Column

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Community

22 September 2023

8 min read

From the barber’s chair: what makes a whole community

Cutting hair during COVID taught Californian barber Adrian and long-time client Neal some lessons about relationships. A new column.

Adrian Urquidez and Neal Presa

Adrian Urquidez is a Californian barber and theologian Neal Presa is a regular client.

A barber stands between two clients, a father and son, a neon sign shines behind.

Adrian and the Presas.

This monthly column features reflections from two Americans: Adrian Urquidez, owner/barber of Cutman & Co, a Barbershop in Solana Beach, California, and Neal Presa, a longtime client who is a Presbyterian minister. Both Adrian and Neal have been friends for almost a decade.

Adrian

From being behind the barber's chair for 15 years now, I've learned so much about myself and others. From their life experiences as well as my own, when you put the two together, you have so much input to bring to the table.

At the start of 2020 I just resurfaced back into my workspace after taking a leave of absence. I was struggling with some alcohol issues, and I needed to step away from the chair to figure myself out and get the clarity I need to move on with my life. At the start of COVID, three months sober at the time the world shut down, I could no longer go to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings, I had to shelter-in-place and figure out how I was going to take care of my family. I applied to numerous jobs and had no luck. Finally, long time clients of mine began to text me saying “they need cuts”. That’s when the house calls began! Work began to flow in and before you know it word started to spread.

Going to people’s houses, cutting hair outside, masked up, I began to realize that no matter what the circumstance, people want to feel good, they want to look good and that's where I came in the picture. Outside of my everyday work I started going to school for alcohol and drug counseling. I enjoyed every second of it; it kept me in the world of recovery. So, with school and Zoom meetings I was able to stay strong and continue to be sober. I learned so much in those two years as my clients, who became my friends, helped keep me afloat financially and ZOOM helped me attend those AA meetings.

Looking back now, I see how important it was for me to go through COVID. I spent more time than ever with my family, understanding what I valued most and learned how important community is. I realized that the people I saw monthly were more than just clients; they were pretty much family. They cared about me, my family and my well-being, which helped me strive to be the best version of myself.

Almost four years sober, I opened my first barbershop, grew my family by one and now get to do what I love every day in a shop of my own. I get to talk to people each of those days and listen to their life adventures. Barbering has evolved so much, when you step in, the vibes are welcoming. At the shop it is more than just “getting a haircut.” You get a beverage of your choice and sit back and relax and enjoy your experience. For 45 minutes or so my ears are theirs and whatever the case may be, my clients/friends get to share about whatever is going on: personal lives, sports talk and just everyday issues we all struggle with. I love what I do, as it opened so many doors and gave me the opportunity to meet so many people - corporate CEOs, professional athletes, doctors, military personnel, fathers, mothers and kids..

At the end of the day, barbering has changed my life, and I can honestly say that I helped change the lives of others and myself by being vulnerable, personable and just really being present in my everyday life.

Neal

The old saying “misery loves company” is true in so many ways. On the difficult journey of life, trying to figure out the twists and turns of what makes it both beautiful and gratifying – and the same time a source of frustration, anguish, and all the mixed emotions of what it means to be human, we need companions along the way. We are human and we can’t do life alone. It’s miserable to do so, and we need neighbors and strangers alike to share in our joys, to comfort and commiserate with when the going gets rough, and to learn from one another.

As with any company we keep - whether it be family, friendships, your neighborhood, or even the traffic on Highway 5, there’s bound to be some sort of conflict. Hopefully, the risk of being in relationship with others doesn’t discourage you and me from being a part of community, of joining new ones, and learning about other people.

COVID-19 was one of the biggest disruptors of such community. Remember the social isolation, the shelter-in-place directives? Recall everyone around us masking up, only seeing each other’s eyeballs, walking on sidewalks socially distanced from each other? Or trying to live and work with endless online meetings and only seeing a few inches of the other person’s existence?

And, in the midst of all of this upheaval, there was a wide swath of community here in the United States and around the world, who amplified their voices on the streets and social media refusing to get vaccinated or to listen to medical professionals. The herd mentality that overtook logic and healthy action to benefit everyone else was a community-response in itself, granted not a healthy and not a helpful one.

It’s good that this inaugural column of “From the Barber’s Chair” is starting on the subject of community. Adrian’s not just my barber, but a friend of mine and of our family. Adrian and I have come to know, respect, and love one another as I have sat in his chair for countless haircuts and conversations about all sorts of topics. He, like a pastor and a bartender, has heard it all. He, like so many artisans in his craft, has the comforting demeanor and listening posture that encourages you to share about your life, be vulnerable about your fears and celebrate your child’s achievements. You also find the joy of a reciprocal relationship in receiving his life’s story as he lives it out between each monthly appointment. Ours is not so much a vendor-client relationship - though of course there is still a fee and gratuity to pay and a service to be rendered - as it is about two erstwhile strangers who are friends, who are figuring out this thing called life. We have this give-and-take; a give-and-take not so much about goods and services, instead it’s about a mutuality of reflecting upon the craziness and wonders of being husbands, fathers, professionals, citizens of the world, trying to be good human beings to neighbor and stranger alike, and make what positive impact we can on the world in our slice of God’s creation.

