I step up to the microphone and say, “There has to be more to life than this.”

“Tom,” Larry yells from the mixing board in back. “Please don’t get crazy.”

I say it a second time. “There has to be more to life than this.”

“Tom,” Larry yells again. “Please! Enough with the metaphysics. Just stick to the script.”

Larry likes to banter. I’m okay with a little banter.

Even so, I only mouth it into the microphone for a third time—there has to be more to life than this—so as to not piss Larry off. I may not like Larry, but I cannot deny that I need Larry. Larry and his cranky outbursts are essential for the legitimacy and success of my act. For this reason then, playing now to my audience, which consists primarily of Larry and a few of the other roadies and stage people and engineers, I say, “Check, check, one, two.”

Larry seems to like that I’ve taken it down a notch and gives me a thumbs up, meaning that I should continue.

“Check, check,” I continue. “Check, check, one, two, one, two.”

“That’s good, Tom,” Larry yells, and gives me another thumbs up, but it is not good. Not in the slightest is it any good. To be clear, I haven’t yet been heard.

“Can you hear me out there?” I say then. But they cannot hear me out there. Larry has turned off the microphone, and nobody, therefore, can seem to hear me out there, proving exactly my point: there has to be more to life than this.