Cages

Comfort is such a pretty prison.

It's strange to admit how often I find myself inside cages I never noticed being built.

They don't feel like traps at first.

They feel like care.

Like love.

Like comfort, even safety.

I rarely walk into them afraid.

I step in willingly.

That’s the trick.

The softest traps never look like traps at all.

This week, I noticed cages everywhere: in my life, in others, in art, even at national scales.

And though I can’t pretend I’m outside it (I'm not), noticing feels like a start.

Comfort and Beauty as Cage

I see it clearest in the quiet moments.

Good food.

Soft lights.

Calm spaces.

Convenience disguised as care.

Safety that feels like peace.

But beneath these comforts are subtle conditions.

Dependencies that dull me just enough to stay put.

Not trapped exactly, just... comfortable enough.

Beauty works similarly.

It promises recognition, value, worth.

But beauty thrives most when standardized because that makes it monetizable.

The ideal beauty is carefully positioned: just distant enough that we chase it; just close enough to feel attainable.

Today, the prevailing look is tall, symmetrical, slightly unconventional.

Features exaggerated enough to be memorable yet still strangely unattainable.

This look is not accidental; it is curated by powerful institutions that profit from our endless pursuit.

Institutions like LVMH, Meta, or fashion conglomerates don't simply maintain these structures; they thrive on our quiet acceptance and obedience.

They favor subjects with two key traits: a deep desire to succeed at any cost (trainability) and enough insecurity to keep trying (potential).

A friend once joked, "Abs are for the poor." He meant that visible signs of discipline and effort become unnecessary when power is secured.

The powerful transcend survival signals like muscular physiques or flashy signs of wealth.

Elegance, at that level, is about subtlety, the luxury of not needing to visibly try.

But I don't reject beauty outright.

I love beauty, the difficult kind.

The kind that survives harsh conditions.

Like the rose: roots gripping rough soil, protected by sharp thorns.

It blooms unapologetically, boldly beautiful.

Its elegance is earned, not given.

That's the beauty I trust, not standardized or profitable, but resilient and real.

Gamified Violence

At a larger scale, cages become rules, games, and scores.

Nations excel at this, turning serious, complex realities into structured simplicity.

Recently, in the Ukraine war, I saw a disturbing example.

Drone squadrons began using a scoring system to gamify attacks:

• Rocket system destroyed: 50 points

• Tank destroyed: 40 points

• Soldier killed: 6 points (previously just 2)

When the point value for soldiers increased, successful drone strikes on individuals doubled.

Gamification made killing clearer, simpler, quantifiable.

And clarity made violence easier.

Morality was replaced by mathematics.

At first, points felt absurd.


Then I remembered every like I've ever chased, every follower I've courted, and wondered how far am I willing to go without realising?

This logic isn't confined to warfare.

We see it everywhere: sales targets, social media metrics, likes and follows.

When winning is clearly defined, morality quietly fades into the background.

People play the game without questioning who wrote the rules.

I find myself uncomfortable with how familiar this feels.

Not because cages exist, but because of how naturally we accept them.

Language as a Cage

If comfort and violence are cages, language might be the most subtle one of all.

Language doesn't just convey meaning; it shapes reality.

It decides who belongs and who doesn't.

A joke tells you your social place, a subtle silence signals exclusion.

English is my cage, and it's comfortable enough.

I argue, charm, and express easily within it.

But when I encounter people fluent in other languages, I sense my limitations.

They think differently.

They love differently.

It's like noticing a wall you didn't know existed only when someone else walks straight through it.

Sophie Calle illustrated this beautifully in Take Care of Yourself.

She asked 107 women to interpret the same breakup letter, and each reading fractured meaning into something unique and personal.

Before language, I loved movement.

I still do, it’s so pure.

Dance doesn’t lie or hide meanings behind semantics.

You’re either connected or not, honest and direct.

The deepest relationships I've experienced weren’t fluent in my language.

Words failed, forcing us to rely on gestures, pauses, and looks.

Without words, we stopped trying to win conversations and started genuinely trying to understand each other.

Language remains my favorite cage.

It connects and confines in equal measure.

The Garden and The Gardener

Life is a curated garden, not wild, not random, carefully maintained.

Even forests carry marks of those who came before: fallen trees, old fires, manipulated soil.

Society works similarly.

We imagine our freedom, but beneath it lie gardeners shaping the landscape: capital, ideology, algorithms.

These forces quietly decide which plants bloom, which get pruned, and which remain hidden from sunlight.

Artists like Hans Haacke and Ai Weiwei explored these same forces.

Haacke exposed hidden power through property records, revealing invisible hands shaping cities.

Weiwei's Gilded Cage showed that luxury is still confinement, perhaps the most seductive cage of all.

I often wonder where I belong in this garden.

Am I blooming where I’m allowed, or fighting quietly for a glimpse of sunlight?

Maybe simply surviving through winter is enough, nourishing those beside me, quietly resilient.

Attachment as Cage

Love, too, forms its own cage.

Louise Bourgeois captured this paradox with her spider sculpture, Maman, a web that both protects and ensnares.

When love leaves, it takes its structure: daily routines, habits, and comforts.

We mourn not just the loss of a person but the loss of the cage they built around us.

And in the emptiness, something else rushes in, often more dangerous, disguised as comfort or distraction.

We replace one cage with another.

I love Performance artist Tehching Hsieh exploration of this.

He lived inside a literal cage for a year, the hardest part of which was eventually leaving it.

Without a cage, freedom can feel unbearable.

Ashley Hunt similarly photographed prisons hidden in plain sight, structures of trauma and support that linger long after physical release.

Often, cages become safer than freedom itself.

Between the Bars

I'm not sure I fully want freedom.

When I break out of one cage, I instinctively build another.

I crave the safety of structures as much as I resent them.

But awareness changes things.

I no longer dream of a blank slate without rules.

Instead, I dream of becoming like the rose, blooming between bars, aware of my constraints but not defined by them.

Not entirely free.

Not entirely captive.

But alive, negotiating, growing quietly between the bars.

You can't escape a cage if you pretend you chose it.

We are all victims of our cages.

Understanding how we may be free, and others may still be in chains, can quickly get us to the feeling of gratitude in what can otherwise be a difficult life.

New stuff to look at coming out on Thursday.

Be kind, be free.

I love you loads.

Russ

x

Poets Corner

Love From The Cage

If freedom is all that you want,
There is freedom in the cage.
If comfort is all that you crave,
There is comfort in the cage.
When love is all that we need,
There is love in the cage.
What is love?
This holy war.

What is love?
I’ve never been here before.
What is love?
This iron gate,
Keeping us locked up
From all that we hate.

- Thomas May

Final words

“There is no spoon”

- Child in 90s film

If you remember what film this is or like what I’m doing, reply and let me know.

Being an artist is, at its best, a lonely cage to build.

Knock on the window and say hi.

Nothing but love

x