The Lennon Wall, Prague

“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.” John Lennon.

Maybe I’m one of the jaded new millennial types, but I’m certainly not someone who can post this quotation without a wince and a smirk. Although the sixties are held up by the Baby Boomers as an unparalleled era of creativity and optimism, for those who weren’t there at the time, it is the pomposity of the ‘peace and love’ message that sticks in the throat, more than its continued relevance. For those born afterwards, the sixties will be as much about the iconography of its idols, the watered down rhetoric and the hippy wigs in Woolworths as any original idea of love and peace. Of course Lennon also told us that the dream was over.

This is perhaps best exemplified by copying and pasting the quotation above by John Lennon into a search engine and see it pop up in any number of ‘inspirational’ websites. The ‘message’ of the sixties has become poster in a sixth former’s bedroom, a t-shirt at best. I love the music, but there has always seemed something - at best – naïve about the sixties and – at worst – disingenuous. The bums lost, but most of the hippies went into management.

It is with a healthy amount of cynicism that I approach the Lennon Wall on Velkopřevorské náměstí in Prague, not far from the Charles Bridge. Since the 80s it has  been a space for Lennon-inspired graffiti and a spot for Euro travellers to leave their mark. Paintings and stencils of the man himself join a host of lyrics and quotations.

The quantity of Lennon faces and quality of the graffiti will depend on when you are there. On the day I visit there are fewer paintings of Lennon than on photos of the wall I have seen on the Internet but this gives prominence to the ones that are there.

There are also a lot of lyrics. A ‘God is a Concept’ stencil dominates the wall and has been sprayed on at various intervals.

God is probably one of my favourite Lennon songs. My fiancée loves it too. She has a habit of ending her otherwise upbeat mixtapes with it as a final devastating blow. It has always reminded me of the end of the Beatles. In the song Lennon rejects belief in any religious, political or musical icon for a quiet belief in himself and in Yoko.

“I was the Walrus
But now I’m John
and so dear friends

you’ll just have to carry on.
The Dream is over.”

It offers quite a fatalistic message. John Lennon always rejected and ridiculed the vast importance attributed to the Beatles. The message of God, like his controversial and often misunderstood comment that Beatles were more popular than Jesus, seems to be that people have to be responsible for themselves and should not put their faith in false idols. 

The ‘God is a Concept’ stencil sits uncomfortably on the wall and reminds me of the all the ways in which Lennon would have been amused by it and withering of any message of peace and love that placed him as its figurehead. It he was alive today, I imagine that he would only have had acerbic remarks towards those who regarded him as a legend. I imagine him getting into the sort of situations that Graham Chapman got into in Life of Brian. Although Lennon was in earnest when he said love and peace was not a cliché, he was scornful of those who followed his words unquestioningly.

The stencil is also inaccurate. In the song, Lennon is not saying that God is a concept, but that God is a concept by which we measure our pain. Stripped of their context, cherry picked or isolated, the lyrics sprayed or written on the wall take on new and individual meanings. I start looking for other examples and find plenty. There are Lennon lyrics,

a few from Paul McCartney,

George Harrison,

Ringo’s holler,

and even David Bowie’s Heroes, which reminds me of another more famous wall.

Photo by photo I begin to feel overwhelmed. The wall says nothing about John Lennon but says everything about the choices people have made, what they have chosen to share and what the power of the Beatles music says to them. The graffiti is often great, but what move me more are the temporary, the fleeting and the scribbled post-its.

Some are stuck to the wall by whatever can be found in a handbag.

Some are passive aggressive.

Some are less serious.

Sure the wall is a tourist trap, but no one is coordinating it and no one, apart from the Knights of Malta who own it, are giving permission and no one is influencing its evolution. Whatever is sprayed on today will not be there tomorrow. 

It is not all peace and love. In the 80s under the communist regime of Gustáv Husák, students used the wall as a space to air grievances. There is a way of seeing the wall as a form of resistance, but nowadays the messages are predominantly on the subject of love.

I’m a Dreamer too in a speech bubble sums it up for me. The wall says nothing about Lennon, it will not secure eternal love and peace and it will do nothing to keep the sixties alive. But it does allow anyone to contribute a message of love and hope, whether silly, earnest or trite, for at least a few days. The dream is over but the wall gives the space and the community for dear friends to carry on.