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 W

Writing

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

Writing is not just a record of speech but a powerful system of signs that creates its own reality. Derrida argues writing precedes and shapes speech and thought.

Detailed Definition
Derrida's critique of logocentrism elevates writing. In poetry, this concept sees the poem as an autonomous signifying system. Meaning arises from the interplay of written signs, not from a prior idea. This perspective focuses on the materiality of the text, the surface of the page, and the play of written language, emphasizing that the poem is a self-contained, material object that generates meaning.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem by E.E. Cummings that plays with typography is an example of writing as a creative system; The way a concrete poem uses its visual form to create meaning is about writing; The poem as a material, written object, distinct from its spoken version, is the subject of this concept; A poet who revises and rewrites is focused on the act of writing as a material process.
Additional Notes
Writing, for philosophers like Jacques Derrida, is not merely a secondary recording of speech but a primary and powerful system of signs that creates its own reality. Derrida famously argued that writing precedes and shapes speech and thought, challenging the Western tradition of "logocentrism" which privileges speech as a more direct form of presence. In this view, writing is a self-contained signifying system where meaning arises from the interplay of written signs, not from a prior idea. In poetry, this concept focuses attention on the materiality of the text, the surface of the page, and the visual and spatial dimensions of language. It emphasizes that the poem is an autonomous, material object that generates its own meanings.
Also Known As
Script Textuality Grammatology
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