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 P

Pseudo-event

Philosophy
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 pseudo-event is an event staged primarily for the purpose of being reported or to create a media image. It is not spontaneous but is planned for public attention.

Detailed Definition
Daniel Boorstin coined this term. In poetry, it can critique media culture and the manufactured nature of public life. Poets might write about these staged spectacles, revealing their constructed, hollow core. This concept makes poetry a tool of social critique, questioning the authenticity of contemporary experience and the saturation of life by the media's fabricated realities.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem that satirizes media events, like the work of W.H. Auden, can be a critique of the pseudo-event; A poem about a political scandal that is manufactured for the media is about a pseudo-event; The spectacle of a public ceremony, as described in a poem by Allen Ginsberg, might be treated as a pseudo-event; A poem that questions the authenticity of public life and its images is engaging with the concept of the pseudo-event.
Additional Notes
A pseudo-event, a term coined by historian Daniel Boorstin, is an event that is staged or manufactured primarily for the purpose of being reported or to create a media image. It is not spontaneous but is planned for public attention and often lacks inherent importance. Examples include press conferences, publicity stunts, and political photo opportunities. In poetry, pseudo-events are often satirized or critiqued, revealing the constructed, hollow nature of modern media culture. A poet might write about these staged spectacles, exposing the gap between image and reality. This concept makes poetry a tool of social critique, questioning the authenticity of contemporary experience and the saturation of life by fabricated realities.
Also Known As
Media event Manufactured event Staged spectacle
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