Storm chords by Tim Minchin
Verse 1
Am
This is a nine- minute beat poem.
F
Am
It's called, "Storm"
Verse 2
Am
Inner North London, top floor flat,
F#
Em
C
All white walls, white carpet, white cat,
Am
Rice paper partitions,
C
modern art and am bition
G
The host's a physician,
Bright bloke,
Am
has his own practice
Em
His girlfriend's an actress,
Dm
C
an old mate of ours from home
Dm
E
Am
And they're always great fun,
so to dinner we've come.
Verse 3
Am
The 5th guest is an unknown,
Em
The hosts have just thrown us
together for a favour
Dm
C
'Cause this girl's just
arrived from Australia
Dm
And she's moved to
Em
North London
And she's the sister of someone or
Am
has some connection.
Verse 4
Am
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 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
G#
F#
when she says her name is Storm.
Verse 5
Am
Conversation is initially bright
F#
E
and light hearted
C
But it's not long before Storm
Am
gets started:
C
"You can't know anything,
Am
knowledge is merely opinion!"
She opines,
over her Cabernet Sauvignon,
C
Am
Vis- à- vis some un
E
Am
C
hippily empirical comment by me.
Verse 6
C
"Not a good start" I think,
Bm
Am
C
We're only on pre- dinner drinks,
Am
And across the room,
Eb
my wife widens her eyes,
Am
Dm
C
B
Silently begs me: "Be nice!"
C
Em
A matrimonial warning,
Am
E
not worth ignoring
Am
So I resist the urge to ask Storm
F#
Whether knowledge is so loose-
Am
weave of a morning when
Deciding whether to leave her
apartment by the front door
Dm
D
Or the window on her second floor.
B
The food is delicious and Storm,
Verse 7
F
Whilst avoiding all meat
G
happily sits and eats
Dm
As the good doctor,
F
C
Slightly pissedly holds court on some
Dm
D
Dm
Anachronistic aspect
C
of medical history
B
Em
F
When Storm suddenly
G
insists:
F
"But the human body is a
mystery!"
"Science just falls in a hole when it
Tries to explain the the nature
Am
of the soul."
Verse 8
My hostess throws me a glance.
F#
She, like my wife,
B
knows there's a chance
Bm
B
I'll be off on one of my rare
Am
C
but fun rants but I shan't
G
My lips are sealed,
Am
I just wanna enjoy the meal
Em
E
Am
And al though Storm
E
is starting to get my goat
Am
I have no intention of rocking
Em
the boat
C
B
Although it's becoming a bit of a wrestle
Bm
D
Am
Because like her meteorolo
gical namesake,
Storm has no such concerns
F
for our vessel:
Verse 9
"Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy,
F#
F
They promote drug dependency
at the cost of the natural remedies
That are all our bodies need
F#
F
F#
They are im moral and driven by greed.
Why take drugs when herbs
can solve it?
Bm
Why use chemicals when homeopathic
F#
solvents can resolve it?
I think it's time we all
Bm
G
Return- to- live with natural
D#
medical alternatives."
B
And try as I like,
Verse 10
Am
B
a small crack appears in
D#m
B
Am
my diplomacy- dike.
"By definition," I begin,
C
B
F
"Alternative medicine," I continue,
C
Dm
"Has either not been proved to work,
Bm
F#
or been proved not to work.
E
Do you know what they call
Am
Alternative medicine that's been
Bm
proved to work?
Am
Medicine."
Verse 11
Am
"So you don't believe in any natural
remedies?"
C
Am
"On the contrary Storm, actually Before we came
Verse 12
to tea,
D
I took a natural remedy derived
G
from the bark of a willow tree
Am
A painkiller that's virtually
Em
side- ef fect free
Dm
C
It's got a weird name, darling,
Dm
Em
what was it again?
Am
C
M- masprin? Basprin? Oh
yeah! Asprin!
Bm
Which I paid about a buck for down
Am
at the local drugstore.
Verse 13
Dm
The debate briefly abates
Am
as my hosts collect plates
E
Em
But as they return with desserts
Am
Storm pertly asserts:
G
"Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in heaven and
Em
Am
Earth than ex ist in your philosophy.
G
Science is just how we're
C
trained to look at reality,
Em
Am
It doesn't explain love
G
or spirituality.
Em
How does science explain psychic
Am
s? Auras?
The afterlife? The power of prayer?"
F#m
I'm becoming aware that I'm
Verse 14
staring,
Am
C
I'm like a rabbit
Am
Suddenly trapped in the blinding
C
G
headlights of vacuous crap.
Am
G
Maybe it's the Hamlet she just
Em
Dm
misquothed
C
Em
Or the sixth glass of wine I just quaffed
Am
But my dip lomacy dike groans
C
And the arsehole held back by its stone
Bm
Am
Dm
s can be held back no more:
F
G
"Look, Storm, Sorry I don't mean
Verse 15
Am
to bore you
G
F
but there's no such thing as an aura!
Am
Reading Auras is like reading minds or
B
Bm
A#
Tea- leaves or star- signs
or meridian lines
Am
G
These people aren't applying a skill,
F
G
Am
They're either lying or mentally ill.
