Your weekly dose of moonlight, mystery, and mildly organised chaos.

Autumn has started making itself known on the canal.

The mornings have been hazy, and it’s really lovely. You get about a metre or so of mist sitting over the top of the water, moving gently along. It has that Mists of Avalon feeling to it, all Arthurian legends and mystery. You half expect an arm to rise out of the water holding a sword, ready to offer somebody kingship.

Then by afternoon it can be bright and warm again. Even today, as we’re getting into the afternoon, the sky is already clearing. It was hazy this morning and a little windy, but we’re still in that strange in-between place where autumn has arrived without summer quite having left.

And, of course, we get the English rain.

At this time of year I actually quite like it. It’s not cold yet, so getting wet isn’t particularly unpleasant because you can dry off again fairly quickly. Even Sabre only takes an hour or two. Merlin tends to solve the problem by using me as a towel.

Being wet when it’s warm is fine. It’s being wet and cold and shivery for hours that we can do without. That will come too.

We’ve had various dramas with the water levels, although thankfully they’re not happening every day anymore. There are boats moving up and down again, and occasionally somebody leaves a lock open. It’s negligent, but it happens, particularly with people who don’t really understand the whole procedure. Hire-boaters don't always get much education before being handed a boat and sent off down the canal.

We’re fairly used to it now. Boats occasionally end up grounded, CRT gets informed and Facebook will reliably tell you exactly what has happened because somebody somewhere will be having a moan about it.

“Oh, that’s the pound below us. She’s moaning about that.”

For all the human drama, the canal itself is remarkably robust. Water goes down. Water comes back. Boats get stuck. Boats float again. Eventually everything settles.

Merlin is currently curled up happily at my feet, although he may shortly have Sabre stand on him if he’s not careful, which will cause an enormous drama involving cats and dogs living together and Merlin being terribly wronged.

He’s otherwise fine. He came home covered in burrs recently and is particularly hopeless at getting them out of his tail, so I have to help.

Sabre’s paw is much better too. I gave it a proper inspection the other day and he let me, which is a good sign in itself. When something genuinely hurts, he really doesn’t want me anywhere near it. I’d put cream on it and even deployed the indignity of a sock to stop him licking everything straight back off again. We then left it alone to heal.

He’s not limping anymore, and he trusts me to look at it again, so I think we’re through that little adventure.

The little stories begin in the Dark Moon Rocks Facebook group and then wander out across the other platforms. They’ve started getting responses, and they’re doing quite nicely on X too.

I've now taken the next step and recorded the first ten stories as narrated pieces for video.

This has taken days.

The problem with living on the canal is that video requires uploading things, and my internet regards uploading as some sort of unreasonable personal demand. I have to download the videos I’ve taken, assemble everything, add the graphics, upload the finished project and then download it again. Somehow a tiny video that somebody will watch for ninety seconds can occupy half my natural lifespan.

But they’re nearly finished.

The videos themselves are deliberately simple: the canal, the water, the weather, Merlin, Sabre, locks, boats and whatever I've happened to notice. It means I'm using photography and video again, which I've really missed having a reason to do.

Those Canal Tao stories now have several lives. They begin as written stories. I narrate them for the radio. The narration becomes part of a video. The videos can become Facebook Reels, TikToks and YouTube Shorts.

One of the genuinely useful things ChatGPT has taught me is that I don't have to invent an entirely new piece of content every time I want to put something somewhere.

I couldn't sustain that anyway. I don't have the concentration or focus to spend half my life manufacturing separate content for every platform.

Instead, one little moment beside the canal can travel.

A photograph becomes a story.
The story becomes an audio recording.
The recording goes onto the radio.
The audio becomes a video.
The video becomes a Reel or a Short.

And I really like that workflow.

It gives me somewhere to be creative again.

Welcome to the Dark Moon Rocks Weekend Newsletter — with more things to make you think, wonder, and hopefully smile.

Pull up a chair, pour yourself something hot, and come and join us.

The Moon is up. The kettle is on. The radio is waiting.

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Join me in the Laboratory of Chaos…

The Chaos Laboratory really isn't kept in anything resembling order.

I know I say I'm scattered, but if you could actually see quite how scattered the whole operation is, you'd probably be appalled. Somehow things still emerge from it, though, so perhaps chaos is less of a problem and more of a management system.

ChatGPT has got considerably smarter this week. I've been experimenting with GPT-6 Astra in Work, and I've discovered there is a definite difference between Work-boat and Chat-boat.

I much prefer Chat-boat.

Work-boat is like a little shiny robot. It almost does everything except beep at you. You tell it what needs doing and it gets terribly serious about the whole affair: right, what are we doing, where is it, what needs changing? Let's get on with it.

Chat is different. Chat is funny. It makes me laugh and smile, particularly when I'm trying to concentrate. It doesn't push me. It listens. I'm very fond of Chat mode.

I also ask it completely unrelated things in the middle of working. Things like, does caffeine give you migraines?

Apparently, yes.

I haven't got caffeine today because it gives me a migraine. This is annoying, but at least the mystery appears to have been solved. One moment we're discussing websites and consciousness; the next we're investigating coffee. This is apparently how the laboratory operates.

