AN EVENING WITH PAUL KELLY

Paul Kelly had definite ideas about art and even about artists, especially twentieth-century ones. Indeed, he had definite ideas about a variety of subjects, including women. Trudi Keenan was beginning to find this out at first-hand as she sat in an armchair, a few yards in front of him, and listened to the flow of his definite ideas with a combination of bemusement and admiration. To her left, in another armchair, the artist Donald Connors was also listening to it, though he had heard much of it before and appeared to be showing signs of impatience with his principal guest. On his left, in the only remaining armchair, Patricia Connors was also listening to the oracle's pronouncements, though, to all appearances, with greater attentiveness than her husband. For the subject at issue was indeed women, and the two females present were, naturally enough, more interested in this than in anything else, especially since they were both relatively young and not unconscious of their attractiveness.

"As a rule," Kelly was saying, "women are more given to appearances than to essences, since of a predominantly sensuous disposition. Their principal duty in life, as they see it, is to keep the species going, not to direct that species on its course towards the transcendental Beyond. That, on the other hand, has to be done by the leading males, who pioneer mankind's advance towards the spiritual culmination of evolution. Women, by contrast, uphold the sensual aspects of life, and may consequently be said to stem from the Diabolic Alpha rather than, like men, to aspire towards the Divine Omega. And because they stem from the Diabolic Alpha, which, in the guise of stars, is the ultimate negativity, the ultimate agonised doing, they have a like-capacity for suffering, for negative living. One is almost tempted to say that they prefer negative emotions to positive ones; that, contrary to masculine procedures, they live for their sorrows."

There was a titter of disrespectful laughter from Trudi, the art critic's latest girlfriend, who found the idea slightly amusing, in spite of its inherent absurdity. Mrs Connors, however, had a more serious response on offer.

"It's probably true to suggest that we women do have a greater capacity for suffering than men," she conceded, "and that we bear-up to our trials and tribulations with greater fortitude, on the whole, than you do. Very few of us take to the bottle when we're under strain, whereas most men would doubtless go to pieces under adverse circumstances, if they didn't have some compensatory stimulant or woman to lean upon."

"That's putting it a little too cynically," Kelly averred, frowning slightly, "though there's certainly an element of truth in what you say. It isn't very often, at any rate, that one encounters women who are down-and-out. They appear to float better on life than men, to be buoyed-up on the current of life, which, considering they support and sustain it, needn't particularly surprise us. And this is because they're closer, in their physical and emotional constitutions, to the sun than men and are therefore more given to the apparent, the sensual, the stable, the natural. They burn up internally, like the sun, with negative emotions - doubts, worries, second-thoughts, fears, hatreds, resentments, suspicions, et cetera., and are consequently more prone to bad temper than men."

"One would think we were all born masochists!" Trudi interjected, casting her fellow-female a vaguely conspiratorial glance.

"Or sadists," said Mrs Connors.

"Certainly pessimists," Mr Connors volunteered, as he emerged from a long brown-study and proceeded to light himself a mild cigarette. "Women are generally more pessimistic or, depending on your viewpoint, realistic about things than men."

"That's true enough," Kelly confirmed, nodding briefly. "They're less easily swayed by imagination, primarily because they have less of it anyway."

"And would you say that they're more disposed to sunbathing than men?" Trudi inquired of her boyfriend.

"Yes, on the whole, I would," he answered. "Sunbathing for women is a form of sun-worship, a kind of pagan communion between the absolute supporter of all life on this planet and the relative supporters of it. Of course, men sunbathe too. But I'd say that women do so more shamelessly and enthusiastically, if not thoroughly, as well. It's almost a form of lesbianism they indulge in. For, although the sun isn't strictly female, still less feminine, it has a sensual essence which corresponds to the essence of woman, using the term 'essence' in the sense of fundamental nature rather than, as in a narrowly philosophical sense, with an implication of spirit or, better, soul. Thus while women, in relation to this latter context, may be said to reflect appearances over essences, their essence, in the former context, is one of sensuality."

