Happiness is a cluttered wall

I'd never much paid attention to the John Lennon Wall, a graffiti-filled symbol of freedom in the Mala Strana section of Prague near the Charles Bridge, after seeing it for the first time in the summer of 2011. "Why," I would ask myself or some poor colleague who happened to be there when the topic arose, "would a John Lennon wall have graffiti about nearly everything except, you know, John Lennon or the Beatles?"

Last night, I got that answer.

The wall is not about John Lennon.

"It was about pissing off the secret police."


That last quote came from a young man who had just completed spray-painting a silver image of Lennon on the wall. I don't know how old he was when the Velvet Revolution ended the Communist movement in November 1989, but with the passion he told the story, it's clear any Prague native knows that the graffiti means more than just paint to a lot of Prague residents.

The latest addition to the wall, as of 9:00ish last night.

The wall was first defaced during Communism as a symbol of people wanting to express themselves, particularly with messages and grievances that the Communist Party did not approve of. The secret police would have the graffiti cleaned the next day. Citizens would respond with more graffiti. The secret police had it cleaned again. It soon became a cat-and-mouse game between citizens who wanted to be able to express themselves and the government that wanted to stifle it.

Now, according to the man at the wall last night, all graffiti is allowed on the outside of the wall. He once had a project where he'd arrive at the wall every week to snap a photo, because it would always be different. There's been so much graffiti there that the original portrait of Lennon has long been covered up. The repression is gone, but the graffiti continues as a reminder that it's a freedom that wasn't always there.

Love (in Czech).

Interior of the nearby John Lennon Pub.