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

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

Hello Full Moon Lunatics,

This week has been one of those weeks where, while living it, I felt like I wasn't getting very much done.

Then I stopped, looked back over my notes... and realised we've actually built quite a lot.

Sometimes progress doesn't shout. Sometimes it quietly stacks one brick on top of another until you suddenly notice you've built half a house.

Come and join me live every weekday morning…times have been a little erratic this week but you can usually find me 9-10am.

The biggest change this week has been the live radio.

After wrestling with OBS, Mixxx, BlackHole, TikTok Studio and enough audio routing to make a NASA engineer wince, I finally have a setup that works.

No more echo.
No more doubling.
No more talking to myself from five seconds ago.

The morning show is beginning to settle into its own rhythm.

The hedgerows have once again been persuaded to sing.

Current investigations into Mugwort, Yarrow and Plantain suggest that plants have been withholding musical information from humanity for several thousand years…..further negotiations are underway with Hawthorn, Nettle and Cleavers.

An exciting breakthrough!

Scientists remain unsure how many books may attempt similar escapes over the coming weeks, although early signs suggest:

Beyond the Shallow End/Stripped Witchcraft/Hidden Worlds/Shadow Weavers Dance ...are all showing increasing signs of restlessness.

Containment procedures have been abandoned.

This is becoming less about presenting and more about simply sharing life from the narrowboat; the changing seasons, the wildlife, coffee, philosophy, music, the occasional barking dog and one ginger cat who seems convinced he owns the canal.

I think that is kind of what I wanted all along…

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

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Join me in the Laboratory of Chaos…

Welcome once again to the Laboratory of Chaos, where, despite appearances, everything is progressing entirely according to plan... or at least that's what we're writing in the official reports.

It has been another wonderfully productive week, although I didn't really realise quite how much had been accomplished until I sat down with my notebook. Living inside the chaos means it often feels as though I'm running around in circles, but every now and then you stop, look behind you, and discover that quite a remarkable amount of ground has actually been covered.

The biggest breakthrough this week has definitely been the radio. After what felt like an endless battle with OBS, Mixxx, BlackHole, TikTok Studio and enough virtual audio cables to wire a small moon, I finally have a live setup that behaves itself. There have been moments when I was hearing myself three times over, moments when absolutely nothing worked, and moments where I questioned every life choice that had brought me to that point. But persistence won in the end, and Dark Moon Rocks is now broadcasting on weekday mornings. Every show feels a little more natural, a little more relaxed, and a little more like inviting friends onto the boat for a coffee rather than trying to perform.

Dark Moon Rocks is slowly becoming the place where all these strange little projects finally meet each other…

Talking of coffee, the laboratory continues to run almost entirely on cream, caffeine and stubbornness. I suspect if anyone ever looked closely enough they'd discover that those three ingredients are responsible for at least half of everything ever created here.

One of the biggest milestones this week has been seeing Rebirth From Your Ashes finally arrive in the Ko-fi shop as a finished digital book.

That felt important. For years I've had folders full of books that only existed inside my computer. Seeing one actually sitting there, ready for someone else to download and read, somehow makes the whole project feel much more real. Better still, several more books are already making their way through the Canva production line, so hopefully they'll soon be joining it.

The Songs from the Hedgerow project has continued to grow as well, and I'm really enjoying that series. Rather than simply listing herbal uses, each song explores the folklore, traditions and old stories that surround the plants. Mugwort, Yarrow and Plantain have already stepped into the spotlight, and there are plenty more quietly waiting in the hedgerows for their turn to sing.

Meanwhile, Merlin has happily resumed his position as Chief Feline Quality Inspector now that we're back on the canal. His current duties involve sleeping in inconvenient places, supervising absolutely everything, demanding belly rubs precisely when I'm trying to work, and occasionally returning covered in burrs as though he's been conducting field research of his own.

Sabre, on the other hand, remains convinced that every passing canoe, cyclist and duck represents an important event that deserves immediate investigation and an alarm raised. His enthusiasm continues to exceed his accuracy, but nobody has the heart to tell him.

Behind all of this, there remains the wonderful organised chaos that nobody ever really sees. Songs are half-written in online notebooks. Podcast ideas appear while I'm taking the dog and cat for a walk. Books suddenly demand another chapter. Graphics need creating. Websites need tweaking. New ideas arrive faster than I can write them down.

So, after reviewing the evidence, the official report from the Laboratory of Chaos is as follows: the boat is floating, the radio is broadcasting, the books are escaping into the wild, the music is multiplying, the coffee supply remains stable, and the notebook continues expanding at a rate that modern science struggles to explain.

As always, thank you for travelling alongside me on this strange little adventure. Every week Dark Moon Rocks grows a little stronger, not because of giant leaps, but because of hundreds of tiny ones that slowly begin to add up.

Until next week, keep asking questions, keep exploring the weird corners of the world, and remember... if you ever hear music drifting across the canal at sunrise, there's a very good chance you've wandered a little too close to the Laboratory of Chaos. The kettle is always on, and the experiments never really stop. ☕🌙🖤

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This week brought us the Full Buck Moon, which reached its peak on the 29th of July. Its name comes from North American traditions, where this was the time of year that young bucks began growing a new set of antlers. It's a simple reminder that nature is always rebuilding itself, often long before we notice the changes.

Across Europe, this moon has carried other names too. Some called it the Hay Moon, marking the harvest. Others knew it as the Thunder Moon, after the dramatic summer storms that often roll across the countryside at this time of year. Different cultures looked up at the same moon and saw different stories reflected back.

For me, the Buck Moon has always been about quiet growth. Not the kind that arrives with fanfares or fireworks, but the sort that happens one small step at a time. You write another page. You learn another skill. You fix another problem. Then one day you look back and realise you've travelled much further than you thought.

That feels especially fitting this week. The radio is running more smoothly. A new ebook is finally out in the world. New songs have found their voices, and more books are making their way towards publication. None of those things happened overnight. They grew steadily, just like the antlers that gave this moon its name.

So if you've been feeling as though you're standing still, perhaps take a moment to look behind you. You may discover that you've been growing all along. Sometimes the biggest changes are the ones we only recognise when we pause long enough to notice them. 🌕

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Until next week, if you happen to hear strange music drifting across the canal at dawn, or find yourself wondering why the hedgerows seem to be whispering stories that nobody else can quite hear, don't be too surprised. Some places have always held onto their secrets a little longer than the rest of the world, and I suspect the canal is one of them.

Reality has always been stranger than we give it credit for. We just get very good at pretending otherwise.

If your path ever wanders a little too close to the Laboratory of Chaos, don't worry. The kettle is usually on, the notebook is almost certainly overflowing, and another experiment is probably already underway.

The experiments continue.

— Kate Silveness
Chief Researcher, Dark Moon Laboratory of Perfectly Reasonable Madness 🧪🌙🖤