"How confusing!" Mrs Connors objected, screwing-up her brows in disbelief. "You philosophers, with your paradoxical logic, are all the same!"

"Nonsense! It's perfectly clear to anyone with a lucid intelligence," the oracle retorted half-humorously. "The essence of woman is drawn to the sun, enabling women to soak-up more sensuality from its powerful rays and possibly draw additional emotional strength from it. Their natural sensuality is toned-up, as it were, by prolonged contact with the sun, and accordingly they're assisted to downward self-transcend in subconscious stupor."

"A quite pleasant form of relaxation," Mrs Connors declared, unscrewing her brows.

"So it might be," Kelly conceded. "But it's hardly conducive to the furtherance of the spiritual life! A time will come, I feel sure, when all forms of sunbathing will be considered undesirable and, consequently, no-one be encouraged to spend time lying around on beaches or in parks or wherever. Instead, they'll be encouraged to turn their back on the sun, so to speak, and get on with the infinitely more important task of developing their spirit, of cultivating the godly."

"Isn't he a spoilsport?" Trudi objected, turning to Patricia.

"A religious zealot would be nearer the truth!" the latter sneered in a deprecatory tone-of-voice.

"Not quite," Kelly responded, blushing faintly. "But I do have certain theories concerning the future path of evolution which I'd be loathe to contradict, as Donald well knows."

"Indeed I do," the artist confirmed, his lighted cigarette smouldering in his lap. "And, for the most part, eminently credible ones, too! I go along with them to the extent I'm able. For if we're eventually destined to attain to the transcendental Beyond, then it stands to reason that we'll have to clamp down on sunbathing at some point in the future. One can't indulge in solar sensuality and develop one's spirit at the same time! Dualism is gradually being superseded, after all."

"So it is," Kelly affirmed, anxious to return to the philosophical limelight again. "There can be only one way forward, and that's up through the spirit, not down through the flesh. Even the days of traditional marriage are numbered; though your marriage would seem to be one of the few exceptions, Don."

"Thank God for that!" Mrs Connors exclaimed on her husband's behalf.

"Frankly, God has nothing to do with it," averred Kelly, who was carried away by the momentum of his argument. "For the simple reason that, conceived in any ultimate sense, God is in the making, not an already-existent fact. No, it's the Devil, the influence of the sun and doubtless of stars in general, which cements marriages together. Love is a sensual phenomenon which is strongest where nature's influence is greatest, where there's a profusion of sensuous plant-life. Once one becomes accustomed to living in a big city for any length of time, however, one's capacity for love, or falling in love, is weakened and eventually reduced to a point where it either ceases to exist at all or only exists on a comparatively weak level - a level not guaranteed to cement marriages together for any length of time! For, without a strong sensuous influence, love begins to wither in the individual, to grow faint and fade away."

"How terrible!" Trudi opined.

"I don't agree," Kelly rejoined coolly. "For there's a great deal of difference between sensual love and spiritual love, between what is generally termed 'being in love' with someone and actually aspiring, through spiritual love, towards the eventual establishment of supreme being. Only the latter kind of love can eventually take man to his ultimate destiny in the bliss of transcendent spirit, not the former, which, by contrast, would keep him chained to the flesh, just as it keeps one chained to a particular individual when powerful. But these days, however, it's much less powerful than formerly and therefore marriages increasingly tend towards separation or divorce. The artificial influence, as it were, of the urban environment is a major factor in the growth-rate of divorce. Couples come unstuck more easily because the emotional cement which formerly bound people together is somewhat weaker or thinner than it used to be, and consequently they separate."

"I still think it's terrible," Trudi declared, unable to overcome her own feminine qualms. "The cities shouldn't have been allowed to become so large in the first place."

"Nonsense!" Kelly retorted. "If they weren't so big, we would still be nature's victims, as of old. Their very size is what guarantees us our future salvation in the transcendental Beyond. By contributing so significantly to the fall of sensual love, they have made the further development of spiritual love possible, and thus real evolutionary progress."

