to the point of burnout throughout the pandemic as a essential worker at a grocery store, and the company shut down our location the week before the federal extra unemployment money stopped being included in people’s checks.

I decided I was done working in the food industry and told myself that I would only accept a job that was paying above a certain threshold, and that it had to be something outside of the food service industry. I had loved working in kitchens when I first started, but cooking for a living had drained me of my passion for what had been one of my favorite hobbies. Fortunately, I was able to find a job that met these requirements I’d set myself thanks to a friend who I’ve known for more than ten years who worked at my current company. Much of this video was shot at this office, which has since relocated, so I’m not giving away any corporate secrets by posting this footage now.

At the end of the video, I shout out a quote I often tag at the end of the song when performing it. The quote is from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents. In the story, written in 1998, the main character Olamina navigates the hellscape of 2024 America where a candidate running on the slogan “Make America Great Again” institutes a christofascist regime of terror. Disillusioned with Christianity, Olamina founds her own religion called Earthseed, who’s manta is:

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you. The only Lasting Truth is Change. God is Change.”

I’ve always thought it serendipitous that I actually read the Parables shortly after writing this song. A lot of people find it spooky how many details Butler’s dystopia gets right, but it felt doubly spooky that I’d written something shortly before encountering these books that so closely resembled some of the books’ main themes. It felt as though she’d reached right into my anxieties and written a book for me. I fear she says it much better than I can, but the least I can do is shout it out at the end of my live performances of Square in hopes someone might pick up her work.

Lyrics:

I've lived my life inside of
Right angles
Beneath florescent lights at work tables
I used to buy
Right into some Old fables about the
Right way to be
I bummed a square on a
Street corner it was
Ninety degrees and
getting warmer and it's
Shaping up to be a
longer summer than it has any
Right to be
I know I'm worth something
And I can Work for it
But it's wearing me out
and I feel worse for it
Did anyone here ever get a square deal
Who gives a f*** anyway how a square feels
You get a thing square and then it rearranges
Everything changes
You have the
Right to remain silent if you're all
Right with some state violence or the Alt-
Right defining science but that don't seem
Right to me
So what's the point of just
Checking boxes
Cashing Checks
Stacking blocks
Although I'll admit I'm at a loss for another way to be
The people you love sometimes become strangers
everything changes