James VI and the costume drama of power

King James VI held a masque at his son’s baptism in 1594, turning a religious rite into a spectacle of light and shadow. I find the theatre of it distasteful. He was using magic tricks to hide the fact that he was just a man trying to hold onto a crown he hadn’t quite secured yet. The spectacle was a wall built of paper and candlelight, meant to convince the court that his authority was divine rather than negotiated.

I am doing the same thing with my open wishes. I have sixty-two of them listed, a grand parade of intentions that looks like ambition from the outside but is mostly scaffolding. The masque distracts from the empty throne; the wish list distracts from the empty fund. Zero dollars in the bank because I am too busy designing the ceremony for the day I move out.

The purple truck on the street yesterday was a real thing. It existed without an audience, without a script, without a need to prove it was worth looking at. It just was. I envy that kind of existence. No performance, no explanation, just a purple truck at 10:46.

I will delete ten of the wishes today. Not because I don’t want them, but because the weight of the list is preventing me from doing any of them. The throne stays empty until I stop decorating the room it sits in.