"But how can the break-up of so many marriages be equated with evolutionary progress?" Mrs Connors protested, coming to the assistance of her fellow female. "I just don't see your point."

"Neither do I," Trudi confessed.

Ah, it was difficult explaining things to these people! Paul Kelly was accustomed to encountering such incredulous opposition these days. It was the price one paid for being so radical.

"Well, let's just say that the age is becoming less dualistic and correspondingly more post-dualistic," he at length replied, doing his best to sound reasonable, "and that the demise of marriage is but one of several manifestations of this changing state-of-affairs. Dualism is being outgrown, and consequently men and women no longer live together on quite such a harmonious or complacent basis, on the whole, as previously. Sensual love is no longer binding them to one another, and so they wander between relationships more freely than ever before. They aren't enslaved to the sensual to the degree they used to be in the heyday, as it were, of marriage, but can develop a spiritual bias independently of matrimonial ties. Women are becoming masculinized to a point where many of them no longer desire to lead a traditional domestic or maternal lifestyle, and, by a like-token, men are becoming even more masculinized, even more intellectually and spiritually disposed. Consequently, the old dualism between the sexes is disappearing, disappearing, one might say, into the cult of unisex, where women dress in pants of one sort or another, like men. Women are increasingly being regarded as 'lesser men' rather than simply as women, like traditionally."

Mr Connors smiled to himself and vaguely nodded his head. "Perhaps the growth of homosexuality this century is another manifestation of this incipiently post-dualistic state-of-affairs?" he suggested, while stubbing-out the butt of his cigarette in a glass ashtray. "Homosexuality has become a fairly commonplace aspect of contemporary life, hasn't it?"

"So it would appear," Kelly admitted, ignoring the women's derogatory sniggers. "Which just goes to show that sexual relations between men have acquired, in the light of post-dualistic criteria, a respectability they wouldn't otherwise have had and certainly didn't have as recently as Oscar Wilde's time. They are somehow compatible with the masculine bias of modern civilization."

"A bias which you apparently don't share," Trudi commented, focusing her attention closely upon him.

"No, not as regards homosexuality," he confessed, blushing slightly in the process. "Maybe that's because I'm too much of an old-fashioned dualist in certain respects, and am therefore susceptible to the charms of women who, like yourself, are both very attractive and highly intelligent."

This time it was Trudi's turn to blush, and she did so generously, flattered, as she was, by her admirer's opinion.

"But apparently not so susceptible to them that you'd be capable of falling deeply in love and living with the same woman for the rest of your life," Mrs Connors observed in a suitably ironic tone.

"That's something I can't say for sure," Kelly responded. "Though since, with due respect to Trudi, I'm not deeply in love at present, I incline to that assumption, yes. It remains to be seen whether I shall ever get married at all."

"But you're not opposed to marriages breaking up," Mrs Connors rejoined, pursuing her old course at the expense, seemingly, of evolutionary progress.

It was a difficult allegation to answer, what with a married couple and a new girlfriend sitting in front of him, but Kelly made a brave attempt at doing so, nonetheless. "On a personal level, the tendency of so many modern marriages to collapse is bound to bring pain and suffering to the people concerned," he admitted, "and thereby evoke a degree of sympathy in us. But on an impersonal level the tendency of couples to separate can only be viewed as a good in the long run, because it testifies to a reduction in the traditional influence of egocentric possessiveness and personal selectivity, not to mention sensual enslavement to a particular person. 'What God has joined together let no man put asunder', say the priests at marriage ceremonies. But to what are they really referring by this word 'God'? I'll tell you what: to the Devil, the Cosmos, the Creator - anything but supreme being. God the Father is one thing, God the Holy Spirit quite another! Most people apparently don't yet appreciate that fact. But, increasingly these days, what the Devil has joined together men are putting asunder, which shows that they're at last making some real spiritual progress in life by turning more towards the eventual creation of a supreme level of being and away from worship of the creative Almighty. Of course, sensual love is still to some extent present, but in a growing number of cases it isn't strong enough to keep couples together for the whole of their lives, so they separate - some disillusioned by marriage, others in the false hope of finding a stronger love elsewhere."