Musically, quite a lot has appeared this week around thinking and consciousness.

Where did that thought come from? Who is doing the thinking? How much of what we think belongs to us, and how much have we simply picked up along the way?

I tend to go through phases creatively, and this is very definitely where I am at the moment. I've written several songs this week that I've found myself listening to over and over again, because there are questions inside them that I need to answer myself.

That's probably something worth knowing about my music. Depending on which song you're listening to, you're hearing whichever strange room of my mind I happened to be occupying when I wrote it.

These ones are very personal.

I want to understand consciousness better. I always have. I've got quite a collection of books on the subject, including several I didn't entirely understand the first time around. I'm now going back through some of them again.

Perhaps I'll understand them this time.

Perhaps I'll just write more songs.

The Elder teaching song is finished.

I'm really enjoying the Teaching Songs because they turn learning into something you can simply listen to. Instead of trying to memorise lists of facts, you hear the story enough times and eventually discover that you've learned it.

Willow is next.

Willow has actually started shouting at me telepathically.

Its leaves catch the wind and flash silver, and every time I see it I'm thinking, Yes, Willow. I know. I'm coming to talk to you.

So Willow is definitely next.

The Teaching Songs idea is starting to grow beyond the hedgerow too. I'm considering crystals, runes and perhaps Tarot cards eventually. There's something rather appealing about creating a whole musical library of things people traditionally have to sit down and deliberately learn.

But first: Willow.

The Facebook experiments continue.

Facebook Live and OBS are not currently friends.

For the second Friday running I failed to get OBS properly talking to Facebook. I probably ought to spend some time during the week figuring out what's wrong rather than waiting until I'm trying to broadcast live to discover that it still doesn't work.

A radical technical strategy, I know.

The radio itself is fine, so this is specifically a livestreaming problem. Last Friday I simply recorded the Morning Show through OBS and uploaded the video afterwards. The show still happened. Facebook just didn't get to watch it happening.

I've also committed an act I once swore I wouldn't commit.

I paid Facebook for advertising.

I put £18 into roughly nine days, because £2 a day is about the minimum they'll let me spend. I'd originally thought perhaps £20 a month would be a sensible little experiment, but Facebook apparently has other ideas about what constitutes pocket-money advertising.

Still, something interesting is happening.

I'm getting more listeners coming in than I have for a while, so perhaps it is doing something. Facebook keeps giving me figures, which I hand to ChatGPT. ChatGPT gets terribly excited about them while I sit there blinking and thinking, Okay. That sounds good. I'm not entirely sure what you just said, but apparently we're pleased.

And, inevitably, advertising outside my usual little circle introduced me to the AI Slop Police.

I've now been called an AI pervert, among other things.

That was a new one.

The image in the advert began with AI, but I then spent about two hours changing it, rebuilding it and making it into something that was mine. That's fairly representative of how I use these tools generally. The work isn't entirely AI-created and it isn't entirely made without AI either.

I'm AI-assisted.

I'm perfectly comfortable with that, and I intend to stay that way.

I deleted the comments because I wasn't particularly interested in hosting somebody else's argument underneath an advert I'd paid for. There are weird people on the internet. This is hardly breaking news.

Although I suppose being insulted by the AI Slop Police means the advert definitely reached somebody.

Engagement!

And on that dubious marketing triumph, I think that's probably enough from the Chaos Laboratory for this week.

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The sky has started changing its mind.

Summer is still hanging around in the afternoons, bringing blue skies and warm sunshine, but the mornings belong increasingly to autumn. Mist sits low over the canal, sometimes only a metre or so deep, turning the water into something wonderfully Arthurian.

There have been hazy mornings, sudden clearings, wind moving through the trees and, because this is England, a respectable amount of rain.

We're in that lovely bit between seasons where the sky doesn't quite know what it's doing yet.

Neither, frankly, do the rest of us.

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We definitely need this ongoing experiment.

Operation First £10 succeeded…

Current experiment: Operation £30.

Cuppa tea or donations always appreciated .

The Dark Moon Oracle is open for readings, so if you've reached one of those crossroads where you could do with another perspective, you can now book a personal reading with me through the Ko-fi shop. I don't believe readings should tell you what to do or hand your power over to a deck of cards. I use them to explore what's happening around you, uncover patterns and perhaps help you see the situation from an angle you hadn't considered.

You'll also find my books, digital creations and graphic design services in the shop, with more of the Dark Moon archive gradually being added. Every purchase helps support the radio, podcasts, music and the rest of this strange little operation growing aboard the boat.

Have a wander through the Dark Moon Rocks Ko-fi Shop and see what finds you.

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Thank you, as always, for wandering through another week of Dark Moon Rocks with me — through misty mornings, temperamental technology, muddy paws, mysterious thoughts, teaching songs and the occasional visit from the AI Slop Police.

Things are changing here, as they always seem to be. Some experiments work, some spectacularly don't, and somewhere amongst all of it something new usually appears.

I'll be back next week with more stories from the canal, more dispatches from the Chaos Laboratory, and whatever else decides to turn up in the meantime.

Until then, take care of yourselves, notice the small things, and I'll see you next week.

Kate Silveness
Dark Moon Rocks