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.

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 D

Drown one's sorrows

Idiomatic Phrase
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

To consume alcohol, usually in an attempt to temporarily escape from or numb feelings of sadness, disappointment, or emotional pain.

Detailed Definition
Drown one's sorrows means to try to forget grief, shame, loneliness, or disappointment by drinking alcohol or otherwise seeking numbing escape. In poetry, the idiom connects emotional pain with water imagery: sorrow becomes something one attempts to submerge, though it may rise again. It can appear in ballads, dramatic monologues, elegies, or poems of urban melancholy. The phrase may invite sympathy, criticism, or tragic irony, especially when the attempted cure deepens the suffering it was meant to silence.
Example
Example in poetry:
A melancholy speaker may drown his sorrows in ale after love has failed; In a ballad, a sailor tries to drown his sorrows but hears the sea answer back; The phrase can reveal escapism, as when the mourner drowns her sorrows instead of facing grief; A poet might use it ironically, showing that sorrow can swim.
Additional Notes
Drown one's sorrows links emotional pain with alcohol and the image of submersion. In poetry, it can suggest avoidance rather than healing: grief is not resolved, only temporarily covered over. It pairs naturally with taverns, glasses, rain, rivers, and night. Students should notice the dark irony of the phrase, since drowning is itself destructive; the idiom can expose the self-harm hidden inside attempts to forget.
Also Known As
drink to forget
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