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 L

Lip service

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

Lip service denotes insincere verbal support without genuine commitment or action; poetically, it critiques hypocrisy, empty rhetoric, or performative allyship, exposing gaps between words and deeds in social or political discourse.

Detailed Definition
Lip service means verbal support, praise, or agreement given without sincere commitment or meaningful action. In poetry, the idiom is valuable for exposing hypocrisy in politics, religion, love, friendship, or public morality. The image confines devotion to the lips, separating speech from heart, hands, and deeds. A poet may use it to criticise empty vows, ceremonial apologies, or fashionable sympathy. It encourages students to notice the ethical gap between language as performance and language as lived responsibility.
Example
Example in poetry:
A satire might accuse the court of paying lip service to justice while selling verdicts in the dark; In a religious poem, lip service contrasts with genuine devotion of the heart; The phrase means insincere words without real action; A poet can use it to expose hypocrisy.
Additional Notes
Lip service means insincere support expressed in words but not actions. In poetry, it is useful for political promises, religious hypocrisy, social justice rhetoric, false love, or public mourning. The phrase locates falseness at the mouth: speech performs virtue while the body does nothing. Students should compare it with empty words and hot air, noting that lip service often involves pretended loyalty to a value one neglects.
Also Known As
insincere support
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