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

🌙 This Week on the Dark Moon Rocks Morning Show...

So, what has been going on aboard Dark Moon Rocks this week?

The water levels have been a bit up and down, although thankfully we haven't been anywhere near grounded this week. There are still leaks pouring through some of the lock gates quite fast in places, but the canal seems to have managed to level and balance itself out a little.

We still don't have to move until the 31st August because of the restrictions to conserve water, which means sometime next week we'll have to start thinking about moving again. I think quite a lot of boaters have been rather happy with the pause. It's been nice not having to worry quite so much about whether there will actually be enough water underneath the boat when you wake up in the morning.

Sabre is still enthusiastically barking at people going past, because apparently somebody appointed him Head of Towpath Security without consulting us. He's also developed a slightly revolting foot fetish and has taken to licking feet. He's kind of yucky.

He is, however, extremely well fed. He's been enjoying his meat dinners enormously, stealing bits of mine and enthusiastically licking plates clean of butter, bacon and anything else he considers worthy of his attention.

Merlin, meanwhile, has been very affectionate this week. Lots of sitting on laps, cuddles and generally behaving as though being adored is simply the natural order of things. Which, as far as Merlin is concerned, it probably is.

It really does feel like late summer now. We've had some rain and, after everything becoming so dry during the heat, green plants are beginning to appear again along the hedgerows. The elderberries are coming out, blackberries are appearing amongst the brambles, and there are bright red berries on one of the trees nearby that I haven't identified yet.

The bird life seems to be recovering too. After those weeks of really intense heat, a lot of the birds seemed to disappear. Now we're seeing ducks again and pigeons flying overhead, and the whole canal is beginning to feel a little more alive.

We've also got a pheasant living somewhere in the local woods.

It makes a hell of a racket.

We've joked about sending Merlin in to deal with it, but even the cat seems to take one look at the size of the thing and think, nah, I'm not doing that.

So the water is holding, the hedgerows are filling with berries, the birds are coming back, the dog is licking inappropriate things, the cat has sensibly declined battle with a pheasant, and late summer is settling over the canal.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes at Dark Moon Rocks, there have been rather a lot of new developments...

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 Morning Show is gradually becoming the centre of the radio operation. I've been broadcasting live and experimenting with going out simultaneously on TikTok and YouTube. Sometimes it works beautifully. Sometimes TikTok decides it doesn't want to play because TikTok is an annoying thing, and sometimes the internet simply isn't consistent enough to hold everything together. But the important bit is that I've proved the technical setup can work.

One of the TikTok lives reached around 500 views, which was particularly encouraging because it's nice to know I'm not broadcasting to an entirely theoretical audience. I've also started replaying the Morning Show at 7pm, which effectively turns it into an American morning show. I try not to say "good morning" too often when I'm recording now, so the replay doesn't sound completely ridiculous later in the day. Sometimes the uploads don't get there because, once again, internet. Life on a boat does occasionally involve explaining to technology that no, we don't have fibre broadband.

The radio schedule itself is filling out nicely, and I was particularly pleased to finish listen.darkmoon.rocks, a website just for the radio station. You can listen, see what's playing and find the schedule there, and I've deliberately made it easy for me to update. It also means the main Dark Moon Rocks website doesn't have to contain absolutely everything I've ever done on one enormous scrolling page.

I've also been making a lot of songs. I love doing them. They're essentially my poetry, what's happening in my life and whatever is rattling around inside my brain. I scribble the words down, write them out and sometimes give them to ChatGPT to help clean up the structure. Then I go through the result saying, nah, I like my language better there... keep that... take that out... put my weird bit back.

I've also discovered more about musical theory and using meta tags to direct the music. I can start saying, let's bring the piano in here, put a flute there, let the cello weave through this section. It has opened another layer of music-making for me and I'm learning as I go. Strangely, the more I learn how to use the technology, the more the finished songs feel like my stuff.

There's a huge conversation going on at the moment about AI-generated versus human-created work. I'm still quite happily and proudly AI assisted. I use these tools to help me organise, structure and hold onto things I can't always keep juggling in my head anymore, but the ideas, experiences, poetry, choices and final decisions remain mine. The tools help me make the thing I was trying to make.

The next livestream target is Facebook. I've cleaned up the old Dark Moon Rocks Facebook group, swept away some of the dust and started using it again. Come and join me over there. I have plans for it now, and I will attempt to remember that it exists. If I don't, ChatGPT probably will.

The podcasts have also settled into a much simpler system. Dark Moon Weaves is now on Apple Podcasts, taking the feed directly from my own AzuraCast setup. That makes me ridiculously pleased because relying on endless layers of other people's platforms can become a nightmare. Now I publish the podcast through my own radio system and it can travel onwards from there. Spotify is still on the list to sort out, along with everywhere else I decide is worth the effort.

And finally, I'm looking at having a bit of a change around over on Substack. I'm not entirely sure what shape that's going to take yet, but there are ideas beginning to form.

So, as usual, there are cables everywhere, several experiments running simultaneously, websites multiplying when I'm not looking, music being made, podcasts escaping into the world and at least one social media platform refusing to cooperate.

Pretty much business as usual inside the Chaos Laboratory.

Last week I quietly changed my slightly intimidating Operation First £100 target to something considerably smaller: Operation First £10.