So, when COVID-19 arrived, like a monster truck barrelling down a storefront, disorienting life as we all knew it, it was such a gift and a blessing for Adrian to have continued his business by making house calls. There we were, in the backyard of our home, every month, my two sons and I would meet Adrian as we all donned our masks. It was two years of those house calls that that helped bring our family and Adrian through COVID.

Adrian was part of another barber shop at the time and that shop was going through a management transition. I knew from years back that Adrian had dreamt of having his own barber shop one day. He had disappeared from the scene for a year. It was on one of these COVID-period house calls that Adrian shared of his ongoing journey towards sobriety. He shared of the strain that alcoholism took on him, his health, his marriage, and family, and how his slow walk to recovery was unfolding and that was life-giving for him and all those with whom he loved and who loved him.

The road to recovery came at a right time when the onset of COVID drove many people into addictions and depression because of social isolation. To receive Adrian’s story and to be invited into the sacred space of his life was a precious gift.

Adrian and our time with him were a source of community, a source of life.

During this period, I was working with church colleagues remotely as we tried to creatively figure out how to serve a large congregation when the name of the game ought to be face-to-face community. This was not to happen, and not anytime soon. Also, our sons who were, at the time, both in high school, grew weary physically and mentally having to take their classes via Google video. I could see their energy level waning and melting. My wife and I grew concerned about them and about their classmates. This was not a healthy situation at all, but this is the best we all could do at the time, to just manage the frustrations, the anxieties, and the stresses of it all.

Our haircut appointments with Adrian were monthly punctuations for human contact outside of our family unit, outside the Zoom contacts with church colleagues, outside the video classrooms. It was like those proverbial apocalyptic movies of emerging from the underground bunker to see who was alive, or like the mythical Noah’s flood surviving on the ark and sending off the dove to see if the bird would bring back evidence of land. Adrian and our times with him were a source of community, a source of life. Such was a powerful lesson in what community is and what community is about: it’s being there for each other, to express and evidence life, it’s helping others keep living and to keep going.

After each haircut, as I reflected upon our time with Adrian, and even now, two years after the fact, my family and I experienced the presence of Christ in our backyard, every month.

When Jesus, and the community with whom he interacted and which were inspired by his life and mission, said/wrote: “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus embodies it. Standing for the way to true life. Showing the way to live life and the way to truth. In whatever combination we understand and receive what he claims about himself, Jesus is very much interested in and in the business of engaging with us human beings truthfully and truly. It’s because he cares deeply that we live life truly in the presence of God and with one another. Jesus desires that to happen in community, where his spirit is moving in and through conversations, story-telling, prayer, laughter, tears, and all the things that make human relationships interesting and meaningful.

For our family and for Adrian – from the barber’s chair in a theologian’s backyard – as we all struggled with life and faith, we also discovered a bit more about being a holy community; not because there was a posted time announcing that there was a worship service or Bible study, not because there was a stained glass or a cross present. None of the familiar symbols and signs were present that indicated “church” was happening or “theology” was being articulated. All it was were the simple ingredients of honest conversations anchored in love for one another, for faith, for life itself and the bit that God had given us, not knowing whether we would live to see tomorrow but being grateful to God that we had that moment together.

Review

Art

Community

Culture

12 March 2025

5 min read

Ceremony's superpower is on show at Berwick Parade

Reinventing historic touchpoints between faith and community.

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A projected image of a person dressed as a mermaid being pushed on a trolley falls on the wall and windows of an old barracks.

The Maltings (Berwick) Trust, Jennifer Charlton Photography.

Watch the parade

Ceremony is beating a retreat. Although wheeled out for major life events: naming newborns, marriage and bidding last goodbyes, and for grand state and civic occasions, standing on ceremony is frowned upon in day-to-day life. Ritual is treated warily, in case it creates an ‘us and them’ chasm between participants, seen as elite, and spectators, presumed to be condemned to disempowering passivity.

But what if, far from alienating people, the power of ritual, ceremony and spectacle could be a force for engagement? The church and military both have a history of creating, reinventing and refreshing rituals to meet changing social needs. The army chaplaincy is an invention of the late eighteeneeth century, responding to the move towards more settled communities of soldiers, requiring spiritual support. Drumhead altars, a centrepiece of November’s Festival of Remembrance, have origins going back into the mists of time, but quite how far back it is hard to say with certainty.

Processions and festivities for holy days are more apparent in Catholic countries, with Seville’s Semana Santa parades springing to mind, but well -dressing, May Queens, harvest festivals and Remembrance Sunday reveal a continued desire for entwining of church and community rituals, across faith traditions.

