"Erase Everything" - Geoff Hendriks

I'm supposed to be studying but my brain has temporarily shut down from panic and lack of understanding. I decided in the time that it is rebooting I will write an entry about the phrase that inspired my blog. It's this badge: 

I got it from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York earlier on this year and have had it pinned to one of my handbags. I always get asked what it means every time someone sees it and to be honest I never really gave it any proper thought. I would normally just mutter something like, “You must erase everything in your life like the badge says,” or “I don’t know, that’s what Geoff Hendriks said.”

As I got this badge from an art museum I figured I had to look into it, like it's an artwork. My understanding of art is that we can all look at something and get our own interpretations from it. I still suck at getting my own interpretation, because my mind has been conditioned to see only a few alternatives not an expanse of ideas. Being at MoMA made me slightly uncomfortable because I realised I couldn't "see". Still unsure of what was right I went and checked out Geoff Hendriks. He’s an artist of course and he chose to paint sky imagery in everything he did. The mediums ranged from objects (as you’ll see in the picture below) to plays. 

Geoff Hendriks

Skygun, 1968

(Courtesy of Pavel Zoubok Gallery)

I still don’t know in what context he said, “Erase Everything” because that quote is hard to track on the internet. I would like to know what he meant. 

My interpretation of Geoff Hendriks’ “Erase Everything” quote is: In my ideal world I would “Erase Everything”, everything that made me unhappy or angry. It would be the final step in forgive and forget. I could create a new and better canvas to paint my life on if I could do this. Imagine being able to just start again? No grudges, no expectations of how things will fail, loving everyone and trusting everyone. Or I could erase things or people that I feel don’t fit in my life.

I carried on thinking about this, this magical life eraser, and then realised it would be stupid. This is my sometimes angry, rational side speaking. Sure I’d love to never be sad and be able to readily and quickly forgive people but if I kept erasing people’s mistakes I would become sad because of the same things all over again. What if I just kept erasing and erasing and eventually erased myself; kind of like rubbing a hole through paper or painting over mistakes until they form an unsightly thick layer on a canvas. What if everyone could use this eraser? Would we forget big things like World War 2 and repeat our mistakes? I don't believe there wouldn’t be any written records, it’s just people would forget how things like that made them feel and we need those bad feelings to keep things like that at bay. 

So when I thought of a blog name I immediately thought that I have to “Erase Nothing” and keep everything. Everything matters. I think there’s more value in happiness because we experience sadness and it would mean far more to ultimately forgive someone by choice rather than just forgetting or erasing them.