This is a test, 1-2-3-4.
How many times have you heard that?? You’re at a conference or a performance; there’s the guy has his mike, testing 1234. You think, this is not a performance, this is not a star, this is just “Testing 1234”. 
Yet the sound hits your ears, and it hits 300 other peoples’ ears and it sinks in. And they know him, that man with the pliers, with the unshaven beard. That man that doesn’t believe in his own voice. That man that has peanut butter in his lunch kit.
Testing 1234. He has just made his first hit. He has performed as a lead-in for the Stones, he has influenced the neurons of two hundred board directors who shape the corporate planet. He has revealed himself and all his hidden virtues to people who clean chairs and people who sit in Rolls Royces.
But, this is just a test. Testing 1234. This is just a test. And he thinks he is nothing and he knows he is nothing because his world of duct tape and electrical joiners is not on the scale of broadcast news. His wife has a better job. And yet he has spoken; all have heard. He has left his dynamic footprint, as all dinosaurs do, as the coming and going of leaves on millionaires’ trees.
We think we count, we think we don’t count. Testing 1234. We are nothing, we are something, surely the papers in our wallet say so. Surely the families we serve so lovingly will attest. They know we are performing, succeeding, rising, living, becoming. This is a test. They are testing us; we are testing ourselves. No one is listening, everyone is counting. It is a square world, we are a round hole. We are a hole in one. We have won the game; we have forgotten the rules.
This is just a test. I am just a simple janitor in the school of life. Cleaning up test papers, confetti on the floor. It’s only a broom, this is not a surgeon’s knife. It’s only Pine-Sol, this is not Giorgio Armani. It’s only my voice, my one and only voice, I have no choice to speak of.
This is hitting a very special ear-drum in an unknown audience called “you”, who I never see, hear, feel, invite for dinner. You are nothing and your ear-drum is nothing because my voice is nothing and my broom is nothing and my wife is cooking cauliflower and watching TV. This is only a test.
1234, is anyone home I am sitting on top of the world; I am on the ledge of seeing everything, I am tasting the incredibleness of the one and only moment called “now”, the one that millions are missing and few are kissing. I am in love.
This is a test: 1-2-3-4. This doesn’t count. I can’t count. I’ve lost count. There is no count to the water drops in this ocean, they have no name tags. One dying man seeks one drop only; it is his life, it is his thirst, it is counting, it counts so much. There are tears in his eye for every increment, every variable, every lost street on every lost planet where lost people live, sweeping brooms, testing microphones, counting slowly backward to the number they originally took. The number in their hand. This is a test.
“Number 253, serving number 253!” The Deli is full, lined up. The food you ordered is ready. The girl at the counter is smiling: “Lost in a dream, dear” She smirks at you with that New York Jewish pizazz. You shrug your shoulders. You are hungry, you are here, the food is glowing, warm, vibrant, alive. Your saliva flows.
She looks at you through those big false eyelashes and says, “This Is A Test”.
“1234”, you say, in a cute and self-effacing way. And she knows what you mean, she knows exactly what you mean.
1234.This is a Test.