walk through Roetersiland, a destination in my mind, fire in my eyes, The Smiths on repeat. “Nothing can stop me now,” I think. No, truly nothing could stop me. Yet, one cannot help but notice the never-ending wave of heads after shoulders after bodies… bodies… bodies. Oh, so many bodies, yet somehow, they are one. A giant mob of monotonousness. It is quite a cultural shock to walk through a campus so vastly divergent from one’s own.
Ever since I was a child the memory of a colorful orange and red playground sticks out to me. The stomping feet of children playing tag or hide-and-go-seek with no care in the world are still vividly engrained in my mind. I can’t help but feel a joyous sensation when noticing a random playground in the wild with its vibrant and inviting colors – are we ever too old to experience the feeling of flying on a swing? As Lindsay McDonald, et al., wrote in their book titled Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, language, and beyond, “a strong influence of experience is in line”. For me, these joyfully exhilarating colors connote the endless number of times I have played on various playgrounds with my friends.
Connie Walden, a first-year Literary and Cultural Analysis student at the UvA, has done what many other students have not even considered attempting. She has undertaken the task of organizing an open mic event! So, I sat down with Connie to talk about herself and the event she is organizing – “Transrijk” – at Vrankrijk which takes place on November 9th.