All too willingly I got sucked into the Oscars vortex last night. I can’t count how many years I’ve sworn I’d never watch the show again, how many tirades I’ve spewed about how worthless the award is in the grand scheme and how moronic are the voters to grant statues to the films they often do. Yet this year, because several films and people I really admire (including a few I’ve met) stood a good chance of winning, I wanted to watch.

…despite the fact that the very mention of the show’s hosts prompted more yawning in me than anything else, despite the fact that the telecast always drags on interminably, and despite the fact that the nominees I’m most ardently rooting for almost without fail lose every single year.

And, for the most part, it all happened again—surprise, surprise. Optimistically, I was happy to see Christian Bale win an Oscar, because he’s a great actor. I enjoyed seeing Randy Newman win, even if his nominated song was a bit of a dud compared to his past Toy Story songs; his speech was the evening’s most sardonic and entertaining. Toy Story 3 absolutely deserved its best animated film win, and I was overjoyed to see the boyish Lee Unkrich accepting his trophy. And of course it was great to see The King’s Speech take home so many awards, simply because it was the classiest, best acted film I saw last year.

But the three best original scores lost to one of the two weak nominations (as usual), and I didn’t even get the pleasure of seeing the deserving nominees’ faces in the audience. I live for film music, so to see (what I consider) inferior scores winning year after year taints most of the satisfaction I get from the outcome in other categories.

Year after year I tell myself that it doesn’t matter whether my favorite score wins. The Academy only gets it right about half of the time (if that), and a look back at cinematic history shows that the list of the art’s most talented practitioners rarely correlates to the list of Oscar winners. Steven Spielberg said it right last night when he noted how many iconic films aren’t on the latter list. It simply doesn’t matter!

But last night reminded me that, despite my huffing, it does matter. It matters very much to the artists—from the most anonymous technical craftsmen to the most celebrated celebrities, winning an Oscar is a huge deal. It might not alter the course of a winner or loser’s career, and popular status (or even cult status) often pay no heed to the Academy’s decisions. But winning the Oscar is the pinnacle of recognition for most Hollywood folk, and for that reason, the Oscars matter.

So reluctantly, painfully, I continue to hope that the true best scores will win, year after year. I hope to see John Powell and Alexandre Desplat win their first Oscar, and Hans Zimmer his second, and John Williams his sixth. Because it matters to them, on some level, and so it matters to me. I love to see great film music given its due. And like it or not, in “this town” (meaning Tinseltown), the golden bald man is the biggest pat on the back you can get.

My wife and I recently made our first visit to the local dollar theater to see Tron: Legacy. I went in with middling expectations, knowing well that the film was no critical darling, but that many people had enjoyed it as an effects-centric guilty pleasure. At a dollar per ticket, I wasn’t paying a premium for the experience, so the film’s enjoyment level had ample wiggle room.

And, much to the chagrin of my more discerning wife, I was wholly and willingly enchanted by the world of the Grid.

Months ago we rented the original Tron from Blockbuster. I’d seen the 1982 flick years before, but was reminded how thin was the story and how primitive were the dominant effects, as groundbreaking as they were at the time of the film’s creation. I’m not sure why (certainly not because of the old Tron‘s quality), but part of me really wanted to see this glossy new sequel, and I wanted to have done my homework.

The other bit of preparation I did was listening to Legacy‘s highly praised score by Daft Punk (always for free on Grooveshark—are you noticing a pattern of cheapness here?). My first listen was just a curious peek to see what all these geeks were raving about. Hmm, I thought. A fun blend of (simple) Media Ventures ostinati and retro ’80s electronics. Fun, I thought, but nothing great. But then I kept coming back to this score, magnetically drawn to its thumping bass lines, its palatial sonic environment, its infectious melodies. It was fun, yes, but oh so much fun. For all its simplicity, it was transcendentally absorbing and deeply satisfying. It’s the kind of music that bids me hoist the volume and close my eyes, as if in a trance, beckoning me to put all else out of my mind.

