Ode to Sonja Barend | Up healthy again tomorrow

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Dear Sonja,

I miss you often, after dinner

Your warm and sharp questions, your classy voice. Your humor. Your conscience

Your freckles blown over your face

The twinkle in your eye, in the studio light

You were the Queen of the talk show, until 2006, forty years long

And above all, afraid of nothing and no one

Dressed in a timeless ensemble, all Bazaar

With words spoken from the heart, in the most beautiful Dutch

You always touched the sensitive chord

With the minorities, the people who do not feel seen and heard

Or for whom the majority did not know exactly what they meant

People who nowadays hardly ever sit at the talk show table

And have been replaced by celebrities who seem to shy away from depth

You dared, the conversations with the prostitutes,

multiple personalities, transvestites, refugees and political rebels

And were you prepared by good friends, director

Ellen Blazer and your editors.

These people at the table and in the audience received your full attention,

interest and sincerity

Many a journalistic animal wonders: where is that time?

Just when the world is so divided, and falling apart

Is this form of journalism our greatest loss

Of course in the present there are

Journalistic peers following in your footsteps

Mariëlle, Kefah, Eva, Janine, Matthijs and Coen

Humberto, Twan, Clary, Margriet and Jeroen

And in the years to come we will continue to honor talents like these

with a Sonja Barend Award

Still, if I could fantasize...

Would it not be possible for you, La Barend, just maybe...

yourself, in the highest persona, again in the Amsterdam Red Hat?

With supporters and opponents united in one room, resulting in noise

And a journalistic explosion waiting to happen

Such a sweltering evening with plenty of 'noise in the hut'

And even people daring to shout: 'I think it sucks!'

So connecting, from the conversation. Sincerely. Really

For the less celebrated and the man around the corner, you, me and us.

To avoid standing right in front of each other and talking in 'they'

We've almost forgotten how to do it: value each other

Digital animals transformed into who we are

Have we forgotten how to talk, listen, lean our bodies forward, look each other in the eye

Let's Sonja again,

and revel

To real stories, of flesh and blood. The world upside down

Then sleep well and up healthy again tomorrow