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



Red Land the Desert

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

The arid expanse as the domain of Set and the place of burial and rebirth

Detailed Definition
As the Desert, the Red Land is both tomb and womb, where the sun dies and is reborn. It purifies and preserves through dryness. Poets reference it to evoke themes of solitude, the stripping away of illusion, and the stark beauty of emptiness—often in ascetic or initiatory verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
A geographical verse: "Red Land the Desert guards Egypt’s borders, fierce and unyielding"; In mythic poetry: "Red Land the Desert is Set’s domain, where chaos breeds and storms rise"; Another line: "Caravans brave Red Land the Desert, trading gold for survival"; A symbolic use: "My solitude is Red Land the Desert—empty yet full of hidden life"; In lyrical form: "Winds sculpt dunes in Red Land the Desert, writing ephemeral scriptures"; A devotional invocation: "O Red Land the Desert, strip me bare until only truth remains".
Additional Notes
Red Land the Desert emphasizes its role as the realm of Set, scorpions, and tombs—while dangerous, it also housed sacred necropoleis like the Valley of the Kings—this paradox allows poets to explore the desert as both destroyer and preserver, a place of silence where eternity is carved into rock.
Also Known As
Deshret the Red Land Desert of Egypt
Skip to main content