Faculty of Design

Illustration

Isobel Woodiwiss

Where I Lay My Head

The queer experience is often constructed at a young age around media that is not queer in any way. However, many people still resonate with it because of their ability to read it in their own context. For me, that happened a lot with song lyrics. The band I heard most as a child was The Barenaked Ladies, and some songs – such as Lovers in a Dangerous Time – I read as explicitly queer until I was informed otherwise. For this project, I wanted to take a sentiment from one of the bands’ love songs and bring it into the lens I saw it through from a young age. The lyric I chose is “Where does the heart reside / if not where I lay my head?” From their song Home. I chose this specific lyric because I think it speaks to a natural state of love that LGBTQ+ identities are not always afforded in public perspective. This is where my queer friends and I stand – in a culture heavily entrenched in heteronormativity, looking for proof that our feelings are natural. And looking for that proof not only in new media, but also in media from our past, as a way of affirming the permanence of our identities. Where I Lay My Head is an expression of how easy love feels when it aligns holistically with identity.