B
Same goes for people who claim they
D
Dm
hear God's demands
Am
F#
And spiritual healers who
think they've magic hands.
F
E
By the way, why
Verse 16
Am
D#m
do we think it's okay for
F#
People to pretend they
Bm
B
can talk to the dead?
F
Em
Am
Isn't that totally fucked in the head?
D#
D#m
Lying to some crying
Am
G
woman whose child has died
B
F
And telling her you're in touch
with the other side?
G#
Am
I think that's fundamentally sick
G
C
F
Do we need to clarify here that there's
Bb
no such thing as a psychic?
Am
What are we, fucking two?
Verse 17
Am
G
Do we actually think that
Gm
Bb
Horton Heard a Who?
Ebm
Am
Do we still believe that Santa
F#
G
brings us gifts?
B
That Michael Jackson didn't
Bb
have facelifts?
Am
G#
Are we still so stunned by
G#m
B
circus tricks that we think
That the dead would wanna talk
Am
to pricks like John Edwards?
G
Storm to her credit
Verse 18
F#
despite my derision
F
Am
keeps firing off clichés
G
F#
F
With startling precision like a sniper using
Dm
C
bollocks for ammunition
Verse 19
B
Bm
"You're so sure of your position
A#
F
but you're just closed- minded
G
D
I think you'll find that your
F#
F
faith in science and
Am
G
Tests is just as blind as the faith
F#
of any fundamentalist"
F
"Wow that's a good
Verse 20
point,
let me think for a bit.
Oh wait, my mistake,
that's absolute bullshit.
F#
F
Am
D#m
Science adjusts it's views
F#
based on what's observed.
B
F
Am
Faith is the denial of observation
D#m
so that Belief can be preserved.
G#m
F#
B
F
If you show me that, say, homeopathy works,
G#
Am
then I will change my mind
F#dim
B
I'll spin on a fucking dime
F
Am
I'll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
G
'It's a miracle! Take
F#
Bb
physics and bin it!
Eb
Water has memory!
Am
G
And while it's memory of a long
B
Lost drop of onion juice
E
Am
seems Infinite
Dm
G#
It somehow for gets all the poo
G#m
B
it's had in it!'
Verse 21
Am
You show me that it works
D#
and how it works
Am
G#
And when I've recovered
from the shock
B
I will take a compass and carve 'Fancy
That' on the side of my cock."
Verse 22
Everyone's just staring now,
But I'm pretty pissed and I've
dug this far down,
So I figure, in for penny,
Am
in for a pound:
Dm
"Life is full of mys
Verse 23
Eb
teries,
E
Dm
yeah
C
B
C
But there are an swers out there
Dm
E
Am
And they won't be found by
E
F#
people sitting around
G#m
B
Looking serious and saying 'Isn't
G#m
B
F#
life mysterious?'
'Let's sit here and hope.
Let's call up the fucking Pope.
Dm
Am
Let's go watch Oprah interview
C
Deepak Chopra.'
F
If you wanna watch tele, you should
Verse 24
F#
watch Scooby Doo.
F
Dm
D#
That show was so cool
F
because every time there
C
Am
Was a church with a ghoul or a
Dm
ghost in a school
F
B
They looked beneath the mask
Am
F
and what was inside?
Am
Dm
F
The fucking janitor or the dude
who ran the waterslide.
F#
Because throughout history every
C
B
Mystery ever solved has turned out to be
C
Not Magic.
Verse 25
B
E
Does the idea that there might
Am
D
be knowledge frighten you?
Am
G#m
B
Does the idea that one afternoon on
E
Am
Wiki- fucking- pedia might
enlighten you frighten you?
G#m
B
Does the notion that there may not be
F
Am
Ebm
a supernatural so blow your
F#
Hippy noodle that you'd rather just
B
Am
Stand in the fog of your in
Ebm
ability to Google?
F#
Isn't
Verse 26
this enough?
Am
Just this world?
Verse 27
F#
F#m
Am
Just this beautiful, complex,
F#
A
wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?
F#
A
How does it so fail to hold
our attention that we have to
B
F#
D
Diminish it with the invention of cheap,
man- made myths and monsters?
If you're so into your Shakespeare,
Dm
B
lend me your ear:
A
"To gild re fined gold,
to paint the lily,
F#m
A
To throw perfume on the violet...
is just fucking silly"
E
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
E
Em
"I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,"
And fine, if you wish to glorify
Am
Krishna and Vishnu in a
Post- colonial,
Condescending bottled-
up and labeled
Kind of way then whatever, that's ok.
A
But here's what gives me a hard- on:
I am a tiny, insignificant,
F#
ignorant bit of carbon.
I have one life,
F#
A
and it is short and unimportant...
F#
But thanks to recent scientific
advances I get to live
F#
Twice as long as my great great great
Am
great uncleses and auntses.
D
Twice as long to live this life of mine
B
D
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting
F#
F#m
shitty at good- looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
Verse 28
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,
Outro 1
For all the chance you'll change your mind.
Storm
Tim Minchin
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