{"id":477,"date":"2019-10-30T14:53:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T14:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/?p=477"},"modified":"2019-10-30T14:58:16","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T14:58:16","slug":"the-allure-of-the-myth-why-we-shouldnt-allow-a-good-story-to-get-in-the-way-of-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/the-allure-of-the-myth-why-we-shouldnt-allow-a-good-story-to-get-in-the-way-of-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"The allure of the myth: why we shouldn’t allow a good story to get in the way of reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently I\u2019ve been reworking a poem I wrote some years ago titled Mole Man was my landlord!<\/em> You may have heard of Mole Man: Bill Lyttle, the eccentric Hackney householder, who caused a serious case of subsidence after 40 years of burrowing beneath his property. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem is about how we mythologise ourselves and\nothers. Of course, it\u2019s all too easy to create myths around intriguing\ncharacters (and tempting to make ourselves appear intriguing in the process).\nBut the reality of Bill\u2019s house was actually quite prosaic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time I rented a studio flat in his basement, I\nwas 20, had recently arrived in London and was trying to survive on my wages\nfrom a part time job. My fellow tenants were mostly students and resting actors.\nNone of us had much money, and Bill\u2019s rents were cheap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He lived in the rest of the basement. My flat was\ndivided from his by the flimsiest of partitions and a makeshift plywood door.\nThe door was secured by bolts on my side. Before I moved in, I asked him to\nremove them and fix the door shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He did. But sometimes I\u2019d come home late at night to\nfind he\u2019d been in my flat, unscrewed the fixings and left a note saying, \u201cWhy\nnot come through and have a drink?\u201d I\u2019d have to find a screwdriver and resecure\nmy space before going to bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes \u2013 despite his comedic burrowing \u2013 Mole Man wasn\u2019t\na mythic creature at all. He was just another seedy slum landlord \u2013 albeit one\nwith an unusual hobby. Yet I chose to focus on the mythical elements of his\nstory in my poem. Why? Because Mole Man was my landlord!<\/em> sounds more\nentertaining and is perhaps more likely to be read than My landlord was a\ncreep.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we want a text to be read, then it needs to be engaging. But as readers and writers, we shouldn\u2019t allow the allure of a myth to blind us to the serious issues that lie beneath it. In the case of my poem, the serious issue is unfit housing \u2013 which you\u2019ll find in a one-line stanza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mole Man was my landlord!<\/strong>
 
Every so often, I walk people
past the house.
A claim to fame never hurts.
 
Bill \u2013 as he was known then,
back in the days when he
advertised his rooms in Loot \u2013
had a yellow Citro\u00ebn Diane
and an opera-singing ex,
 
which accounted for the piano
in my basement flat but not,
perhaps, the gas-fired fridge
and the lack of a kitchen floor.
 
I used to cook ankle deep in earth.

He was already burrowing.   
Next to my front door
was the entrance
to an underground sauna.
 
Or so he said.
I never gave it a try.
 
Years later, a chasm appeared
in the road above,
swallowing a passing bus,
three parked cars
and a small boy on a bicycle.
 
You\u2019ve heard \u2013 of course \u2013
of poetic licence.
I renew mine every year.
 
Now, would you like to see the cuttings? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I\u2019ve been reworking a poem I wrote some years ago titled Mole Man was my landlord! You may have heard of Mole Man: Bill Lyttle, the eccentric Hackney householder, who caused a serious case of subsidence after 40 years of burrowing beneath his property. The poem is about how we mythologise ourselves and others. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felicityparsons.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}