Last year, after spending nearly 13 seconds thinking about a name for this blog, I chose "Late Night Musings..." after remembering a book I read by Lewis Thomas called Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's 9th Symphony. It's small book of essays and I highly recommend it, as he represented to me what is a dying breed of modern philosophers.
When I read it in 1995, I was listening to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Dvorak, so it was good timing for me to be turned on to Mahler. I recently downloaded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's rendition, and listening to it again, man, what a masterpiece. I don't really like knowing the back stories to classical pieces, but the 9th is pretty interesting, you can read it here.
Under Speeches and Stuff, I added a speech I'm giving tomorrow at the graduation ceremony. Only 4 people showed up today for class, many have graduated, some seem to have lost interest, so I was one of the 2 picked to represent the class of 4. 不思議なんだったよ。