Storm - Tim Minchin

Inner North London, top floor flat

All white walls, white carpet, white cat

Rice paper partitions

Modern art and ambition

The host’s a physician

Bright bloke, has his own practice

His girlfriend’s an actress

An old mate of ours from home

And they’re always great fun

So to dinner we’ve come

The fifth guest is an unknown

The hosts have just thrown

Us together for a favour

Cause this girl’s just arrived from Australia

And has moved to North London

And she’s the sister of someone

Or has some connection

As we make introductions

I’m struck by her beauty

She’s irrefutably fair

With dark eyes and dark hair

But as she sits

I admit I’m a little bit wary

Because I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy

Tattooed on that popular area

Just above the derrière

And when she says «I'm Sagittarian»

I confess a pigeonhole starts to form

And is immediately filled with pigeon

When she says her name is Storm

Conversation is initially bright and lighthearted

But it’s not long before Storm gets started:

«You can’t know anything

Knowledge is merely opinion»

She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon

Vis-à-vis

Some unhippily

Empirical comment made by me

«Not a good start», I think

We’re only on pre-dinner drinks

And across the room, my wife

Widens her eyes

Silently begs me: «Be nice»

A matrimonial warning

Not worth ignoring

So I resist the urge to ask Storm

Whether knowledge is so loose-weave

Of a morning

When deciding whether to leave

Her apartment by the front door

Or the window on her second floor

The food is delicious and Storm

Whilst avoiding all meat

Happily sits and eats

While the good doctor slightly pissedly

Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history

When Storm suddenly insists:

«But the human body is a mystery!

Science just falls in a hole

When it tries to explain the nature of the soul»

My hostess throws me a glance

She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance

That I’ll be off on one of my rare but fun rants

But I shan’t, my lips are sealed

I just want to enjoy the meal

And although Storm is starting to get my goat

I have no intention of rocking the boat

Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle

Because — like her meteorological namesake —

Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:

«Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy

They promote drug dependency

At the cost of the natural remedies

That are all our bodies need

They are immoral and driven by greed

Why take drugs

When herbs can solve it?

Why use chemicals

When homeopathic solvents

Can resolve it?

I think it’s time we all return to live

With natural medical alternatives.»

And try as I like

A small crack appears

In my diplomacy dyke.

«By definition,» I begin

«Alternative Medicine,» I continue

«Has either not been proved to work

Or been proved not to work

Do you know what they call alternative medicine

That’s been proved to work?

Medicine.»

«So you don’t believe

In any natural remedies?»

«On the contrary, Storm;

actually:

Before I came to tea

I took a remedy

Derived from the bark of a willow tree

A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free

It’s got a weird name

Darling, what was it again?

Maspirin?

Baspirin?

Oh yes, aspirin!

Which I paid about a buck for

Down at the local drugstore.»

The debate briefly abates

As my hosts collect plates

But when they return with desserts

Storm pertly asserts

«Shakespeare said it first:

There are more things in heaven and earth

Than exist in your philosophy

Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality

It doesn’t explain love or spirituality

How does science explain psychics?

Auras, the afterlife, the power of prayer?»

I’m becoming aware

That I’m staring

I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped

In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap

Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed

Or the fifth glass of wine I just quaffed

But my diplomacy dyke groans

And the arsehole held back by its stones

Can be held back no more:

«Look, Storm, sorry, I don’t mean to bore ya

But there’s no such thing as an aura!

Reading auras is like reading minds

Or tea leaves, or star signs, or meridian lines

These people aren’t plying a skill

They’re either lying or mentally ill!

Same goes for people who claim they can hear God’s demands

Or spiritual healers who think they’ve got magic hands

«By the way

Why do we think it’s okay

For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?

Isn’t that totally fucked in the head

Lying to some crying woman whose child has died

And telling her you’re in touch with the other side?

I think that’s fundamentally sick

Do we need to clarify here that there’s no such thing as a psychic?

«What, are we fucking two?

Do we actually think that Horton heard a Who?

Do we still believe that Santa brings us gifts?

That Michael Jackson didn’t have facelifts?

Are we still so stunned by circus tricks

That we think that the dead would

Wanna talk to pricks

Like John Edward?»

Storm, to her credit, despite my derision

Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision

Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition

«You're so sure of your position

But you’re just closed-minded

I think you’ll find

That your faith in science and tests

Is just as blind

As the faith of any fundamentalist.»

«Wow, that’s a good point, let me think for a bit…

Oh wait, my mistake, that’s absolute bullshit.

Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed;

Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved

If you show me that, say, homeopathy works

Then I will change my mind

I will spin on a fucking dime

I’ll be as embarrassed as hell

Yet I will run through the streets yelling

'It's a miracle!

Take physics and bin it!

Water has memory!

And whilst its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice seems infinite

It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!'

«You show me that it works and how it works

And when I’ve recovered from the shock

I will take a compass and carve 'Fancy That' on the side of my cock!»

Everyone is just staring now

But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down

So I figure, in for a penny, in for a pound:

«Life is full of mysteries, yeah

But there are answers out there

And they won’t be found

By people sitting around

Looking serious

And saying 'Isn't life mysterious?'

Let’s sit here and hope

Let’s call up the fucking Pope

Let’s go watch Oprah

Interview Deepak Chopra

«If you wanna watch telly, you should watch Scooby Doo

That show was so cool

Because every time there was a church with a ghoul

Or a ghost in a school

They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?

The fucking janitor or the dude who ran the waterslide

Because throughout history

Every mystery

Ever solved has turned out to be

Not magic

«Does the idea that there might be knowledge

Frighten you?

Does the idea that one afternoon

On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you

Frighten you?

Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural

So blow your hippy noodle

That you would rather just stand in the fog

Of your inability to Google?

«Isn't this enough?

Just this world?

«Just this beautiful, complex

Wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?

How does it so fail to hold our attention

That we have to diminish it with the invention

Of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?

If you’re so into your Shakespeare

Lend me your ear:

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily

To throw perfume on the violet is just fucking silly

Or something like that

Or what about Satchmo?!

I see trees of green

Red roses too

And fine, if you wish to

Glorify Krishna and Vishnu

In a post-colonial, condescending

Bottled-up and labeled kind of way

Then whatever, that’s okay

But here’s what gives me a hard-on:

I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon

I have one life, and it is short

And unimportant

But thanks to recent scientific advances

I get to live twice as long

As my great great great great uncleses and auntses

Twice as long to live this life of mine

Twice as long to love this wife of mine

Twice as many years of friends and wine

Of sharing curries and getting shitty

At good-looking hippies

With fairies on their spines

And butterflies on their titties

«And if perchance I have offended

Think but this and all is mended:

We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time

For all the chance you’ll change your mind.»