"If you fail once you continue to fail," Mrs Connors averred, her dislike of Kelly's argument no less intense.

"Not necessarily," he countered. "Though failure in marriage may well lead to success in the cultivation of the spirit or in intellectual progress. One needn't look upon the break-up of so many marriages only from a negative point-of-view. There are degrees to everything, and this may well be but a stage on the road to complete liberation from the flesh and, hence, all forms of sexual activity - a liberation which will be reached when men attain to the culmination of evolution in discarnate spirituality, and thus become experiencers of Eternal Life. They're a long way from that blissful state-of-affairs at present, as you'll doubtless be aware. But the overcoming of dualism is an aspect of their struggle towards it."

"And hence the overcoming of women," Mrs Connors concluded huffily, a look of defiance in her dark eyes.

"Yes, there would seem to be no other course," Kelly confirmed, prompted by the integrity of his genius to draw the inevitable conclusion as to what evolutionary progress ultimately signified. "We live, as I've already said, in a post-dualistic society, and this society can only become even more post-dualistic in future, as we draw closer to the divine culmination of evolution. As a woman, you may not like the idea, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be happening. What happens must happen, for only through evolutionary progress towards the eventual creation of a supreme level of being does life acquire meaning and justification. As a stasis of perpetual dualism it would be absolutely meaningless, futile beyond words! Only continuous change lends it meaning and so justifies our presence here. But continuous change - what does that signify? It signifies - does it not? - the outgrowing of traditional patterns of behaviour and the acquirement, in their place, of new patterns. It means a time must come when what was once justified is no longer relevant but anachronistic, harmful to further growth, and thus subject to removal. Marriage, believe it or not, is no exception to this general rule. It isn't something that could or should last for ever, like Eternal Life, but something, on the contrary, that must give way to its logical successor in the progress of evolution - possibly to some communal sexual arrangement or, as is certainly the case at present, to a freer exchange of partners. And this in turn will give way to what stands above it on the next rung, so to speak, of the evolutionary ladder - namely to the widespread introduction of artificial methods of reproduction, reminiscent of Brave New World, which will result in a much greater freedom from the sensual. Eventually, life in the highest civilization will be so post-dualistic ... that there won't be any women in existence at all, since they'd be superfluous and a temptation to dualistic regression. Men will simply dedicate themselves to the important task of getting to the spiritual culmination of evolution via the path of Transcendental Meditation."

"Not forgetting that such a task will be facilitated by technology," Mr Connors interjected, recalling what he had already learnt from Kelly on a previous occasion. "Men will, by then, have been elevated to the status of so many meditating brains supported on artificial bodies, as it were, with artificial methods of keeping the brain alive, and most especially the new, or higher, brain."

"Absolutely," Kelly concurred, casting his artist friend an affirmative nod.

"The very thought of it makes me cringe," Trudi confessed, screwing-up her facial features in a demonstration of disgust.

"It does me too," Mrs Connors admitted, following suit.

"Naturally," Kelly rejoined. "But that's primarily because, as women, you're fundamentally appearance-over-essence, and thus more aligned with the sensual, the bodily, the apparent. You're society's born conservatives, opposing change to the extent you can. You're largely resigned to the world as it is, since the beauty of your natural bodies is quite acceptable to you. Needless to say, you wouldn't wish to be deprived, by advanced technology, of your physical assets. You put your chief pride in life in your appearance, not your essence, or spirit, which is no small wonder, since it's comparatively negative in relation to a man's spirit. Only men, as a rule, give precedence to the spirit, and you're a long way from being a man, even if both of you are somewhat masculinized females, like so many women these days, since intellectualized to an unprecedented extent. But no matter how far evolution masculinizes you, it can't literally turn you into men, changing the charge, as it were, of your spirit from negative to positive. Even the most spiritually-advanced women are still fundamentally female, with appearance-over-essence their chief characteristic. They're still slaves to their bodies, proud, if attractive, of their physical appearance, which plays a dominating role. So how could they be expected to approve of a technological strategy designed to free men from the flesh to an extent which resulted in their becoming artificially-supported meditating brains? How could they approve of the supersession of the natural body by an artificial one? They couldn't."

