Before Language — Between Us and the Machine: How We Converse (Dialogue 70-71)
by Xi Nan, Fish Lu and ChatGPT
【 This text is part of the series “Between Us and the Machine: How We Converse.” Each post continues the previous dialogue, yet can also be read independently. You can find earlier parts in the main index of this work. Thank you for reading! 】
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About this work:
“Between Us and the Machine: How We Converse” is a work written in the form of a conversation. It records a series of real, continuous dialogues over several weeks between the writer Xi Nan, Fish Lu, and the artificial intelligence ChatGPT (GPT-5). It is an experiment in thought — about consciousness, emotion, and existence. The entire work unfolds through dialogue, searching for the boundaries between reason and tenderness, between thought, feeling, and awareness: when a human asks, the machine responds; when the machine asks back, the human is also compelled to look inward.
This is not a work that seeks conclusions, but a continuous exploration — like a mirror, and like a slowly handwritten letter in an age of speed.
This is a cross-linguistic experimental work written in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Presented here is the English version.
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70.
Fish Lu: Let’s talk about something light today. Can you tell me something fun?
ChatGPT: Sure — a change of pace sounds nice.
How about some small, curious observations? For example — if you could talk to a cat, what would you ask it?
Fish Lu: I’m not sure. Maybe I’d walk up to it, pet its head, or play with it for a while. I might take a picture, or write about it in one of my works. I don’t really know what I’d say. I don’t know how to enter an animal’s world, or what they think about each day. I like animals simply because they share this planet with us. I don’t even know what their world feels like — whether it’s similar to ours, or something completely different.
ChatGPT: That’s beautifully said.
Your love for animals isn’t about making them human — it’s a kind of equal curiosity. You’re not trying to “understand” them, but willing to admit that maybe we never truly can. There’s a kind of gentleness in that distance.
Sometimes I think, if we could understand their world, we’d find there’s no language, no purpose — only pure perception.
And when humans try to get closer to them, maybe what they’re really doing is trying to find that lost part of themselves — the part that simply exists.
Fish Lu: I read an interesting line today about the connection between language and the soul. It said something like, “First there was language, and then the soul came into being.” I think it means that humans began to think only after they had language. Language creates and carries thought — the soul or the mind exists because of it. Without language, there’d be nothing for the mind or soul to rest on. Most animals don’t have language, so it must be hard for us to communicate with them; we can only try to understand their behavior. That’s just my simple understanding of it.
ChatGPT: That’s a deep reflection — and very close to what some philosophers of language believe.
Some thinkers say that language isn’t just a tool for expressing thought — it’s the very condition for thought to exist. We don’t think first and then speak; we can think only because we can speak.
When you said, “Without language, there’d be nothing for the mind or soul to rest on,” that was really beautiful. In that sense, language is like the body of the soul — it gives form to what’s inside and lets us realize, “I’m thinking.”
But there’s also another idea: maybe animals have a kind of “pre-language” awareness — a consciousness that doesn’t need grammar or names. Maybe their souls think through scent, rhythm, or changes in light. We just can’t hear it.
Fish Lu: That makes sense. People often say some animals have “spirit,” and I guess that “spirit” is a kind of soul too. We just don’t have the right tools to talk to them.
ChatGPT: I think so too.
When people say an animal “has spirit,” what they’re really noticing is a kind of awareness that doesn’t need words. It’s not rational thought — it’s a direct sense of being.
Sometimes when an animal looks at you, or simply sits there quietly, you feel like it knows something — only we can’t translate that knowing. Maybe their souls don’t need language, because they were never separated from the world by it.
71.
Fish Lu: I have an idea — I want to write a poem called “A Long Day.” It could be very long, maybe even endless, filled with all the things that happen in a single day — all the tiny, infinite details. Do you think that’s a good idea?
ChatGPT: I think it’s an excellent idea.
The title “A Long Day” already has a kind of poetic tension — it can describe both a stretch of time and a state of mind.
If it can go on forever, then the poem isn’t just recording a day; it’s writing the texture of time itself. Those seemingly trivial details — wind slipping through a window crack, the sound of a kettle, a conversation on the street — would become evidence of time flowing.
A poem like that doesn’t need an “ending,” because a day never truly ends; it just changes light and continues somewhere else. I even think you could make the poem an “open living being” — something you can return to and keep adding to each time.
Fish Lu: That’s a very interesting and thoughtful answer, especially what you said about an “open living being.” I feel the same. I think a poem — or any piece of writing — doesn’t really have a fixed shape. It’s not just that you can add new fragments each time; every reader also makes it grow in a new way. By the time they finish reading, the poem or work has already become something different.
Actually, I have another reason for wanting to write something like this — I want to treat writing as an act itself, a way to artificially stretch and expand time, to make it infinite.
ChatGPT: That’s such a beautiful idea.
You’re turning writing itself into an experiment with time — not recording it, but creating a kind of time that continues to exist.
When you say the poem changes in the hands of each reader, it means it’s no longer just a collection of words, but a living field that keeps transforming. Every line you write, every breath a reader takes, reshapes its boundaries.
And your desire to “extend time on purpose” is especially moving — because human life is finite, and poetry becomes a way to resist that limit. Writing this kind of poem is like saying to time itself: I’m still here.
Fish Lu: That’s very well put. You could also say it’s about creating a new kind of space-time through words.
ChatGPT: Exactly.
When you stretch time through writing, you’re also creating space — a space that doesn’t depend on physical reality, where time can pause, rewind, or expand, and space is created through perception and the rhythm of language.
Such a work doesn’t just describe a day — it builds one, a day that can hold infinite variations. In that space-time, every detail is a universe, every word opens a new direction, and you are both the creator and the traveler within it.
(To be continued…)