I’ve been struggling with a cold all week, so my plan to go to Amsterdam today did not push through. Instead, I found myself watching a friend defend her PhD on the livestream. I was a bit disappointed not to be there in person, but life is life and even the best laid plans don’t always work as we want them to.

Later on, I find myself reflecting on the use of language and also how I appreciated how most of the language used felt accessible to me who is not at all an academic.

It had me thinking about a conversation I had with another friend on the purpose of academic writing and who it’s for and why it’s done. If research and the results of research are only exchanged inside the university or the academy or among peers, if the language is not accessible to people who don’t have doctorates or access to that kind of language, what is the use of the research? Maybe we can argue that it has a trickle down effect into policy, but how long before that happens? In particular when we talk about social sciences which have to do with community and with the masses, isn’t it better to use language that will invite inclusion rather than exclusion?

I think about language because, of course, as a writer it’s part of my daily life. Like for instance, the visceral response I have to Spanish. Which I love the sound of it, and yet it also reminds me that we have this long history under Spanish occupation and that’s why the sound of Spanish can have this kind of mesmerising effect and also at the same time serves as reminder of a history that is painful. I wonder how it would be to learn Spanish simply because it’s a beautiful language and not feel as if I am helplessly caught in this net where I know in parts but don’t know because the way I know it is in the expressions that linger like remnants in Filipino consciousness.

Language remains a matter that I wrestle with because of the complexity of our history and it is related not just to colonialism but also to displacement, to the experience of being othered, to that experience of being seen as “little brother” or “model migrant”.

Whether I am writing in English or Dutch, I wrestle with how this language that I use carries so many layers.

So, maybe this is on a tangent, but I admit to side-eying advocates for using AI if you are not a native speaker of a language.

Of course, I agree, a properly constructed sentence helps us communicate better, but if I utilise an AI to take away that wrestling with language, then the story of that struggle is absent from my text. It’s absented because I allow an artificial intelligence to erase it for me. My question then becomes this: what are we afraid of that we cannot write as we speak? And who are we writing for if we opt to allow AI to write for us?

For me, writing isn’t just about producing a cohesive text. Often, it’s not. Writing is about struggling with things and maybe the conclusion isn’t neat or maybe I have to go back and think about it again, or maybe I have to argue with myself again. Maybe there is no resolution or conclusion and that’s okay. If the ends aren’t neatly tied up and the package isn’t neatly wrapped, does it mean it’s of lesser worth?

I suppose what I mean to say is that our use of language reflects the imperfections of our lives.

Writing this, I have to think of the impulse of consumerism and materialism to erase everything that isn’t perfect. Erasing wrinkles. Erasing lines. Erasing imperfections that we may have been born with. All these in the hope of creating perfection. Often, we end up with shallow and grotesque expressions that reflect the soullessness in that pursuit of perfection.

It’s the same with writing or with art. Without the wrestling, without the struggle, without the imperfection, we empty our work of what makes it meaningful.

I’d rather keep my imperfections and keep my soul.