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 M

Mask Spirit

Mythology
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 general term for masked ceremonial beings—such as kachinas in Pueblo cultures—who mediate between human and spirit worlds in ritual performance.

Detailed Definition
Mask Spirit refers broadly to kachinas (Pueblo), false face spirits (Iroquois), or other masked ceremonial entities who embody natural forces and ancestors. They mediate between worlds in rituals. In poetry, Mask Spirit symbolizes transformation, ancestral presence, and the power of disguise as revelation, often used to explore themes of identity, community healing, and the sacred theater of indigenous ceremony.
Example
Example in poetry:
Mask Spirit appears in Iroquois poetry as the wooden face that channels ancestral voices; A verse describes Mask Spirits dancing to heal community fractures; Poets use Mask Spirit to explore identity: “Behind wood, truth speaks without fear”; In ceremonial poetry, the mask’s eyes hold centuries of witness; Its grain becomes a voice in verse—carved but alive.
Additional Notes
Mask Spirit refers broadly to beings embodied in ceremonial masks across tribes (e.g., Iroquois False Face, Northwest Coast transformation masks); masks are living vessels, not art objects—poets must avoid describing them as costumes and instead convey their sacred agency.
Also Known As
ceremonial face ancestral presence transformative power
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