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| Dawoud Bey, Isabel, University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, 2003, Chromogenic print, Courtesy of the artist, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, and Gorney Bravin + Lee |
Audio:  (1.7MB mp3 file; 1 minute 27 seconds)
I can't smile on cue. I just don't have my own smile when I smile on cue, and I hate it when I have a fake smile, in a picture. So I don't smile. And then people always say that I'm being negative, but I just don't like to look stupid. Sometimes people think it means I'm in a bad mood, but I don't really care because it's not usually true. People think that I'm really blunt, and so, in a way that can be good, but also it sucks 'cause people think I'm mean when I'm not trying to be mean and I don't even notice that I offend people sometimes. And so that can be frustrating 'cause it will come back a week later in my face and they'll be like, "you made me so upset the other day, blah, blah"... and then it's like, "I didn't know, sorry, I didn't mean it that way." And so in a way I like that about myself, 'cause I hate it when people are two faced and lie, but in another sense it alienates me from people sometimes, because I don't know that I'm offending them. And, something most people don't see about me is that I, I think people think... like I was saying, people think I'm blunt, they also think that I am not sensitive to, like, them. So they think that since I often offend people accidentally, that I'm hard to, like, hurt my feelings, and people don't know that I'm actually kind'a shy. I don't spill my emotions... like sometimes my friends will say, "you never tell us anything. You listen to us and you're nice but you don't..." and I don't even notice that about myself, 'cause I do feel a lot of things, obviously, but I just don't express them to people that I'm not really close to, and I don't trust a lot, you know...
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