STORM by Tim Minchin, 2008.

In a North London top floor flat,
All white walls, white carpet, white cat.
Rice paper partition, Modern art And Ambition

The host's a physician,
Lovely 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.
The girl's just arrived from Australia,
And she's moved to North London,
And she's a 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,
As 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 Sagittarius!"

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 light-hearted,
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 unhappily 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 begging 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 the second floor.

The food is delicious,
And Storm whilst avoiding all meat,
Happily sits and eats,
As 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,
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 an enemy,
They promote drug dependency,
At the cost of the natural remedies,
That are all our bodies need,
They're immoral and driven by greed,
Why take drugs when herbs can solve it?
Why do 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 we came to tea,
I took a natural remedy,
Derived from the bark of a willow tree.
It's a painkiller, virtually side-effect free.
It's got a, a weird name,
Darling, what was it again?
Maspirin?
Baspirin? Oh, yeah -
Aspirin!
Which I paid about a buck for,
Down at the local drugstore.

The debate briefly abates,
As my hosts collect plates.
But as they return with dessert,
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
Could be held back no more.

Look up, Storm, So I don't need 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
To hear God's demands,
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 me you're in touch with the other side?
I think that's fundamentally sick.
Do I 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?
Or are you still so stunned
by circus tricks,
That we think the dead would
Wanna talk to pricks like John Edward?

Storm, to her credit,
Despite my derision
Keeps firing off cliches
With startling precision
Like a sniper using
Bollocks for ammunition.

You're so sure of your position,
But you're just close-minded,
I think you'll find tat
Your FAITH in science and tests,
Is just as blind as the
faith of any fundamentalists,

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,
I will change my mind,
I will spin on a fucking dime.
I'll be as embarassed 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 is 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's 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 mystery, 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 on Oprah,
And Interview Deepak Chopra.

If you must 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 water slide!
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 might not be a supernatural,
so blow your hippy noodle,
that you'd 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,
Whatever, That's okay.

But, here's what gives me a hard-on,
I'm 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, of 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 ten minutes back in time
For all the chance you'll change your mind.