Cages

by George Genovese

---

We’re all caught in the cages of our belief and each belief must not only exclude its negation but also countless possibilities deemed inconsistent with that belief. Each belief then is a lifetime’s arrangement of sturdy bars we set around us as reliable markers, boundaries, by which to frame our view of the world; for that is what we most crave, the palpability of what we believe, and there is nothing more palpable than the bars we unavoidably bang our heads against.

In this arrangement what is excluded or denied merges with the blank spaces of non-belief, for which reason, it’s what we don’t believe and will not countenance – the interstices we cannot see – that occasion the visibility of our bars and what suggests itself between them.

It’s remarkable how others can see through a particular believer’s belief in a way in which that believer cannot because those others stand in a region of possibility excluded from that belief. What one believer assumes as the natural order of things someone outside those beliefs sees for their contingency, which must be so, for just as non-belief allows those captive in their cages the interstices to look beyond them, the very same spaces allow another to look in.

---

George Genovese has published five volumes of poetry, one with the assistance of the Council of Adult Education and the remainder with Ginninderra Press. He has collaborated extensively with Australian Composer Lawrence Whiffin on projects setting his poetry to Whiffin’s inventive and colorful music. In 2010, Whiffin composed a song cycle based on Genovese’s Time Steals Softer for accomplished bass singer, Jerzy Kozlowski and virtuoso pianist Michael Kieran Harvey which was performed by the Astra Chamber Musical Ensemble under the direction of John McCaughey. He has contributed lyrics to two CD releases by Mario Genovese and is currently engaged with him on another collection of songs and poetry set to music. He has written for The Age and Independent Australia.

Read More