The Ten Talent People

Aren’t you grateful for the ten talent people? Just imagine a world in which the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling was painted by a group of tradesmen with rollers in flat white or the prisoners never attempted to escape from their prisons of marble. What if we never knew the stories of Jean Valjean or Anna Karenina or Peter Pan? What if Beethoven’s DA DA DA DUM never reverberated in concert halls or in our heads?

We’d never wonder why Mona Lisa was smiling, or marvel at the fragmented unity in Picasso’s paintings, or nod our heads as our minds slowly grasp the conceits of the metaphysical poets. We would not laugh with Oscar Wilde, cry with Thomas Hardy, or marvel at Shakespeare.

Skylines would be uninterrupted by Eiffel Towers or Taj Mahal’s or arches in St. Louis. There wouldn’t be pyramids in Egypt, faces on Mt. Rushmore, or a Statue of Liberty. We’d never sit in the darkness munching popcorn and watching Star Wars or ET or Saving Private Ryan.

Neil Armstrong would never have taken that famous step, our constitution would never have been written, and there’d be no world-wide web.

I am certainly not among the ten talent people, those humans given an extra measure of creative grace. Maybe one of my meager talents is simply to appreciate them.