Thus was the stage set when we sat down in the slightly odious and barely sloping seats at the maxi saver theater. From the opening refrains against the technologized Disney logo, I was immersed. The jocularly reverential nods to the 1980s were delightful (I loved hearing Journey blaring out of the jukebox at Flynn’s cobwebbed arcade), and the tone at the story’s outset was a perfect balance of Odyssean epic and whimsical adventure movie.

When the protagonist entered the world of the Grid, the perfect execution of an escape into a dream was complete. Brightly glowing space suits against an ink black sky, tetris-like transport ships, gladiatorial disc-flinging battles, throttling light cycle chases, and a petaled airship sailing on a shaft of light over a digital sea—all against the intoxicating, propulsive soundscape of Daft Punk and Orchestra.

It would take a single paragraph to plumb the depths of the plot, although I was pleasantly surprised to find as much story and sympathetic characters as were there. But in this kind of film, the plot is simply a peg upon which to hang an ornately painted portrait. The portrait is more of an impression, a still—someone’s intricately detailed dream world. The music is yet another layer of paint on this stunning landscape (or should I say circuitscape?), and often the layer in the foreground.

The reason Tron: Legacy thrilled me and remains embedded in my mind is because it was an immaculately conceived experience of the way I daydream. It whisked me back to those long car trips in my youth, when I would stare out the window at the stream of trees and power lines surging by while listening to a film score through headphones. The wordless music would inspire a plotless dream world that superimposed itself against the physical world I was looking at. The synergy of music and fantastic images was something hypnotic, and completely transporting.

Tron: Legacy took me back into that world, and did so with incredible finesse. If only in that very special sense, it was truly a work of art.

Yesterday I took a stab at a new blog feature, the anatomy of a piece of music. The idea was to embed a self-contained piece for your benefit, and break the music down into its vital parts with words. It wasn’t going to be heavy, academic music analysis, but analysis at a more “popular” level. Even so, about two paragraphs in I became irreversibly exasperated with my limitations and gave up.

It pains me to say that musical analysis is not a particular strength of mine. This is painful because, in many ways, I’m trying to earn a living doing musical analysis. I’ve tried educating myself through two years of music theory, an independent study in composition, attending a multitude of symphony concerts, reading books, and trying my hand at a certain level of analysis in soundtrack album reviews and album liner notes. I think I’m getting better, but it simply does not come easily…and some days not at all.

Oftentimes I can forge past my deficiencies or frustrations, either by rerouting my direction (concentrating on my strengths) or “hitting the books” to inform my specific ignorance. But sometimes I feel like I’m persistently ramming my head into a wall, making no other progress than the size of the crack in my skull.

There is a spectrum when it comes to these kinds of frustrations: there are simply bad days on one end, and inarguable limitations on the other. I can take a breather and get over the bad days, but I can’t breach genetic or intellectual limitations. Sometimes it’s hard to discern where I’m falling on the spectrum, but I know I have my limits—we all do.

In some areas of my life, this repeated head-injury-by-limitations would cause me to give up and look for clearer avenues of travel—areas like math, science, car repair, and most athletic enterprises. In this one area, however, it only strengthens my resolve to overcome my handicaps. I have the spark of a gift and the flame of a desire to write about music, and that necessarily includes some amount of analysis. I will study well-written analysis by others, musical scores, and books on theory until I improve, as achingly gradual and concussive as the process may be.

Because some limitations are God’s way of pointing us in other directions, while others are simply the force of devilish resistance, challenging us to smash our way through the barrier.

In small talk settings with friends or new acquaintances, my wife is always a little embarrassed when she answers the inevitable question about what she “does.” An intelligent college graduate, singer, actress, and ballerina, she has wrestled with the idea of getting a master’s degree, in everything from speech pathology to nutrition, and pursuing a professional career. Right now, however, she spends most of her time at home—working part-time for our church as a secretary, and doing a lot of “domestic” things around the house.

She exudes a lot of admirable enthusiasm when describing what she does in her more “professional” capacity, but I know that, behind closed doors, she feels that her life is not up to snuff compared with whomever we’re talking to; that her present homebound vocation is a misuse of her college education or potential as a modern woman. In the company of business-suited working women and hip graduate school gals, she thinks little of the stereotypical sewing, cooking, and cleaning that occupies much of her time.

