Autobiography of Jason Hutagalung (2026)

The World Through Words

My name is Jason Hutagalung.

I was born on 3 August 1973 in North Sumatra, Indonesia. If someone asked me what defines my life, many would probably expect the answer to be tattooing, art, machines, or the many places I have lived.

They would all be wrong.

The thing that has defined my life more than anything else is words.

Not because I wanted to become a writer, a linguist, or a scholar, but because I never stopped asking what words actually mean.

From the beginning of my life, I was surrounded by different languages. I inherited the Batak language from my family. At the same time, I was exposed to Bahasa Indonesia, the national language. As I grew older, I encountered other languages spoken throughout Sumatra. Every language described the world differently.

Then life expanded even further.

English entered my life through music before it became a language I had to speak. Later, living and working in Bali exposed me to Japanese and Italian. Each language forced me to compare one with another. Why did one language have a word that another did not? Why did two languages translate the same idea differently? Why did one expression make perfect sense in one culture but sound strange in another?

I realised that I was no longer simply learning languages.

I was investigating them.

Most people ask, “What does this word mean?”

My question has always been different.

Who created this word?

Where did it come from?

What did it originally mean?

How did it survive?

How did its meaning change?

Why do people still use it today?

Those questions became the foundation of how I see the world.

To me, every word is a historical artifact. Every word has travelled through time. Every word has been shaped by the people who spoke it before it reached us.

I don’t begin with a conclusion.

I begin with a mystery.

When I encounter a word, I don’t assume the modern definition tells the whole story. Instead, I treat the word as evidence. I follow its trail through languages, cultures, and history until the evidence tells me where it came from and how it changed.

That way of thinking has influenced everything I do.

Whether I am studying Batak culture, reading Ancient Greek texts, discussing religion, examining politics, or simply talking with another person, I find myself asking the same question:

“What does this word really mean?”

Many people investigate history through kings, wars, governments, or religions.

I investigate history through words.

Words are the fingerprints left behind by civilizations.

They reveal migration, trade, conquest, belief, misunderstanding, and change. A single word can travel further than an army and survive longer than an empire.

That is why language has fascinated me throughout my life.

Not merely because it allows people to communicate, but because it preserves the memory of humanity.

This autobiography is not simply the story of where I have lived or what I have done.

It is the story of how a boy from North Sumatra became fascinated by words, and how that fascination became the compass that guided every question I have ever asked.

Everything else in my life—tattooing, art, machines, culture, philosophy, and my search for meaning—grew from that same curiosity.

If there is one sentence that describes me best, it is this:

I do not chase answers. I chase questions, and more often than not, those questions begin with a single word.

— Jason Hutagalung

2026

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