The musicians were so close I could see beads of sweat on their foreheads. The intricate pattern on the cowboy boots of the steel guitarist caught my eye. We had a clear view of the set list, a piece of paper taped to the stage. As the band situated plugs and amps, I looked at the sign hanging on the back wall which said “The Grey Eagle.” The spelling of “grey” (more of a British spelling) piqued my interest. Later, I looked it up. The original venue location was in Black Mountain, which was historically called Grey Eagle after a nearby rock outcropping.
With the first note, the venue erupted with sound and energy. The band, called Fruition, jammed out for the next two hours and during that time, I was reminded of the power of live music. Later, walking back to our car, we wound through the streets of the River Arts District and talked about the progress made since Hurricane Helene in 2024.
Before the show, we ate dinner at All Souls Pizza, the former Silver Dollar Diner where my dad took me as a little girl in the 1980s. At the restaurant, we watched two skilled employees manage the wood-fire oven, knowing precisely when to add more wood, move the pizzas around and pull them out. The texture and flavor of the leeks on our pizza and bibb lettuce on our salad told me they were locally sourced. The crispness of the crust was textbook. “Dinner and a show” in an understatement to the aliveness I felt that evening.
The following night we attended Haywood County’s longstanding rivalry football game between Tuscola and Pisgah. Canton was the home team this year, and an hour before kickoff, it was standing room only at Pisgah Memorial Stadium. There are high school football players and cheerleaders doing their thing all over the country on Friday nights, but I would put our county clash up against anyone as the most exciting. The heartbeat of that stadium was palpable.
My lifelong best friend and I met for lunch at Haywood Common in West Asheville on Sunday. The hour and half flew by in a flash as we caught up on one another’s lives and reminisced about memories and people we both know. Similar to All Souls Pizza, the food at Haywood Common is locally sourced, and our palettes could tell. How blessed we are to live in a region that honors growers and farmers.
After lunch, I went to Malaprop’s Bookstore in downtown Asheville to purchase a copy of “Lord of the Flies.” My younger son is reading it in his English class, and I’m reading it along with him. Pushing the doors open, the place was bustling. Every table in the cafe was full. Patrons filled the aisles, flipping through books or reading spines to find a particular title. I remember Haywood Common and Malaprop’s being closed during the extended water outage after Hurricane Helene. It makes me happy to see them both thriving.
Later that day, I read my children’s book, “The Jolt Felt Around the World,” to a group of fifth-graders at Waynesville’s First United Methodist Church’s Clean and Green program. All of the kids were engaged, asked deep questions, and offered insights. After the book reading, they decorated reusable shopping bags to take home to their families.
They say robots are taking over, but I have a four-day window that tells me otherwise, and this is simply a snapshot of my life as a whole. The above list of recent activities doesn’t even include the cross-county meet I attended last week. A competitive cross meet is another place where passion, grit, and pain mix into an elixir of exhausting yet satisfying gratification.
No robot has fingers that move across a keyboard with grace. No robot can eye melted cheese and crust to know exactly when to pull it from an oven. Even if one could, it wouldn’t sense the satisfaction of watching a customer’s face after that first bite, eyes closed with palatable ecstasy. Can a robot feel the triumph of scoring a touchdown or the adrenaline of a big win? Can they mimic the electricity of a high school football stadium under Friday night lights? Can robots appreciate hours in a local bookstore, perusing shelves and drinking lattes, or walk the rows of a community garden and delight in harvesting hard-earned produce? Can they sit in front of 15 fifth-graders and enjoy the humor and unique intellect that comes from that specific age, or imitate the stampeding sound of cross-country runners coming around a bend in the woods? Does a robot have curiosity that makes them ponder the spelling of a word, or the heartache when remembering the aftermath of a hurricane?
Maybe artificial intelligence can perform functions, but it’ll never process the emotion behind the experience, and it’s the emotion that brings meaning. I feel the shift that’s happening. Don’t you? People are sick of the flat, one-dimensional “pleasure” that comes from looking at a screen or automating a task. People are out in the world again, craving connection and meaning. We have so much potential and one beautiful life to max it out. What are you waiting for?
(Susanna Shetley is a writer and editor who lives in Haywood County. susanna.shetley@gmail.com.)