But allow me to share  something. My wife is no simpleton housemaid. She’s no aspiration-less, copout, home-keeping disappointment. My wife is a creator, an artist, of the most inventive variety.

She’s not a cook; she’s a chef. She doesn’t heat up prepackaged dinners, nor does she simply take out yellowed recipe cards and whip up a traditional family meal. She scours the internet and magazines for healthy, creative, and exotic cuisine. She researches and researches until landing on an appetizing adventure, then embarks upon it—throwing in a little improvisation and a ton of hard work to create an edible masterpiece. She dedicates hours to make pasta from scratch, render beef fat, and separate whey from raw milk (the meaning of such activities she has had to explain to me). She cooks up mouthwateringly fluffy, homemade Mexican tortillas and Indian naan—dabbling in whatever culture’s menu that catches her fancy. She invents original ice creams, lovingly grows her own kombucha “mother” (a long story for the uninitiated) for fizzy tea drinks…and in short takes no shortcuts to create the most delicious, authentic, handspun foods for herself and her staggeringly lucky husband.

She persistently pushes herself to improve her dancing skills as a ballerina. She is constantly refining her talents with a needle, embroidering handcrafted gifts for friends and sewing cloth napkins for the table and new items for her wardrobe. The end result is a home that is populated with her creations, infused with loving intention and immense effort. Because of her, very little in our lives is store-bought or assembly-lined—it came from her imagination, her talents, her toil.

My wife does not deserve to be scoffed at for her seemingly quaint vocation, least of all by herself. She is every bit the artist that I claim to be—her canvases are simply dinner plates and fabric (among other things). She creates with concentration and ingenuity, holds herself to the standards of a master, and is her own toughest critic. She is no hapless homemaker by default; she is, in every nuance of the term, an artisan, and an impeccable one to boot.

I recently wrote about film music overload, and my (rare) need to seek some kind of diversion or palette-cleanser in other musical genres. On a related note, I’ve been musing about how insubstantial and thoughtless so much of my “listening” is lately, regardless of genre. I hear so much music on any given day, any given hour—perhaps more in quantity than any other time of my life—yet I fear that I’m listening to so much less.

We all know the distinction; hearing only implies that the sound waves hit your ear drums (I’m not sure how accurate my anatomy is here, but go with it), while listening implies some purposeful attention given to said sound. One is a simple physical occurrence, the other requires deliberation. It’s the difference between having food fed to you through a tube and setting out to enjoy a fine meal with anxious hands and acute tastebuds.

With earbuds perpetually piping all manner of musical notes into my brain, I’m constantly exposed to great music of varying genre and style. Throughout the mundane work day, there is an unending stream of music washing through my ears. Occasionally there are favorite moments or new revelations that perk up my mind, that I suddenly give all of my attention to. But by and large, through the distraction of work or whatever else I’m doing, most of the music becomes literal “background” music (an oft-used descriptive term that is insulting to the great art of film music).

Part of this is just an inherent detriment of multitasking. You can’t devote all attention to what you’re doing and what you’re simultaneously listening to. And, personally, I would rather have beautiful music accompanying my work than silence. But I fear there is an overall pattern of purposeless hearing that is mushrooming in my life, and it does not bode well.

It seems that this ugly development is culture-wide. Is it simply because of earbuds and iPods—the instant accessibility of music and the cheapness of downloaded (or pirated) MP3s? Has music become just another tradable commodity rather than a transcendental encounter? Does it say something about us as a culture that we’ve lost the ability to be still and submit to great art? Or I am I reading too much into it all?

Aaron Copland once decried the increasing presence of great classical music impotently spilling out of shopping department speakers and elevators, relegating civilization’s greatest masterpieces to a bed of background noise. I dare not imagine what he would think about the ubiquitous music emanating from our iPods and ring tones. Surely it’s not a crime to have great music “on in the background”—I will always prefer a well-sculpted orchestra to silence or the drone of coworker conversations. But it is a crime when we, subconsciously or not, begin to treat this great music as background noise, blighting from our memory that its stormy power comes from an ancient and better place.