Creative Writing Wordshops May 2025

“Attention”, a voice began to call, and it was as though an oboe had suddenly become articulate. “Attention”, it repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. (Aldous Huxley, Island)

A Capful of Stories

In 1962, the year this novel was published, I entered Rhodes University as a firstyear student. It took years to integrate and practice the symbolic message of Huxley’s mynah birds. Here is part of a conversation between Will, a cynical journalist, shipwrecked on Pala, the utopia island and Susila, an inhabitant:

“ Is that your bird?” Will asked. She shook her head. “Mynahs are like the electric light…they don’t belong to anybody.”
“Why does he say those things?”
“Because somebody taught him, …”
“Why ‘Attention’? Why ‘Here and now?”
“Well …” She searched for the right words to explain the self-evident to
this strange imbecile. “That’s what you always forget, isn’t it? I mean, you
forget to pay attention to what’s happening. And that’s the same as not
being here and now.”