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 G

Ghost dance

Dance
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

A dance associated with spirits or the dead; it may also refer to the sacred Ghost Dance movement among Indigenous peoples of North America. In poetry, it evokes haunting, memory, resistance, and spiritual longing.

Detailed Definition
Ghost dance has both general and specific meanings. In imaginative literature, it may describe spectres dancing in graveyards, ruins, or dreams, embodying memory and the return of the past. Historically, the Ghost Dance was a sacred late nineteenth-century Indigenous religious movement promising renewal, reunion with the dead, and restoration after colonial devastation. Poets may use the term for haunting, grief, cultural survival, or resistance, but its historical significance requires care so that a living spiritual and political tradition is not reduced to a vague supernatural image.
Example
Example in poetry:
“At midnight the abandoned ballroom filled with a ghost dance of remembered guests” uses the phrase for supernatural haunting; A poet may describe shadows on a wall as a ghost dance of the past; In historical writing, the Ghost Dance should be presented as a sacred Indigenous movement of renewal and resistance rather than a generic spectral dance; “The ancestors moved through his dream in a solemn ghost dance” can suggest memory, grief, cultural survival, and spiritual longing.
Additional Notes
Ghost dance has two very different uses that must not be confused. As a general poetic phrase, it may describe spectres, memories, shadows, or the return of the dead. Capitalised as Ghost Dance, it refers to a sacred Indigenous religious movement of the late nineteenth century centred on renewal, reunion, and resistance after colonial devastation. Students should identify which meaning is intended and treat the historical movement with precision and respect. Related concepts include haunting, cultural survival, prophecy, memory, mourning, and colonial history.
Also Known As
Spirit Dance
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