lying under covers
When am I most confronted by my sense of self? It’s the moment right before I fall asleep, alone in my room, with my hot water bottle. On a whim, I researched the history of hot water bottles. In no time, I became fascinated by their use throughout WWI and WW2. With their harsh, metal shapes and cold, inflexible materials, these warmth-giving objects feel oxymoronic; designed to bestow comfort but hostile in their form, paradoxically, these hot water bottles look like artillery. Some unusual examples were contoured to the human form, curved to cradle the stomach, or arched to fit the spine, just like armour. I began to think about this moment between being awake and asleep as a time of duality: night/day, comfortable/uncomfortable, attack/protect, loose/fitted, hot/cold, hard/soft, rigid/flexible, empty/full, heavy/light, liquid/solid, sealed/open, filling/draining, swelling/shrinking, public/private, intimate/exposed.
I drew connections between armour and underwear: lingerie is the symbolic ‘first’ and innermost intimate layer, and armour is the ‘final’ outer layer. I noticed the near-microscopic similarities between lace and chainmail – the ways in which we create layers and barriers between our ‘selves’ and the outer world. How do we attack and protect? What do we reveal, and what do we conceal?
Eventually, I gathered my research into a zine titled Lying Under Covers. A publication all about the truths and lies we tell ourselves before we fall asleep, confessions and fantasies. A poem introduces each chapter. These an be found here.