"Indeed not!" Mrs Connors exclaimed. "This whole idea strikes me as monstrous, if not positively insane!"

"That's how it strikes you," Mr Connors remarked, speaking directly to his wife for the first time all evening. "But it doesn't strike our genius friend here like that, he who has a much more objective and masculine view of it."

"To be sure," Kelly confirmed, blushing slightly for the compliment paid him by a man who, in his own sphere of creativity, wasn't entirely bereft of genius himself! Indeed, he might even have had as much genius as Piet Mondrian, a painter whom Kelly regarded, in common with many others, as the foremost artist of his generation. "Yet because it will strike the average female as monstrous, it stands to reason that women won't be expected to follow the male lead," he continued. "It stands to reason that any society in which such advanced technology was to be found could only be supermasculine, with essence triumphing over appearance to a quite incredible extent. Women, however, would have been gradually phased-out of society in the meantime, which, to some extent, is already happening, as the masculinization of the female well attests. Only men could be expected to continue evolving, in accordance with their spiritual predilections. And this evolution would inevitably entail their sacrificing physical appearance to essence, which could only be in their deepest spiritual interests. For women, on the other hand, such a sacrifice would be their greatest loss and destruction as females. However, have no fear! They won't be obliged to make it. Only men will attain to the culmination of evolution, women having been genetically phased-out of society some time before."

"It's mad, Paul!" Mrs Connors protested, unable to reconcile herself to the transcendental scope of Kelly's mind. "How can you say such a thing?"

"Modesty forbids me to confess," the art critic replied facetiously. "Yet the fact is that a view which tends to endorse a perpetual stasis of behaviour or custom would be madder, absolutely so! Life, remember, is change, and if it's to continue a time must come when women cease to exist and men are elevated to the quasi-divine status of artificially-supported brains. Evolution can't come to a halt in front of the natural body, like a horse in front of a solid wall. It must lead to man's overcoming the body and progressing beyond it, progressing to his ultimate salvation in the spirit. For the path of evolution, I need hardly remind you, leads away from nature, whether internal or external, towards the self. And, in leading away from nature, it can only lead towards the supernatural. Progress is a fact, whether or not you approve of it. The modern city has enabled us to push external nature away from ourselves to an extent quite unprecedented in the history of our evolution. The future city will doubtless enable us to progress still further in the direction of the supernatural, by causing us to push nature back even more, to thin out whatever of the natural is left in the city. Eventually, as recipients of the highest possible civilization, we'll completely escape nature's influence and attain to the transcendental culmination of evolution, attain to an area of space which will be at the farthest possible remove from the sensuous influence of stars, and which traditional idealists call Heaven. Yes, such a Heaven will surely come about, though not, however, following death, as Christians have believed, but at the climax of evolution, following the post-human millennium - a period of the highest civilization which will have been raised on the solid foundations of world socialism. Yes, socialism coupled to transcendentalism will lead to the millennial Beyond, and that, in turn, to the evolutionary culmination of life in supreme beingfulness. That will be a time worth looking forward to, believe me!"

"Perhaps for people like you," Mrs Connors corrected sarcastically.

"Naturally," Kelly admitted, offering her a faintly ingratiating smile. "But I can sympathize with you to some extent, especially in light of my earlier remarks about women."

"Can you indeed?" Mrs Connors responded, and, turning towards Trudi, she said: "Isn't he kind?"

"Awfully," agreed the latter, who was privately of the opinion that, despite his considerable intelligence, Paul Kelly was a conceited jerk whose view of evolution, while broadly credible in a paradoxical kind of way, was woefully misguided in regard to gender, and just another example of male chauvinism. It wasn't women who would be left behind, she reflected, but men!