An evening with Tim Minchin.

We'll decay; Endless night of a sunless day.

The sweet kisses from fruit of summer
Have slowly been turning duller
You say, "those times"
And "remember the days
When we went outside and there still was the shade?"
Taking no reason into play…

Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.

That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so obvious, moving in slow motion toward us. Some are fearful of the damage coming, others welcome it as a time of renewal and optimisation. Bulldozing trees for a firestop, sacrificing some so others may thrive.

It’s curious that one people can see things so differently.

Darkness.

The house lights were down, the stage lighting too. Just darkness and anticipation. I leaned forward in my chair and closed my eyes as the familiar words came softly from the stage.

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?

Leonard Cohen’s magical words.

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

I smiled at the musical terms. We’d just been given an explanation of time signatures, where the beat sits, and how it’s made to swing. Baby.

We reached the chorus, as requested the whole audience sang.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

A beautiful, human moment, all of us singing together as the rollercoaster we’d travelled glided towards a halt. Less tuneful voices lost in the great swelling chorus, if anything enriching it, no hint of a wrong note. The acoustics of the Town Hall were put to better use than I’d heard before.

Waiting for Tim.

To be fair the memories I have of the place are of non-musical comedy, and rock concerts. Of the Violent Femmes and Faith No More, nights decades ago.

I recall this being taller
But then I was maybe smaller
You feel it each time the heat hits your face
Still won't realise until all colour fades
Thought you were immune
But then we all were

I’ve been a Tim Minchin fan for most of his career. Not, as with other musicians or comedians, through early albums or years of struggle - unknown to all but those who’d discovered them and held them close. As he told us his was an unexpectedly meteoric rise from having a go at comedy to the Albert Hall with full orchestra in no time at all.

Unlike many comedians, who can make you feel as if you’re watching a script being read, the same words in the same order every night, this was free flowing. In keeping with Tim’s career approach it felt like he was leading us in directions he was choosing at the time, not following a predetermined route from start to end. It was intimate, not always polished, unashamedly real.

Besides which, as he explained, he wasn’t there for a comedy show. This was about the music. But if you came for the comedy classics you might as well have stayed home and watched then on YouTube. Rather than, as he put it, him rolling them out one more time while we pretended not to know exactly what was coming next.

The musical was fabulous. Covering older songs he’d written playing in bands prior to his comedy career, through pieces from the musicals he’d written, Matilda and Groundhog Day, to more recent serious work.

I especially enjoyed hearing about his father’s reaction to the following song. Listening to it, as the evening’s tempo slowed, holding my wife’s hand, was very moving.

Tim spoke of marriage as a commitment to stay with the person you love - as they decay. It didn’t feel as gloomy as that sounds, it felt true and actually ok. Which is just as well.

There were things he spoke of that cut through much that we are familiar with. The separation of people into groups, when we’re fundamentally the same. Celebrating our victories, our declared rightness, as opposed to wrongness, over our fellows.

The things we now say
Are the ones that make us brave
When every day there is less water to save
If time should escape
Then I'll find you somewhere halfway
And there we'll decay
Endless night of a sunless day

One of the ideas he spoke of gave me much to think on. It was about punching down. Not at those with less, those without power. Not at minorities, or those that are different. But at the angry people that call us names.

I’m not going to go into the details of the story, it feels wrong to repeat it and possibly spoil it for others. More so I think that some things are part of a performance, a moment between an artist and audience, and should stay there, not be poorly replicated in review.

It was about one of his children and their friends being called a really ugly word and standing up for themselves. It’s not that word, but it’s as bad, and I don’t plan on using it. It starts with an ‘F’, and it’s not the one we all like, and find such versatile uses for.

The child was surprised that rather than praising them for standing up to a bully Tim talked about how the person using that term might not have the privilege of the fierce friendships of his child, the education that enabled them to easily outwit juvenile arguments, and put the abuser in their place. That there must be a reason that person was using such a horrible phrase, and in all likelihood it comes from a bad place of hurt and anger.

