Every Note Played

“Using language to convey the magic of Brahms would be like using a wooden classroom ruler to measure the speed of light.”

Here, Genova uses a simile to capture Richard’s feelings about the music of German composer Johannes Brahms. As the disease progresses, the loss of his ability to create music stings Richard perhaps more than any other. The loss cuts to the core of Richard’s identity as a musician, leaving him to ponder who he is when that avenue of artistic expression is eliminated.

“Could Karina have seen the red flags through the thick haze of lust at twenty? Was there any way to predict all that would unfold? Possibly.”

Richard’s diagnosis with ALS proves to be a catalyst for him and Karina to reflect on their shared history. As they do so, each uncovers regrets as well as hopes for potential reconciliation and renewal. Here, Karina wonders whether she could have foreseen the deterioration of her marriage to Richard. Her inconclusive answer mirrors her inability in this moment to foresee the turns her life will take over the course of the novel as she cares for Richard and returns to her roots as a jazz pianist. She finds that life cannot be predicted, only experienced.

“Every note played is a life and death.”

Sitting alone at the piano a few months after his diagnosis with ALS, Richard plays a single note, holding it down until the sound completely fades away. This line, which gives the novel its title, draws a symbolic connection between Richard’s life and the music he plays. Like a note played on the piano, each life starts with noise, vibration, and movement. But each life is different, as is each note. Some fade slowly, while others are cut short. Richard’s thought thus reflects his awareness of his own mortality, heightened by the onset of ALS.

“Jazz improvisation is a speech without a script. It’s twelve notes and doing anything she pleases. There are no rules, no boundaries. Verbs don’t have to follow nouns. There is no gravity. Up can be down.”

Music serves as a characterization device for both Richard and Karina. This passage establishes Karina’s preference for jazz, which is very open ended, unlike the classical music Richard favors. It also symbolically foreshadows Karina’s arc in the novel, which sees her abandoning the restrictions she placed on herself and acting with newfound freedom and assurance.

“As she walks out the front door, fixing her hood onto her head, she remembers walking down the courthouse steps, scared that it was she who was irretrievably broken, knowing that there was plenty of fault to this failure, and daring to admit that she might be as much to blame for it all as he was.”

Following her second visit to Richard, Karina recalls the moment of her divorce from Richard and acknowledges her own responsibility for what happened. This is a major turning point for her, as she previously tended to blame Richard for everything. Only by accepting responsibility for her actions does she begin the difficult process of addressing the past instead of hiding from it.

“He’s standing in a lake of dense quicksand, and every offer of assistance is a block of concrete placed atop his head, sinking him irrevocably deeper.”

Here, Genova employs an apt metaphor to describe Richard’s view of his situation. Each additional treatment procedure, device, or medication designed to help him can also be interpreted as evidence of his worsening symptoms. Like someone sinking into quicksand, Richard is powerless to reverse a process that ultimately leads to oblivion.

“Listening to Schumann is like looking at a Picasso, like breathing in God. Listening to Bill serenade him with Broadway tunes is a fork dipped in vinegar, stabbing him in the eye.”

Richard’s views on popular music, such as Bill’s beloved Broadway tunes, can be described as elitist or snobbish. They also help to explain his life and character. As in this quote, Richard can be dismissive of those who have different views or preferences. However, his pride and ego are severely tested through the progression of ALS, which forces him to rely on others for help.

“He imagines his body’s resistance to this attack, the molecular war in the fight against ALS at every neuromuscular junction, an invisible army, outnumbered and outgunned, deployed to fight this insidious enemy for as long as it can.”

Richard imagines the progression of ALS in his body as a war of attrition, with his body’s defenses gradually giving way to an unstoppable enemy. This military metaphor emphasizes the stress and tension of Richard’s experience, as well as its prolonged nature and high stakes. The tone of this passage also reveals Richard’s wavering between hopefulness and despair as he longs for victory but knows that the odds are against him.

“Everything living is in motion, going somewhere, talking, walking, pecking, flying, doing. […] Every day, he’s a little more shut down. […] He’s becoming a two-dimensional still-life painting, slipping inexorably into the alternate dimension of the sick and dying.”

Here, Richard considers the gradual nature of his disease, which progressively saps him of the capacity for motion and activity. His sense that he is becoming two-dimensional shows the fundamental nature of the losses he is sustaining, which have to do with his very identity. Meanwhile, his heightened perception of the living things around him shows that his perspective is shifting, as he no longer takes simple things, such as walking, for granted.

“She looks at Richard and his lifeless arms and the wheelchair and his piano, and it’s already true and done, as if this moment, this whole day, her entire life, were fated, and she agreed to say what’s next before she was even born.”

Karina experiences a sense of fate or destiny being fulfilled as she invites Richard to return home, as though everything that has happened in her life so far has led to this point. This could be interpreted as a lack of agency on her part, as she acquiesces to care for Richard out of duty. However, her sense of calm in this moment suggests that her reasons for inviting Richard home are deep and expansive, not restrictive or troubling. Perhaps she senses that inviting him back into her life could provide another chance for resolution.

“He finds jazz sloppy, incomprehensible, unlistenable, played by mostly untrained amateurs in dive bars, and he never understood how it moved Karina’s soul.”

Richard and Karina’s struggle to connect and communicate is mirrored in their diverging musical preferences. As captured here, Richard’s disdain for jazz is suggestive of certain character traits and preferences: He likes things to be ordered, scripted, structured, and logical, and he finds jazz to be none of those things. Karina, by contrast, finds jazz to be liberating, just as she seeks liberation from the restrictions placed on her by Richard, herself, and others.

“And he’s sorry without the usual accessories, the excuses that absolve him or an equivalent list of her crimes weighing down the other side of the scale, blaming her, making them even. There is only his apology.”

