Storm by Tim Minchin

[MiraiRonin]

Stef's recent conversation with a rabidly anti-empirical (if not flat out insane) drug user reminded me of this poem/animation by Tim Minchin, though I suspect the caller is somewhat less hot than Storm is purported to be. Transcript below the video.

 

 

STORM by Tim Minchin

 

In a North London top-floor flat,

 

all white walls, white carpet, white cat,

 

rice-paper partitions, modern art and ambitions,

 

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've just thrown us together for a favour

 

'cause this girl's just arrived from Australia

 

and she's 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,

 

'Cause I noticed the tip of the wing of a fairy

 

tattooed on that popular area just above the derriere

 

and when she says “I'm Saggitarian”

 

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 a 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 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 not 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 returned to live with Natural Medical Alternatives.”

 

 

And try as I like, a small crack appears in my diplomacy dike.

 

“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?

 

“Masparin? Basporin?

 

“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 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 mis-quothed,

 

or the fifth glass of wine I just quaffed,

 

but my diplomacy dike 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 OK 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 the dead would

 

“want to 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 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'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 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 want to 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 hippie 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 upon 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, 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 ten minutes back in time

 

“For all the chance you'll change your mind.”

 

[chrisdjmorgan]

Is this the call that had that one brilliant line where he admitted "I used to be rational, but then I took drugs" (or something very similar) and thought that was a good argument for hallucinogens? Possibly my favourite line in all of FDR

[MiraiRonin]

Thaaaaaat's the one. The one who kept saying "if you'd just take ten minutes out of your day and just try MDM" and things of that nature. I remember his description of having a trip where he talked to aliens about how to make an infinite power source and thinking "a super-smart alien race would not come up with this idea. However, an underachieving drug user who doesn't understand physics? Maybe."