My Sociological/Listening Background:

I'm probably the farthest out sociologically
on this list, since I'm 57 years old and have been
homeless and living on the street for 26 years.

I've always had better access to music theory
in print than to recordings, so that has forced me
to dwell on the conceptual/meta-conceptual levels.

I only had access to compositional facilities from
1986-90 with the Studio Session Macintosh software, and
I only got access to that by sneaking into a very laid-back
computer lab at a junior college in Tucson, AZ.

So, looking back, my homelessness and travelling/wandering
around has provided the necessary geographical, cultural and
mental/conceptual isolation necessary to discover something
from a higher conceptual "plane".

Bill Flavell