Tim Minchin: how my beat poem took the world by Storm

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/06/tim-minchin-poem-storm-the-animated-movie-youtube

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My 2006 solo show, So Rock, included a very short song with a very long title: If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife), a 90-second long refutation of the plausibility of astrology, psychics, homeopathy and an interventionist God. I found the titular quote in Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, and, inspired by James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge, which offers a prize pot to anyone who can satisfactorily demonstrate paranormal ability, structured the song as a bet.

People seemed to like that song, and I loved playing it, but I was aware that it was merely an assertion, not an argument. So in 2008, I set out to expand the ideas in Take My Wife into a piece that justified itself a bit more. I had said a lot about religion already, so I was keen to address some of the non-evidence-based claims outside religion. I wrote in my Ideas document: “a poem/rant about the crazy/harmful shit people believe. Alt Med, psychics etc.” And that was that, for a bit.

The idea to write the piece in the form of a Socratic dialogue came to me after a dinner party, at which I had stumbled into a conversation with a person who dug on homeopathy. My wife Sarah and I had been invited to the north London apartment of a dear friend of mine, a wonderful Australian actor who we’ll call Kate, because, well, that’s her name. We were joined by another couple: also Australian, much more hip and arty than us, very good-looking. The lady half of the couple – let’s call her Jane, because I honestly don’t remember her name – seemed nice, but a bit full-on: early in the evening she went on a rant about what a shithole our mutual hometown of Perth is, which set me a little on edge. (I don’t mind if you dislike a place, but tarring 1.5 million people with a single, poorly made brush is how wars start.)

That aside, it was all pretty pleasant, until at about 11pm – when I was just about to suggest to Sarah that we head home – I made the mistake of mentioning homeopathy. Equal to Jane’s hatred of Perth was her love for ol’ Samuel Hahnemann’s watery elixirs, and she began a lengthy advocacy, explaining to us with condescending patience the techniques and theories behind ultra-dilutions and all that jizz.

That night, however, there was to be no rant from me. One of the main differences between the protagonist in this poem and the real me is that my “diplomacy dyke” pretty much never cracks. I am a coward. Or a gentleman. Or both.

So I went to great lengths to ensure Jane felt her ideas were respected, and I didn’t try to mount any defence of science at all. People feel bullied if you stab their sacred cows, and I don’t like feeling like a bully, and didn’t want the evening to end on a sour note. Besides, you gotta pick ya battles, and Jane showed no interest at all in hearing talk of placebo, cherry-picking, or false causal correlations. (In fact, I’ve learned the hard way over the years that most people don’t get off on logical fallacies like I do. Sigh.)

So there was no confrontation. Nor, for that matter, was there anyone called Storm. And poor old Jane only talked about homeopathy; she was not the paragon of evidence-free thinking that her fictionalised self, Storm, was to become. But it was a starting point.

I still have my first draft of Storm. The document is labelled “Hippy” although the title at the top of the page is simply “Dinner”. It is 15 pages long and begins with a list:

PsychicsReikiCollective ConsciousnessMayan CalendarChiropracticAcupunctureVaccines/ AutismEnemas

(Ahhhh, enemas. How sad they didn’t make the final cut. Maybe that’s my next poem.)

That early version of the poem is wide-ranging and unfocused – it takes a page just to describe the actress and her house, and has whole angry verses on why homeopaths who offer malaria vaccine alternatives should go to jail, while accusing those who promote the false dichotomy of western and eastern medicine of racism.

It needed to be trimmed. Though I’ve never been shy of testing my audiences’ patience, I knew a beat poem about science that goes on for over a quarter of an hour was going to stretch even the most stoic fans.

I also realised that there’s a limit to how much straw you can stuff in a straw man before he is no longer shaped like a believable man.

But more importantly, I believe that it is valuable to complement any criticism of evidence-free thinking with an appeal to earthly beauty. People who claim to be “spiritual” seem to think that a humanist world view is cynical, sad or cold, and addressing this misconception is, whether we like it or not, an important part of communicating these ideas. I knew that if the piece was too ranty, broad and long, I would forfeit the possibility of writing something that resolves – like all good stuff – in love.

Storm was a pretty weird way to end a comedy show, but that’s what I did for two years, as I toured Ready for This? around the UK and Australia. Then Tracy King and DC Turner told me they wanted to animate my poem. They were asking for nothing but permission. They didn’t want to make money out of it. They just wanted to help me spread the message. So – like I always do when someone offers to enhance my work for free – I said yes. After two years’ work, Storm the Animated Movie was uploaded to YouTube in April 2011. To date it’s been viewed around three million times.

I wrote Storm because I thought it would be funny, because I needed material, because I’m incredibly interested in how people form ideas and the way these ideas affect others, and because I passionately believe we need to find more attractive ways to teach young people how to think critically. The superhuman dedication shown by Tracy and Dan, and the wonderful support of the community of humanists, sceptics, secularists, scientists and atheists worldwide has turned a poem about a slightly annoying dinner party into something of a critical-thinking anthem ... and an incredible source of joy and pride for me.

• Join Tim Minchin for a live streamed Q&A on Monday 6 October (7 – 8pm), by purchasing a limited special launch edition of Storm from online retailer Bookomi for £12.99: www.bookomi.com/storm. This is an edited extract from the introduction to Storm by Tim Minchin with DC Turner and Tracy King, published on 16 October 2014 by Orion in paperback, £12.99, and eBook, £6.99.