That really struck a chord with me, a minor seventh I imagine.

Why is it the things we hold dear
Keep us from facing our fears?
The years go by and I wonder sometimes
If it's your fault I always get in trouble at night
I think I'm special
But then we all were

I wouldn’t punch down in my writing, in fact I think it’s important to call out those who do. Actually, if you think the start of this newsletter was a bit weird it’s because I was going to talk about David Seymour gloating over job cuts, but the review ran long.

But I do respond online to people making unintelligent arguments in a way that isn’t very nice, or helpful to anyone if I’m honest.

Posting on news pages, for example, attracts nasty comments, usually accompanied by poorly thought through, or misinformed, arguments. Do I gently point those people in the right direction without belittling them? Not so much.

I’m more inclined to ask them something like, “what’s your favourite flavoured crayon?” You know - crayon chewers, window lickers. Ahh how funny it is to mock the stupid.

I wouldn’t do that with anything else. Not someone’s race, height, weight, or religion. But for some reason I deem it, and perhaps you do too, acceptable to punch down at the poorly educated.

Damn, that sounds worse than I expected it to.

In fairness when you’ve got someone yelling at you that you’re all manner of things. Ridiculing what you’ve said, saying ghastly things about female politicians, or blaming the last government for every problem, it’s not easy to be sympathetic to their plight.

But Tim was right. Yelling at each other from our bubbles is a pretty dumb way to share our existence on this planet. I’ll bear that in mind in coming newsletters, wish me luck.

I was a bit surprised by the crowd, they were a lot older that I’d anticipated. Tim also explained that there tended to be a lot more people across the spectrum of autism, than in the general population. One of the songs he wrote for Matilda really resonated with such people, and he seemed happily surprised to have discovered this aspect to his audience.

It was a matter close to home. He mentioned one of his most well known songs, the one a lot of you will know, and which I post each Christmas - White Wine in the Sun. He told us that all the proceeds for that song go towards autism charities. The crowd reacted to that but Tim made light of it explaining that with the royalties streaming services return they’ve probably received enough to buy a tea towel.

We did run in to a few people we knew. Fi, a close work colleague on the way in, and then a good family friend on the way out. Actually we were surprised to see her as we’d been assuming she was giving the kids, hers and ours, a lift home from dance.

We laughed like naughty teenagers, delighting in the fact that our kids, our families have known each other since they were just wee, are big enough to sort it out for themselves, which they did indeed do.

Prior to the show I was looking out for someone in the foyer. Alison, who was the first free subscriber, and then the first paid subscriber, to this newsletter. It was nice to finally meet in person.

Alison and I. Photo: F Rockel.

Fi and I had a good chance to dissect things on the way home. Auckland Transport showed an admirable commitment to all by ensuring that the traffic signals provided each direction with the same alloted time to progress. This despite the fact that 95% of the traffic was going in the same direction. I’d forgotten about the joys of sitting in traffic jams as most of the roads and intersections you’re waiting for remain empty.

The children didn’t seem to have missed us too much although our dogs were losing their minds at out return.

Tim’s playing the Town Hall again tonight. Unfortunately it’s sold out, but if you’re going I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

If not, perhaps I’ll see you the next time he comes - can’t wait.

One of the things Tim spoke of was his craft, that it wasn’t high art but it was something he loved doing that he offered up and people who enjoyed it could buy it.

That resonated with me, funnily enough. What I do will not be long lived, it is consumable and those who like it buy it, those who don’t - fair enough. If you like reading these newsletters I’d really appreciate it you subscribed. For free if money’s tight, or for less than a couple of dollars a week if you can afford a paid subscription.

Your support enables me to do this, and it’s greatly appreciated. 🙂

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You probably didn’t recognise the lyrics in this newsletter, apart from the Leonard Cohen ones of course. I’ve been listening to Penny Eau a lot lately, some really good songs. This video is very much one of two halves, and the track seriously grows on you.