Column

Comment

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.

Article

Art

Culture

Trauma

War & peace

23 June 2025

5 min read

Forgotten soldiers and new narratives are shaping how we mark our wars

Writing our history of conflict is as much a war of images as of words.

Susan Gray

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

An actor reads a speech at a commemoration

Timothy Spall recites Churchill.

Sky News.

Heading into an intense summer of World War Two remembrance, with May’s commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day followed by marking the end of war in the Far East in August, it is remarkable how well the essentially Edwardian model of honouring the war dead has stood the test of time.

In The Edwardians Age of Elegance exhibition, at the King Gallery’s, a room is devoted to the passing of the extravagant turn-of-the-century era into the sombre age of war memorialisation, following World War One. George V commissioned traditional English artist Frank O Sullivan to paint the inaugural service for the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. The long canvas, with a domed frame at the centre to accommodate Edwin Lutyens’ freshly unveiled, lofty Cenotaph, captures the solitary King walking behind a flag draped coffin, mounted on a gun garage, as the parade passes the war memorial. Initially a temporary wood and plaster structure, Lutyens’ Portland stone monument commemorated over a million soldiers lost in the Great War, some buried near the battlefields near where they fell, and nameless others whose remains had been obliterated by mechanised warfare.

Attended by widows, ex-servicemen and armed forces personnel, the 1920 Armistice Day ceremony marked a shift away from solely glorifying commanders and officers, placing the sacrifice of ordinary combatants centre stage. The monarch symbolised his gratitude to his people, rather the other way around.

Ceremonial Great War gun carriages featured in the London VE Day parade on 5th May. And the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery provides gun carriages and teams of six black horses for state funerals. Following World War Two, and complete mechanisation of artillery, George VI instituted a troop of horse artillery for ceremonial occasions, enshrining the continuation of practices from a previous era’s warfare.

Layering memorialisation upon memorialisation was also evident in the 5th May ceremonies when actor Timothy Spall read an extract of Churchill’s Whitehall speech, given to the crowds when European hostilities ended.

“In the long years to come, not only will the people of this isle, but of the world wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, will look back on what we have done and they will say do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straight forward and if needs be, die unconquered.”

Narratives around the present and recent past are codified with a focus on forecasting how future generations will view events when looking back.

While Europe celebrated in early May 1945, the one million troops of the Fourteenth Army continued fighting the Japanese Army through Burma and the Pacific. Dubbed the Forgotten Army and the Forgotten War, their campaigns were underplayed in the Allies’ wartime narrative. Singapore’s fall to Japanese forces in February 1942 was seen as a shameful defeat. Remoteness from London of the Far East campaign, and the vastness of the theatre of war, made it near impossible to report on by radio and print journalists. Letters to and from the Fourteenth Army took months to reach their destinations. Soldiers and civilians held as prisoners of war by Japanese forces were forbidden to make images or create records of their captivity, making contemporaneous images of their incarceration rare. But drawings of camps and hospitals by Jack Chalker hidden in hollowed out bamboo sticks, acted as preparatory works the artist to later make paintings such as his painting Medical Inspection, Chungkai Hospital Camp 1943, created in 1946, and now held by the Royal Army Museum.

As traditions of commemorating the war dead evolve, new grey areas come to light, demanding space in the official narrative

Contrasting the paucity of images of the war in the Far East, with the array of works depicting the Blitz in London - created with American audiences in mind, in the hope of winning support for the Allied cause - together with photographic images of North African and Middle East operations, it is little wonder the Forgotten War struggles to be remembered. Veterans of the Far East campaign and POWs were far more likely to join ex services organisations such as the British Legion and Burma Star, than those who served in Europe. Marginalised from victory and peacetimes narratives, the Forgotten Army chose to remember together.

Before Victory over Japan’s 80th anniversary is commemorated on 15 August, with the famous cover photo of an American sailor dramatically embracing a woman in a white dress showing on repeat, the 80 years since the dropping of atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have to be faced. Mainly civilians died as a result of impact and sickness from the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August, with estimates of between150,000 -246,000 deaths. Whether the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare was justified, as it prevented loss of life from not having to wage a military campaign to occupy mainland Japan, or the horrific sacrifice of so many civilians was a war crime, remains a morally grey area.

As traditions of commemorating the war dead evolve, new grey areas come to light, demanding space in the official narrative. Actress Sheila Hancock wrote recently about the trauma and fear of being an evacuee, sent away from her London family as a small child, to an emotionally neglectful home in the ‘safer’ countryside. Forced adoption of children born to lone mothers, and the stigmatising treatment expectant women received at the hands of Christian denomination- ran mother and baby homes, is a wartime and postwar story now demanding to be heard.

Lesser documented stories of marginalised civilians, and combatants in faraway places take time to emerge, fighting to be heard above familiar images of plucky cockneys in bombed out buildings and amorously celebratory sailors. Shaping a multifaceted history of conflict is as much a war of images as of words. And as families become more transnational, the search for a shared narrative can replace clinging to the right or official story.

The idea of army chaplain, the Reverend David Railton, to commemorate an Unknown Warrior with honour, still resonates over a century later. Railton’s battlefield altar cloth, known as the Padre’s or Ypres Flag, covered the coffin on its journey from Boulogne to Westminster Abbey.

Stretching and fraying to include the stories of groups previously overlooked, the Edwardian fabric of military remembrance is proving remarkably strong.

The Edwardians: Age of Elegance, the King’s Gallery, until 23 November.

Find out more

Support our work

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief