Nampa, Idaho - November 15, 2026 - Imagine standing backstage awaiting your introduction—the one you helped craft, highlighting that what you have to offer is based on natural talent honed by acquired skills and tens of thousands of hours practicing and preparing for moments like these. Just as your name is called, the stage manager pulls the curtain back and waves you on. Your mouth is dry; your hands feel like 15-pound dumbbells. The bright lights temporarily blind you, separating your mind from your body, making you walk toward the center of the stage using muscle memory alone. But as soon as your bearings return, and as your eyes make peace with the glare, you’re shocked by what you see. No one is sitting in the audience! Presumably, they’ve all lost their minds, having left their seats to gather on stage. By the sheer number of delusional wannabes vying for applause that won’t ever come, the talented few who actually offer meaningful content are driven into the background, where their remarkable gifts remain largely unnoticed.
But who among us is qualified to deem what is and isn’t talent? By all accounts, isn’t talent, like beauty, subjective? I have an answer to that dilemma, which, once again, requires your imagination. Picture a man walking into a crowded café carrying a small paper bag. He approaches an empty table and removes a shiny red apple from the bag. He places it in the center of the table and steps back, avoiding eye contact with those around him who find his actions unsettling. Next, the man walks up to a woman perusing a nearby rack of postcards and asks her if she can identify what’s on top of the table he’s pointing at. “An apple,” she replies, giving him the side-eye before skuttling away, clutching her purse. He poses the same question to 11 more people, including a barista who stood on his tippy toes to see over the hulking espresso machine, an older gentleman sitting at a table along the railing upstairs in the mezzanine, and a couple of teenagers outside on the sidewalk who could see into the café through open windows. No matter where they were, as long as they could see the surface of the table, they all identified the same thing—a shiny red apple.
The point of the story is that real talent is recognized as such by anyone who encounters it. Real talent spans socio-economic, political, educational, racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious barriers, as well as a host of other chasms that further divide our species. It’s both unmistakable and worthy of our time—and praises, too. I believe everyone can agree that the late Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney Houston were (and still are) captivating to watch and listen to—or that Vin Scully could lull us into a love affair with baseball while calling Dodger games for 67 seasons? Who, with a straight face, could say Jim Carrey isn’t a comedy genius—or that Ernest Hemingway couldn’t turn your mind into a cinematic adventure? I wonder if these and other talented icons would’ve even surfaced had digital media been introduced earlier. Given the rampant self-aggrandizement saturating social media and the internet in general, I highly doubt it.
At the same time, I also wonder about the talented people I’ll never get to experience—the ones systematically shut down, shouted over, and buried by the blur of agendized mainstream and social media dominating every pixel of every screen. But that wasn’t the case two weeks ago when I attended a homecoming concert at a local university, featuring a symphony orchestra, various ensembles, and a choir. Although still quite young, the performing students were loaded with enough talent to move me to write to their music director, who promptly emailed me back the very same day. In it, I expressed my deep appreciation for what he and his staff had accomplished; in turn, he thanked me and said he’d share my sentiments with everyone involved in the production. That’s really what any true artist wants—to be recognized for the natural talent they’ve cultivated, refined, and sacrificed for in order to present their finest gift to the world.
I don’t
know how many times I’ve heard, “Such and such is a lost art” or “Nobody puts
in the time anymore.” But the truth is that real talent has always been
with us; now it’s simply fossilized under mountains of photos and videos from
hundreds of millions of attention-seeking people who think their unremarkable
lives, inane commentary, and talentless contributions are worthy of the
spotlight.
-Chuck Trunks
“This work was written independently by the author without the use of generative AI.”
Trunks Art moved from Columbia, South Carolina, to Nampa, Idaho, in 2025 and has made this city his home and writing inspiration.
To see more of my work, please have a look at more posts or email me at chucktrunks@gmail.com. Or, visit my website at www.trunksart.com. Also, you can find me on Instagram (chucktrunks) and Facebook (Chuck Trunks).