And then Keeley went and did it.

Not only did she send £10 through Ko-fi, she left the message "First £10", which made me laugh and then made me realise something rather important.

Somebody is actually reading this newsletter who isn't my mum…and I really appreciate that she does.

So a huge thank you to Keeley. That £10 was worth considerably more to me than the number on the screen. It was the first little bit of evidence that this strange collection of radio, podcasts, books, music and assorted Dark Moon creations can actually support itself.

The Ko-fi funnel worked. Someone read the newsletter, wandered over there and put actual money into the Dark Moon pot.

So obviously we need another experiment.

Operation £30 has begun.

Not £100 yet. We're sneaking up on that bugger slowly.

The next target is simply to see if we can get the little Ko-fi counter to £30. Every book, reading, graphic commission, digital product or coffee counts towards keeping Dark Moon Rocks growing and covering some of the costs of running it.

And when we reach £30?

Well... I suppose I'll have to move the bloody goalpost again.

Thank you, Keeley. You were officially the first. 🖤

Check Out My Substack HERE

After all the excitement of last week's solar eclipse and the Perseid meteor shower, the sky has been a little quieter this week, but the Moon certainly hasn't been sitting still. We've moved from that tiny post-eclipse crescent into a much brighter Moon, reaching First Quarter on Thursday 20 August. Tonight, Saturday 22 August, we've got a waxing gibbous Moon heading steadily towards full. (skyatnightmagazine.com)

If the clouds give us half a chance, there's something rather lovely to look for tonight. The Moon is passing close to the Teapot of Sagittarius, one of those patterns in the sky that actually does vaguely resemble the thing it's named after. More interestingly, when you look in that direction you're looking towards the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The Moon will be bright enough to wash out some of the fainter stars, but covering it with your hand can make the Teapot easier to pick out.

There's also a beautiful little lunar effect visible tonight called the Jewelled Handle. At around 10pm UK time, sunlight catches the tops of the Jura Mountains on the Moon while the surrounding lower ground is still in darkness. Through binoculars or a small telescope it can look like a curved handle of light hanging over the dark side of the lunar surface.

The planets are shifting too. Saturn is becoming much easier to see, now reaching a good height in the southern sky during the dark early-morning hours. Mars is also returning properly to the morning sky, while Jupiter is beginning to emerge before sunrise. Uranus and Neptune are improving as August progresses too, although you'll need binoculars or a telescope for those. Mercury, meanwhile, is disappearing back into the Sun's glare.

But the really interesting thing is what we're heading towards.

Next Friday, 28 August, is the Full Moon — and another eclipse.

This time Earth gets between the Sun and Moon, producing a deep partial lunar eclipse. It's the partner to the solar eclipse we watched from the canal on the 12th. The lunar eclipse will be visible from the UK in the early morning, although the timing and low Moon will make it a bit of an early-riser's event.

I rather like the symmetry of that. Two weeks ago the Moon moved between us and the Sun and changed the daylight. Next week we'll watch Earth's own shadow fall across the Moon.

So this week we're sitting between shadows.

The Moon is growing, the nights are slowly drawing back in, the planets are returning to the morning sky and late summer is beginning to tip towards autumn.

And somewhere out there, Earth, Moon and Sun are quietly moving themselves into position for the next show.

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If you've enjoyed the radio, the podcasts, the music or any of the assorted strange things I create aboard Dark Moon Rocks, there's a whole other cupboard of things waiting over in my Ko-fi shop.

You'll find my books and ebooks there, exploring shadow work, spirituality, witchcraft, personal transformation and some of the stranger corners I tend to wander into.

You can also book a personal reading with me. If you've reached one of those crossroads where you could use another perspective, the Dark Moon Oracle is open and readings are available to book now.

And if you're creating something of your own, I also offer a graphic design service. Podcast covers, social graphics, book graphics, promotional artwork and other bits of visual magic can all be commissioned through the shop.

Every purchase also directly supports Dark Moon Rocks — the independent radio station, podcasts, music and everything else being created from this slightly improbable floating studio on the English waterways.

So have a wander. You don't have to buy anything. Window shopping in the Dark Moon is completely permitted.

Visit the Dark Moon Rocks Ko-fi shop

contact me…

And that's about it from Dark Moon Rocks for another week.

Thank you for reading, listening to the radio, joining me on the Morning Show, wandering into the Facebook group, listening to the podcasts, buying my books and music, and occasionally throwing a few pounds into the Dark Moon pot. Every little interaction tells me that somebody is actually out there on the other side of all this.

Dark Moon Rocks is still very much an experiment. I'm learning as I go, changing things that don't work, keeping the things that do, and gradually discovering that I don't have to create something completely new every five minutes. That particular revelation may save what remains of my sanity.

A special thank you again to Keeley for completing Operation First £10. It might have been a small financial milestone, but psychologically it was a bloody enormous one.

And thank you to everyone who quietly reads without commenting or clicking anything too. I know you're there now. Apparently some of you aren't even my mum.

I'll be back next week with more tales from the canal, more radio, more music, more experiments and probably another technical problem I haven't discovered yet.

Until then, look after yourselves, notice what's growing around you, look up at the sky occasionally, and don't forget that we're all just making this up as we go along.

Much love,

Kate Silveness
Dark Moon Rocks 🌑