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 M

Murphy's law

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

Murphy's law states that if anything can go wrong, it will; thematically, it reflects pessimism, inevitability of error, or cosmic irony, often used humorously or resignedly in narratives of mishap.

Detailed Definition
Murphy's law means the pessimistic principle that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. In poetry, it can introduce comic fatalism, modern frustration, or a speaker’s sense that the universe is mischievously hostile. The idiom suits poems about travel, machines, bureaucracy, domestic mishaps, performance, or repeated disappointment. It may be humorous, but it can also express deeper anxiety about chance and control. A poet might use it to contrast human planning with the unruly behaviour of reality.
Example
Example in poetry:
A comic poem might invoke Murphy's law when rain begins exactly as the picnic cloth is spread; In a travel poem, every wheel breaks and every map tears by Murphy's law; The phrase means anything that can go wrong seems likely to go wrong; A poet can use it for humorous misfortune.
Additional Notes
Murphy’s law states that if something can go wrong, it will. In poetry, it can provide comic fatalism, modern irony, or a framework for chaotic misfortune. It suits domestic mishaps, travel, technology, bureaucracy, and tragicomic narratives. Students should note that the phrase is less about strict law than expectation shaped by experience. It can be contrasted with providence, fate, bad luck, and comic inevitability.
Also Known As
anything that can go wrong will
Skip to main content