My TED Talk:

You have to do it badly. If it is poetry, even more so, because there is no because. If you write like you were the best in the world, you are the worst because you pretend too hard. Too harsh, too. Why do you want to be the best? Is that because you are a lack or there is a lack in you that you feel like filling up all the time? Even when you are named the best, does that mean anything? What about those who are not named the best? What about those who are not even called the good? Do we have to be good in order to survive? Survive what? But poetry is freedom. It frees you from all the constraints, restraints and limitations of the world because of good, better, best. It doesn’t work like that in poetry. When you tell yourself to write the best poem in the world now, you will not get anywhere. You won’t even produce a single line. Best is the symbol of the worst oppression and suppression. It stops you from even producing the mediocrest work. Why don’t you say to yourself: I’m not good enough. I’m already bad. From time to time, I feel I have no abilities to do anything well. I am stifled by the competition around me. Everyone is pushed to a choking level. I don’t want to be a president, not even of a company, not even a class, let alone a country. All I ever want to do is a poet. And a bad poet at that. Why? I mean who can be that good without making a huge effort? And the point? Nothing guarantees that you won’t die. In fact everything guarantees that you do. I write without knowing what I write is good or bad. I write without wanting to know. Anything and everything are subject to judgement by other people anyway. Who has the autonomy to do what one likes to the ultimate degree of pleasing oneself? Why does one imprison oneself with the concepts, ideas, ideologies, judgments and confinements of other people? Aren’t there too many prisons already in this world? To be bad is to be free. To be bad is to be creative. To be bad is to be innovative. Marcel Duchamp is bad because he buys a readymade and presents it as art in a museum. Piero Manzoni is bad because he cans his own shit and sells it for millions of dollars after his death. Andres Serrano is bad because he makes ‘Piss Christ.’ Michael Jackson is bad because he makes an album titled, Bad. Maurizio Cattelan is bad because he creates Comedian out of a duck-taped banana. Banksy is bad because he self-destructs his own art. Ouyang Yu is bad because he writes a poem called ‘Bad Writing’. All histories are a continuous process of badness against goodness until it becomes good then badded again. It’s a process of keep saying ‘my bad’, ‘our bad’, ‘their bad’. I love bad. There’s nothing else I love. I only love bad. Let the good rot for all I care.