loading . . . The Healing Power Of Social Friction Credits
Lisa Bubert is a writer and librarian living in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work can be found in Longreads, Texas Highways, West Branch and elsewhere.
Whenever Iâm spiraling about the state of the world, the survival mechanism in my brain tells me to get out of my head and into my body. For a long time, my preferred embodied experience was a night out at a strip-mall biker bar in small-town Texas where karaoke was emceed by a drag queen.
Outside, the bar was unremarkable. Inside, it teemed with the weirdest collection of people: a socioeconomic grab bag of college kids and yuppies, seniors and empty nesters, bikers and cowboys, liberals and conservatives, locals and visitors. Thatâs what I loved most about Crossroads â it was an âall kindsâ kind of place.
Now defunct, it had all the hallmarks of a great southern dive bar: neon lights glowing green and blue; beer bottles lining the bar shelves, all cheap domestics; a perpetually sticky floor; oscillating fans mounted on the walls to keep the heat at bay. The place was tiny, a single room with a stage lifted two feet off the ground in a corner and the bar across the back wall. It had a handful of two-top tables scattered around, but mostly everything was swept to the edges so there was room for dancing and carrying on. Itâs been 10 years since I was last there.
Beyonca Deleon, the drag queen who ran the karaoke machine, still remembers her first night there. âI looked out at the crowd and was like, âHoly shit, someoneâs gonna die.â Because you had bikers, rednecks, twinky little gays walking around, just all types,â recalls Deleon, who now identifies as a trans woman. Soon, though, she realized her fear was misplaced. âIt was a come-as-you-are bar,â she says. âNobody cared.â
Everyone I talk to who spent time at Crossroads remembers it the same way: a lovefest of humanity singing at the top of their lungs, a place that made you believe this American melting pot experiment could actually work.
Unfortunately, the bar couldnât weather the pandemic; it shut down in 2021. But there is a lesson in its legacy. Today, at a time when weâre increasingly siloed by class, race, politics and algorithms,**** places like Crossroads perform a sacred service. They invite us to embrace something essential to our collective well-being: social friction.
We humans can have a low tolerance for social friction, tension that may arise when people from different backgrounds, worldviews or values interact. It can be awkward, uncomfortable and unnerving. These feelings of intergroup anxiety sometimes stem from things like prejudice and fear of rejection or judgement. Subconsciously or otherwise, we tend to avoid outgroups and instead stick to people and experiences that feel familiar and safe to us. We go the long way around if it means we wonât encounter encumbrances.
And so, for a variety of reasons, we divide ourselves. The majority of white Americans report that their core social networks include only other white people, according to a study in 2020 by the Survey Center on American Life. Similarly, the survey found, most Black Americansâ core social networks are composed of only other Black people. The same pattern is true for Republicans and for Democrats. These kinds of homogenous social networks can result in a doubling down of partisan belief in stereotypes and assumption as fact.
Social media exploits this human impulse to sort ourselves by slices of our identities. In our online world, we have access to a practically limitless range of people and ideas right at our fingertips. And yet, we are often drawn into filter bubbles and echo chambers that reinforce our existing beliefs, biases and ideals. Now that we can access whatever (and whomever) we want in the palm of our hands â the perfect dinner, the finest products, an ideal lover â itâs easy to avoid anything that doesnât meet our explicit preferences or that falls outside our comfort zone.
This optimization comes at a cost. When we can pick and choose whom we engage with, click by click, we become further sorted into weak tribes exploited by grievances that drive us apart. We lose the ability to wade through the muddy waters of forgiveness and repair, accountability and justice. And when we are unable to navigate social friction, we lose our ability to function as a society and a democracy.
> âThe necessary work of bridging societal divides may be achieved not just through policy intervention, but perhaps inside your local karaoke bar, bowling alley, library, public transit or church.â
We are also siloed in our offline world, where residential segregation by class has been on the rise for decades. Between 1970 and 2009, the percentage of American families living in either predominantly low-income or affluent areas more than doubled, with families in marginalized communities experiencing disproportionate residential isolation. (In Nashville, where I now live, 99% of median housing is financially out of reach for Black and Hispanic families.)
Increasingly, wealthy communities stay wealthy while poor communities stay poor, a stratification perpetuated by what researchers call the âopportunity gap.â The American promise of upward mobility has largely become a myth for poorer communities, perpetuated by segregation across class lines.
This lack of cross-class interaction impacts the way we view each other. Limited contact between groups can breed mistrust and contribute to polarization at a time when we are already fiercely**** divided. Nearly half the U.S. electorate thinks members of the opposing political party are âevil,â recent polling shows, and a growing number of Americans believe political violence to be ânecessaryâ to restore American values.
