"Playing by Ear" tells the story of John Conrad, a man who has so idealized his wife Emma that he has destroyed his ability to relate to the wider world and the mortal women who inhabit it. Deranged by her sudden departure, he sets out--although he doesn't seem to realize it--to find someone equally worthy of worship. Living and working and buying too many CDs in suburban Chicago, John careens from reality to fantasy, rarely capable of a chaste thought, searching for a way to redeem himself and for the one song that explains it all.