Art’s ability to step into the ceremonial space and create moments of communion, as well as giving voice to underrepresented groups, has been evident since Surrealism. British Surrealist Eileen Agar’s crustacean strewn ‘Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse’, 1936, attracted collective gasps when she wore it in London. In Sao Paolo in 1931, Brazilian modernist Flavio de Carvalho had to be rescued by police when he walked, hatless, in the opposite direction of a Corpus Christi procession, and the crowd wanted to beat him up.

Artists can also create spectacles of togetherness and joy.

Berwick Barracks is a challenging site for community arts. The massive walls and monumental stone-grey interior of Britian’s first purpose-built barracks is reminiscent of eighteenth century experiments in prison design. Even the windows on the living quarters, confirming it is not a prison, are tiny-paned and meanly spaced, like an afterthought dotted reluctantly on the overbearing grey expanse.

But over the weekend of Berwick Parade, the barracks’ forbidding walls turned into a living portrait of the border town. Under a piercingly brilliant starlit sky – it was the night of the six planet alignment – an audience gathered in the middle of the parade ground to watch themselves, neighbours, friends and family members move across the barrack walls. Artist Matthew Rosier’s projection at x10 magnification transformed the townspeople into giants, and the forbidding military structure of Berwick Barracks into a canvas for joy and creativity.

Berwick Parade shows you can draw community from a stone, forbidding, large grey stones at that. Paraders and audience were dazzled and dignified, seeing themselves anew.

The dancing, riding and processing images were soundscaped by music from the repertoire of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, who have their ceremonial base, and museum, at the barracks, accompanied by the Melrose and District Pipes and Drums. Positioned by the main gate, the musicians set the expectation of spectacle with the rousing music associated with marching bands, as Scotland the Brave gave way to Mairi’s Wedding, and then a medley of upbeat, om-papa outdoors tunes.

Over 30 minutes, topped by veterans of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers and tailed by hi -vis vest wearing Berwick Parade production staff carrying metal barriers, a parade including processing clergy and the Bishop of Berwick, conga-ing medics in scrubs from Berwick Hospital, brownies, boys’ and girls' football teams, civic leaders in mayoral regalia, Morris, Highland and flamenco dancers, and midlife wild swimmers, shimmied across the walls. Berwick Riders Association were filmed on small ponies, so the magnified projection would not crop the riders into headless torsos. A wheelchair user crossed the expanse of barracks wall wearing a mermaid’s tail. Everybody involved was simultaneously true to life and larger than life.

Consisting of 850 characters, some of Berwick’s residents played more than one role. “Ooh there’s Cheryl again” commented a spectator next to me, as another pageant of figures travelled across barracks’ perimeter.

Speaking to Rossier the following morning, he revealed Parade participants had been filmed in the barracks, travelling across a10 metre stage. Magnification made these sequences large enough to cover one wall of the rectangular parade ground. Editing and projection created the appearance of participants entering at one corner and disappearing around the next.

Movement filmed across short distances opened up participation in the Parade to people with mobility and health issues, in a way that physically journeying around the whole parade ground, repeated over three nights, never could.

Filmed over six bitterly cold days, choreographer Chloe Sayers had to keep participants’ spirits and energy up as they devised ways of travelling across 10 metres that represented their personality, role and creativity. Sayers specialises with creating events with the public rather than professional dancers, and says that enabling people to express themselves through movement in spaces not always thought of as welcoming, breaks down barriers and creates a sense of ownership.

Some of the funniest moments in Berwick Parade were rare breeds sheep hogging the limelight like divas, and children clowning around with policemen’s helmets and clipboards. Rosier says primary school years are a sweet spot for performance. ”I love the energy kids bring. We had all age groups, but the six- to 10-year-olds bring so much energy. They just bounce. They have no inhibitions but are good at following instructions. At 12 or 13 heads start to drop and they become more self-aware.”

Rosier drew on his Irish Catholic mother’s tradition of ceremony and celebration with food and drinking, whether for a wedding or a funeral, to make Berwick Parade a fun place to hang out - food stalls included - beyond the performance. “I want people to have a nice time and not be subservient to the thing they have come to watch.”

Berwick Parade shows you can draw community from a stone, forbidding, large grey stones at that. Paraders and audience were dazzled and dignified, seeing themselves anew.

At King Charles’ coronation, the church’s ceremonial superpower was on display to the world. And as artists demonstrate, ceremony does not have to be confined to great occasions. Churches in all traditions can draw on their legacy of historic touchpoints between faith and community, to reinvent, reinstate and refresh rituals to engage with people’s contemporary concerns and hope.

Community groups taking part in Berwick Parade.

A projection of a horse and rider against a barracks wall.

Clergy process as they are filmed for a projecton.

A projection of a parade of young people dressed theatrically against a barracks wall.

A projection of soldiers marching and carrying flags.

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