The most rigidly perverse (perversely intransigeant) of my self-containments in Bill Weaver's company and tutelage, however, was my more-or-less polite but absolute disdain of the (popular, non-classical) music that he, his family, and all our friends doted on, and which was always playing in the background. So resolutely did I ignore it that I seldom noticed it, unless it were too loud to talk over, or else offended or irritated me in some other way. Roy Orbison, for example, usually provoked my gag-reflex, with his whining, his abject heterosexuality, his calling women who were not his mother "mama." Likewise, The Supremes, with their indecent, unwashed-sounding wailing, appalled and sickened me. I tried for the most part to keep my distaste to myself, not to talk when the company was obviously enthralled by the awful stuff, to leave the room if it got to be too much for me. When then, after a decade and a half of inner growth and isolation , I wrote my five-part setting of "Phyllis plus avare que tendre," and showed a copy of it to Bill (saying, as I handed it to Sue, his wife--who, to hear Bill tell it, was, when in a state of Tantric extasy, a fount of supernal Wisdom--to hand to him, "You asked me once what I had ever done. This is what I have done.") he was dumbfounded: "Those are parts," he said several times over. "I can't imagine thinking of music in that way." I felt (almost!) vindicated. And yet, and yet...Sue was less than impressed; in fact she said something like, "What am I supposed to do with this?" and sneered as she handed the manuscript over to Bill. The sneer (expressing ignorance, inability to read music, and utter contempt for the notion of music as something that is read) remained on her face and in her attitude for the rest of the interview-- during which she kept silent--which Bill cut short, I think, because of her hostile impatience. So, upon reflection, I suppose she did understand something....

A couple of decades later, Bill having been dead for a dozen years, our differences on the subject of music emerged again, as irreconcilable as ever, when I was invited to a family party at a restaurant/nightclub given by Bob B. the husband of the younger Weaver sister, where it was understood that there would be "music" played by Bob and his professional rock 'n roll band. It pained me to have to decline the invitation, and to have to tell the older sister (to whom I have never lied, and from whom I have never concealed anything) why: I could not have borne having to sit still and listen to (what is to me) such trash, and then to have had to smile and say how much I'd liked it. It'd've killed me.