People often think the work of strengthening democracy means thrusting people in a room together to have meaty, critical conversations. But according to Bridget Marquis, director of the nonprofit Reimagining the Civic Commons, this is a misunderstanding.
âCivic infrastructure â parks, trails, libraries, community centers, neighborhood main streets and the like â has the unique power to serve as literal common ground in our communities to counter both loneliness and socioeconomic segregation,â she says.
And it serves to strengthen our civic life. Communities that have more access to socially-shared spaces, such as parks, libraries, museums and community centers, report feeling more connected to their community, have more close friends on which to rely and engage in more civic participation in the form of local meetings, social events and volunteerism.
Physically bringing people together, however, is not enough. The places where socioeconomic classes mix the most, according to new research, are casual restaurant chains like Olive Garden. But inside these establishments _,_ diners generally interact almost only with those at their own table. What Marquis has found is that within community spaces, shared activities such as singing and dancing supercharge bonding and trust building across diverse socioeconomic groups.
Itâs an idea with roots in intergroup contact theory,**** which suggests that contact between disparate groups serves to reduce the effects of prejudice between them, as long as appropriate conditions are met. In other words, under the right circumstances, there can be a healing power to social friction.
This was the magic of Crossroads. It had no one identity and belonged to no one group. Bikers decked out in leather would mingle with gays decked out in crop tops and spandex. Cowboys would two-step with college students if someone was singing a country song with a good beat. My pal, Hutch, would bring down the house every night with his rendition of Salt-N-Pepaâs âShoop.â We lived for the part when he sang the lyric, âGirls, whatâs my weakness?â and the whole bar got to shout back: âMen!â
It truly was the _karaoke_ that made Crossroads so special, contends its former owner, Richard Underwood. âEverybody always asked me if Crossroads was a gay bar,â he says. âI always said it was a karaoke bar. Yes, Iâm gay, but itâs a karaoke bar.â Underwood now manages a different bar, Dustyâs, that has become another melting pot of identity centered around karaoke music.
âWe still mix the way we do,â he says. âI had a show [recently] with bikers and cowboys, a table of lesbians and a table of people just getting brews and everybody was getting along and having a good time.â
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Crossroads was what is known as a âhug space.â Community spaces tend to form around three Hâs, Marquis says: havens, hangouts and hugs. Havens are protected spaces of belonging, where identity matters and the exclusivity of that protection is what creates safety for those in the in-group. Hangouts are neutral spaces where people can simply _be_ but may not interact. Hugs are the spaces that encourage cross-pollination of identities and socioeconomic mixing across race, class and ideological lines.
Healthy communities need a balance of all three types of spaces, Marquis says. But algorithmic sorting and other forms of segregation effectively shove us into boxes, potentially making every space we identify with feel like a haven, devoid of social friction, and every space outside of that experience feel like a threat.
> âEvery time we exchange our fallible, friction-filled world for a smoother, more convenient, more predictable experience, we are chipping away at what makes us human.â
Third spaces â the hug spaces â need to be physically designed for conversational distance (a literal rubbing of elbows) and they need to incorporate intentional programming that creates opportunities for spontaneous, unpredictable communication and connection. The necessary work of bridging societal divides to strengthen democracy, then, may be achieved not just through policy intervention, but perhaps inside your local karaoke bar, bowling alley, library, public transit or church.
When I think of my childhood church, religion is not what comes to mind. What I remember most are the hymns, the atonal drone of dozens of farmersâ voices singing out of tune, the organist missing key notes but getting most of them right, the group chant of the Lordâs Prayer before the adults lined up to receive communion, the shape of the menâs muddy boots poking under their dress slacks as they kneeled at the altar and the pastor tipped wine to their lips from a shared cup.
We were a small congregation in a one-room wooden church in the middle of Central Texas, a ranching community of scattered houses and open land. The church was built in the 1900s with the arrival of the train tracks, and the same descendants of that original congregation (my family included) still attend today. When I return to that church, I am enveloped by history, generational memory and tradition.
I picture my childhood church without the hymn song, the rituals of communion, the picnics and barbecues and prayer. Quiet people keeping to their sides of the fence, perhaps suspicious of the neighbors on the other side of the barbed wire. I picture Crossroads without the karaoke and I struggle to feel the same amount of love between the disparate communities. I imagine people grouped and siloed, nervously eyeing the room before deciding they donât belong, tossing a couple dollars on the table and leaving. Both would be quieter places, sadder, scarier and unsure. An integral piece would be missing.
Tech boasts a frictionless existence, but friction is part of what makes life worth living. Every time we exchange our fallible, friction-filled world for a smoother, more convenient, more predictable experience, we are chipping away at what makes us human: our souls.
