I Love You When I Wake Up on Thursday Mornings
2025.11.27
About 7:10 a.m.
3 videos(digitalized), color, sound
我爱你
사랑해요
あいしてる
1. Love Language
It was a project I had wanted to do for a long time, but one winter morning I opened my eyes, looked at the curtains, and suddenly thought, “Today is the day.” So I began and finished it.
In fact, I recorded (filmed) it three times, and in the end I chose the first test video. Perhaps that unprepared, unpracticed, hazy and awkward state is the most embarrassing to show—and therefore the one that must be shown.
When I filmed the video, I too began speaking first in my mother tongue (Chinese). But after reviewing it, I realized that the video in my mother tongue was the longest (9s). I waited a long time before opening my mouth.Korean was the second longest. After about ten years of learning it, the language has become much more familiar to me.Yet still, it felt less familiar than my mother tongue, and at the same time somehow less shameful. In contrast, the video in Japanese—my least familiar language—was the shortest and ended the most decisively, and when I said “I love you” in Japanese, it somehow sounded the most confident.
Perhaps when I filmed in Japanese, I was thinking less about love itself and more about trying to pronounce something so unfamiliar correctly.
In foreign languages, I feel like I can say “I love you,” “I like you,” or “I dislike you” more easily.
But the more familiar a language becomes, the closer the distance between my emotions and the words—
and everything becomes more embarrassing.
2. Love Language
Regardless of mother tongue or foreign language, locals or foreigners,
each person has their own love language.
And the phrase “I love you” will inevitably feel different to every person—
because each of us grew up in different families and experienced different forms of love.
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, can I give to others?
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, do I wish to receive?
At the very least, I do not want to endlessly prove myself,
nor do I want to pretend not to love.
I imagine a love that maintains some kind of dynamic equality.
Can I understand and embrace the anxiety, wounds, and anger hidden behind someone else’s love language?
Can I refrain from blaming myself for their anxiety, wounds, and anger?
And can I set down my past anxieties, doubts, and anger,
be patient, and learn—and listen to—another person’s love language?
(If love is said to be long-suffering and gentle.)
It was a project I had wanted to do for a long time, but one winter morning I opened my eyes, looked at the curtains, and suddenly thought, “Today is the day.” So I began and finished it.
In fact, I recorded (filmed) it three times, and in the end I chose the first test video. Perhaps that unprepared, unpracticed, hazy and awkward state is the most embarrassing to show—and therefore the one that must be shown.
When I filmed the video, I too began speaking first in my mother tongue (Chinese). But after reviewing it, I realized that the video in my mother tongue was the longest (9s). I waited a long time before opening my mouth.Korean was the second longest. After about ten years of learning it, the language has become much more familiar to me.Yet still, it felt less familiar than my mother tongue, and at the same time somehow less shameful. In contrast, the video in Japanese—my least familiar language—was the shortest and ended the most decisively, and when I said “I love you” in Japanese, it somehow sounded the most confident.
Perhaps when I filmed in Japanese, I was thinking less about love itself and more about trying to pronounce something so unfamiliar correctly.
In foreign languages, I feel like I can say “I love you,” “I like you,” or “I dislike you” more easily.
But the more familiar a language becomes, the closer the distance between my emotions and the words—
and everything becomes more embarrassing.
2. Love Language
Regardless of mother tongue or foreign language, locals or foreigners,
each person has their own love language.
And the phrase “I love you” will inevitably feel different to every person—
because each of us grew up in different families and experienced different forms of love.
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, can I give to others?
What kind of love, and what kind of love language, do I wish to receive?
At the very least, I do not want to endlessly prove myself,
nor do I want to pretend not to love.
I imagine a love that maintains some kind of dynamic equality.
Can I understand and embrace the anxiety, wounds, and anger hidden behind someone else’s love language?
Can I refrain from blaming myself for their anxiety, wounds, and anger?
And can I set down my past anxieties, doubts, and anger,
be patient, and learn—and listen to—another person’s love language?
(If love is said to be long-suffering and gentle.)