A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

addle-brained

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Having a brain that is muddled, confused, or lacking in sense; synonymous with foolish or scatterbrained.

Detailed Definition
This compound term uses “addle” (originally meaning putrid or ineffective) to suggest mental decay or disarray. In poetic usage, “addle-brained” conveys contempt or pity for those deemed irrational or witless. Found especially in Elizabethan drama and later mock-heroic poetry, it adds period flavor while serving as a vivid, almost visceral insult that heightens character contrast or comedic effect through its grotesque imagery.
Example
Example in poetry:
Thy addle-brained scheme shall drown us all in woe; The addle-brained jester babbled through the feast; Like an addle-brained sparrow, he flew ‘gainst the pane; She shook her addle-brained head at fortune’s cruel jest
Additional Notes
“Addle-brained” is a vivid compound adjective combining “addle” (rotten or muddled) and “brain,” used to describe someone foolish or mentally disordered. It belongs to a family of similar constructions like “addlepated” and “addle-headed,” all playing on the idea of a mind gone “bad” like a rotten egg. In poetic usage, it’s typically employed for comic or satirical effect—mocking pretension, stupidity, or irrational behavior—rather than genuine pathos. The term appears most frequently in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and later in mock-heroic poetry where inflated diction contrasts with trivial subjects. Its grotesque imagery (a brain as spoiled matter) gives it visceral rhetorical power, making it effective in character sketches or moral critiques of intellectual laziness or credulity.
Also Known As
foolish muddled
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