We forget that we have souls. Which is understandable, considering how much of our lives we spend interacting with technology. Our screens do not have souls. ChatGPT has no soul, no matter how much it says it understands our frustration. We appeal to our phones as if they are friends, mediators, mentors and therapists, scrolling through them for some semblance of good news, something to laugh about, something that makes us feel seen. We pull the feed down to refresh with our thumbs the way we pull the handle on a slot machine. Maybe this time will be the jackpot. Maybe this time Iâll see something that makes me feel whole.
But what is a soul? How is a soul different from a conscience? To me, a soul and a conscience are two completely different entities, the conscience being that nagging inner voice of your duty to others and the soul being that nagging inner voice of the duty to yourself. But the soul does require that you attend to others, because attending to others is how we heal ourselves.
Attending to others is inconvenient. We canât schedule catastrophe to coincide with our personal schedules. We canât put a deadline on grief. We canât predict with 100% certainty that we will always say just the right thing at just the right time. We have to embrace the friction of uncertainty. We have to operate on faith.
âThere is a horizontal and vertical relationship of our life and faith,â says Pastor Nate, the pastor at my old church. He is a young man just one year older than I am. He came to our church a decade ago, at the end of his 20s. I remember thinking that he would have a hell of a time wrangling these old timers, my father especially â a red-blooded Texas cowboy with a long stubborn streak.
But Pastor Nate had no trouble fitting in, a testament to his ability to make all feel welcome, regardless of their beliefs or identity â not unlike Underwood, the unofficial collector of lost souls at Crossroads and Dustyâs.
> âWe who do not seek to commune in some way with some greater sense beyond ourselves will find ourselves rambling, isolated and lost.â
âThe vertical relationship is the parts of our life lived toward God; the horizontal is the parts of our life lived toward our neighbor,â Pastor Nate says. âYou need the vertical in order to not be disappointed by the horizontal.â
Whether we want to admit it or not, humans live in a physical, emotional and _spiritual_ realm. We attend readily to the physical and emotional health of our being, but when it comes to the health of our souls? We who do not seek to commune in some way with some greater sense beyond ourselves will find ourselves rambling, isolated and lost.
I stopped attending church long ago. While I havenât missed the church itself, I have missed the _feeling_ of church. What I am really desiring is the feeling of an embodied experience of communion. Being in physical space with other humans. I donât have to know all these humans, identify with them or even agree with them, but I do have to feel welcomed by them. They have to be willing to sing with me.
These days, I find that feeling at a dive bar called Franâs. Just like Crossroads once was, Franâs is a modest, come-as-you-are type of place with free-wheeling karaoke nights. My friends and I arrive early because once the music gets going, itâs impossible to talk. Which is fine, because the point of this bar isnât to talk, itâs to blow off steam, scream and sing with a motley crew of revelers.
Franâs used to reside in the more inner side of East Nashville but got priced out to the outskirts of Dickerson Pike, a part of the city still in flux with half-constructed luxury condos looming over day-rate motels. Inside are two low-lit pool tables, a mish-mash of card tables and metal chairs and a long bar with one woman (not Fran) working the drinks. They serve only bottles and cans and they take only cash, sorry honey.
I fish $2.50 worth of quarters out of my pocket because $2.50 gets you a PBR and $10 at this bar can still get me good and drunk. The regulars sit in the corner and hassle the woman, who hassles them back. They are a collection of old men, white, Black, all looking like this bar is their home and theyâre just happy to have company.
The karaoke officially opens. Reading the room, I choose âBlueâ by LeAnn Rimes. After all, weâre in Nashville and this is still a country bar â but not for long, because the gays have arrived and are clamoring for Britney and Chappell Roan. The pool tables fill up; a few elder millennial dads run up to sing âTeenage Dirtbagâ in between shots. My friend Yurina sings her favorite, âManiac,â as she dramatically whips her hair around in a circle and does the running man to great acclaim. I get back up and sing âNeon Moon,â sticking to my country roots, and the regulars nod and toast me.
One of them takes the mic and the room goes wild for him. Heâs mid-50s, though he looks a decade older because of hard living. He is skinny with bones poking under his tattered T-shirt, dirty jeans held up by a belt. He talk-sings âI Love This Barâ by Toby Keith and doesnât even have to look at the screen for the words. Eyes closed, euphoric smile, hand on his heart â the epitome of a man singing to his love, and we all feel it, we all cheer for him.
Itâs hard to imagine this strange collection of people finding each other outside this bar and feeling the same kind of love that we feel here. But after tonight, if we were to run into each other on the street, there would be smiles, possibly even hugs. Maybe an agreement to see each other again soon at the mic. We are so much better when we are singing together.
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