The John Lennon Wall

This is from a guide book, a place we will visit today if only to mourn once more:

John Lennon Wall

After is murder on December 8, 1980, John Lennon became a pacifist hero for many young Czechs. An image of John Lennon was painted on a wall in a secluded square opposite the French Embassy (there is a niche on the wall that looks like a tombstone), along with political graffiti and Beatles lyrics. Despite repeated coats of whitewash, the secret police never managed to keep it clean for long, and the Lennon Wall became a political focus for Prague youth (most Western pop music was banned by the communists, and some Czech musicians were even jailed for playing it).

Post-1989 weathering and lightweight graffiti ate away at the political messages and images, and little remained of Lennon but his eyes, but visiting tourists began making their own contributions. The wall is the property of the Knights of Malta, and they have repainted it several times,, but it soon gets covered with more Lennon images,peace messages and inconsequential tourist graffiti. In recent years Knights have bowed to the inevitable and now don’t bother to whitewash it anymore.

The imagery is potent. John Lennon was entering his home in New York when a hidden gunman stepped forward, crouched in military fashion, pumped five bullets into him, and then calmly sat down and read as he waited for police.

I don’t know what to make of Lennon the man. He was often angry and incoherent. His music was potent at times, and at other times merely a mush of drug-inspired lyrics. But Lennon the symbol has meaning for me. Somehow this complicated and confused man came to symbolize human freedom.

And this has more meaning for me than anything about him before: The communist culture could only paint over him, and he always reappeared. American culture murdered him, gone forever from life, but never from our memories.