By E.W. Harris
For the Salisbury Post
My name is Eric Harris. I am a 27 year old writer, musician, and self-styled philosopher. I have a B.A. in Comparative Literature, virtually no money, and I am moving to Salisbury.
What?! That can’t be! Young people go to big cities to make money, or to hipster places like Asheville and Athens to cast third party votes and complain. I assure you, though, that moving to Salisbury is my plan.
There are many reasons for someone like me to move to Salisbury; not least of them is its aspiration to become a “City of the Arts.”
I must shamefully admit my primary draw to Salisbury is economic. That may seem as strange as relocating, but look at it from my perspective. I am looking down the barrel of 30 and many things are sweeping in and out of my mind that had never crossed it before.
I work at a coffee shop, write music, pontificate on art and literature with my friends, and my girlfriend is a wonderful painter. Sounds great doesn’t it? Here’s the rub. I live in Athens, GA (a town rampant with poverty), I make $6.50 an hour, college kids from rich families underbid me for gigs, I live in a little house with four other people, and that (the only place I can afford to rent) is 30 minutes outside of town.
What if I want to get married? Start a family? Get health insurance? Not likely.
Salisbury, however, is an established community with a stable population and has a desire to become a “City of the Arts.” I don’t know about you, but this gets my entrepreneurial juices flowing.
Blame my liberal education or my dad, but regardless I’ve got some big ideas. Perhaps I’ll resuscitate my indie record label, or begin a forum where writers exchange ideas and criticism. The message I am receiving is that Salisbury is a place that doesn’t now, but wants to, support these kinds of ventures.
I am old enough now to know where to place a good bet, and young enough to take the risk. Economically, for someone like me, Salisbury seems like a good bet and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
An unexpected advantage of, and likewise another draw to, Salisbury is its geography. I don’t really like big cities for the most part and the parts I do like I could never afford to live in. As a musician, though, big cities are your bread and butter.
As an Athenian I often had to travel to Atlanta for these types of opportunities. The problem is Atlanta is a nearly 90-minute drive. This is not to mention the nearly insurmountable moat of suburban traffic and bad urban planning.
In Salisbury, though if I need some wallpaper gigs at a ritzy hotel I don’t have to spend 60 bucks in gas (in addition to the cost of anxiety medication). I just drive 40 minutes down the road to the Queen City. For touring Salisbury is also strategically positioned in the Southeast, and is within a day’s drive of dozens of music hotspots.
The other thing is the weather. Maybe it is due to my Midwestern origins, but even after 10 years Georgia is too hot. I really don’t want to go anywhere I have to shovel snow again, but I am tired of spending summers under an invisible wet blanket.
Salisbury just feels like a place I’d like to be. I don’t know about my fellows, but I for one feel it is time for less “going” and more “building.”
Florence wasn’t the shining light of the Renaissance because people went off to Rome; its artistic growth was independent. It was this independence, too, that irrevocably binds the name Florence to the arts and still attracts artists and thinkers from far and wide.
I think Salisbury can and will possess this magnetic effect. I think that it will attract artists young and old and retain the ones it has. In doing this, I don’t think Salisbury will become the retirement community so many small towns have, and it will become the envy of its close and distant neighbors.
Call me what you will, but I think a change is coming in Salisbury and a chance for people like me to do something substantial. I just want to get in on it.
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Musician and Salisbury newcomer Eric W. Harris is facility manager for The Looking Glass Artist Collective of Salisbury, Inc. Contact him at ericharrisgroup@hotmail.com.