As Karina cares for Richard, he finds his thoughts and feelings about their relationship shifting. Instead of remaining defensive and competitive, he begins to acknowledge his own guilt for the way things have turned out. The circumstances of Richard’s illness therefore provide the ideal setting for him and Karina to reconcile, as he is grateful for her support, and she responds to his vulnerability with compassion.

“Part of the reason we’re divorced is because we don’t know how to talk to each other.”

When Bill prompts Karina to speak openly with Richard about their complicated history, she admits that she does not know how to do so. Lack of communication is revealed as a major factor in their divorce, and it remains a problem well after Richard returns home. Richard’s communication difficulties are compounded by advancing symptoms, even as he ironically feels the need to communicate more urgently.

“If the situation were reversed, if she was sick, and Richard was stuck tending to her, everyone would canonize him. No one makes her feel like a saint for doing this. She feels pathetic, foolish, resentful, and stupid, probably how Dylan feels sitting at her piano for thirty minutes once a week.”

Karina notes a double standard regarding her decision to care for Richard, which can be analyzed in terms of traditional gender roles. On the one hand, Karina’s compassionate actions can be taken for granted since she is a woman. On the other hand, her choice can also be seen as evidence of weakness, of caving to expectations and allowing Richard to take advantage of her. Ultimately, Karina’s decision strengthens her character, not because she adheres to or defies expectations but because it allows her to confront the past and then move forward.

“When he’s thought about his legacy, it’s always been about his body of work, the music he’s played and recorded, his piano career. He now sees his real legacy sitting opposite him, his daughter, a beautiful young woman he doesn’t know, and he’s out of time.”

As Richard’s symptoms progress, he becomes increasingly concerned with the legacy that he leaves behind. As he does so, his perspective shifts, with greater emphasis now placed on family relationships than on professional accomplishments. The implication is that awareness of mortality, whether heightened by terminal illness or otherwise, can sharpen one’s perception of priorities, stripping away superficial concerns.

“He’s plagued with regret and the inability to articulate the apology he wants to give her because of the sweeping scope of it, because his voice production is so damn slow and there are too many and not enough words, because he’s entirely unpracticed with this kind of conversation.”

Here, Genova captures Richard’s complicated frame of mind as he grapples with the past, as well as how to communicate in the present. This passage highlights the irony of Richard’s situation, as his decrease in the motor skills associated with speaking coincides with an increased desire to communicate important personal statements. Through the legacy recording he leaves for Karina, Richard manages to communicate an essential apology before losing the capacity to communicate vocally.

“He understands the breadth of what can be communicated in the smallest subtlety of sound. A single key played on the piano can convey the entire range of human experience.”

Richard gradually loses his ability to play piano physically but maintains his musical sensitivity. Here, his appreciation for the expressive capability of a single note mirrors his earlier recognition, echoed in the title, that each note is a lifetime, metaphorically. Each is unique and complex, and the note that is Richard’s life remains so; even as ALS robs him of certain experiences, Richard finds himself renewing his personal relationships.

“The father Richard knows would offer no words of shock, horror, empathy, sympathy, or love for his youngest son.”

Richard craves support from his only remaining parent but is haunted by memories of rejection he suffered as a child. He also lives in fear of repeating his father’s faults and mistakes with regard to Grace. In the end, it is Richard’s self-awareness that saves him from fully repeating his father’s mistakes, allowing him to reconcile with Grace in a way that his father never did for him.

“Richard absorbs the acceptance and apology given to him by his brothers, and a space begins clearing inside him, a field stretched to the horizon, a morning sky, a universe of stars.”

Though Richard does not make amends with his father directly, he does do so indirectly through his brothers, who readily admit their father’s problematic treatment of Richard. The metaphors used to describe his feelings in this moment combine imagery of nature with hints of infinity, such as the horizon or distant stars. The implication is that, as his own mortality looms over him, Richard is beginning to feel at peace with himself and the world.

“Richard doesn’t feel jazz in his body. It doesn’t move through his heart and soul. He doesn’t get it. It’s always been impossible for him to understand what he can’t feel.”

Genova presents Richard as relying primarily on emotion and intuition as he interprets the world around him. When he fails to connect with something, such as jazz, on an emotional level, he dismisses it and can even become critical or snobbish toward those who like it. Only as he develops a newfound compassion for Karina and others does he begin to take a wider perspective, encouraging others to pursue and enjoy life according to their preferences, regardless of his own opinions.

“With stunning clarity, she suddenly sees the role she’s been playing, the costume and mask she chose and has been wearing for twenty years.”

As Karina listens to a gifted jazz pianist in New Orleans, she finally confronts the truth about how she has been living in denial. This reveals the transformative power of art and music. Karina’s comparison of her choices to wearing a costume and mask show that her jazz-loving nature and goals never really changed; she only covered and disguised them from herself and others.

“I’m not you, and even though I’m around it every day, I’ll never know what it’s like to have ALS.”

When Richard asks Kathy, his care coordinator, for advice, this is her answer to him. Her respectful answer provides a model for the loved ones of those who are diagnosed with ALS or other terminal illnesses. Her comments contrast with those offered by Mikey, for instance, who offers Richard well-meaning but unsolicited advice.

“I should’ve set you free to live the life you wanted with someone else.”

This passage is part of Karina’s heartfelt apology to Richard. Instead of wishing they could have somehow made their marriage work, Karina is mature enough to realize that they should have let each other go much sooner than they did. Her realization mirrors Richard’s recognition of his own role in holding Karina back from pursuing her dreams, and his decision not to ask Karina to provide long-term care via a ventilator reflects his newfound understanding and concern for her well-being.