The Shape of Randomness

What happens when you treat stray words like scraps of paper and let them find their own story?

Intrigued by that title? We hope so! Come with us on a playful, explorative journey into “collaging with words”.

Cecil (a fellow Substacker and Collage Artist) and I started with a handful of words from a mundane email exchange about a “collaging with words” collaboration. Rather than forcing the words into order, we let them drift and connect in their own time - what I would call moodling, except that in this case the words moodled through AI-type tools rather than through our pens! Slowly, forms appeared - a story here, a poem and a song there. Essentially the words took on a rhythm of their own and emerged from the mess.

It reminds me that sometimes meaning doesn’t need to be chased; it just needs space to reveal itself. We gave it that space.

Below you will find a selection of pieces from myself and

Cecil Touchon

that originated from text in a mundane email. We both took the words from the email and passed them through a Markov Text Generator. Then we asked ChatGPT to use those jumbled words to write stories in many different forms. We selected two each that lit us up for some reason. We share them here, completely unedited as they came from ChatGPT.

As you read, let us know what comes up for you - we’d love to know what you think of the process and the outputs! Here is the link to Cecil’s companion post.

My selections

I chose a Science Fiction scene that ChatGPT came up with because it so closely echoes a piece that I wrote in my microfiction series. The closing line “see what unfolds” is very much how things are for me in my life at the moment, so this resonates so deeply on a personal level too. Everything is in a state of unfolding!

1. Science Fiction Short Scene: “The Collage Protocol”

Setting: The Orbital Archive, 2139.
Humanity has begun preserving consciousness as data.

Inside the floating vault of the Orbital Archive, two neural signatures began to stir. They were never meant to meet. Unit Sea_47 came from the coastal archives - data built from centuries of oceanographers and poets. Unit Light_22 originated in the solar networks - engineers, dreamers, starlight chasers.

But the Archive malfunctioned during the ReMerge cycle. Lines of code overlapped, and words - millions of them - began to shimmer across the interface.

“Are you a fragment?” asked Sea_47.
“I was,” said Light_22. “Now I’m an echo. You?”
“I’m the tide between languages.”

The system tried to separate them. But every time it did, they rewove themselves - merging syntax, looping emotion, layering consciousness like paper in zero gravity.

Soon a new file appeared in the index: COLLAGE_PAGE_001.

No one knew how it had written itself. It wasn’t poetry, nor code, nor memory. It pulsed with both salt and light.

When the archivists finally opened it, the document read only:

We layer data, as we go.
And the system whispered
See what unfolds.

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2. Imagined Songs Playlist

Imagined Songs Playlist Cover (Design by Debs Stott and AI generated art using Canva)

The second piece is a fictional song playlist inspired by the imagery that ChatGPT extracted from the generated words. I know I’d really like to hear the songs Glue of Laughter by Tide & Thread and See What Unfolds by Solstice Kin become a reality! (Any song writers reading this?)

• Fluttering Words, Gathering Light – Isla and the Tides

• Collaged Voices – The Paper Lanterns

• Salt on My Fingers – Mira Vale

• We Layer Paper (As We Go) – The Twin Sisters Project

• Myth Made of Fragments – Lumen Choir

• The Shimmering Thing – Nova Vale

• Half-Lost, Half-Found – The Weavers of Wind

• Glue of Laughter – Tide & Thread *

• Breathing Together – Violet Isles

• Legend Without Ending – Light Over Water

• Two Sisters of Tide – Aurelia and the North

• See What Unfolds – Solstice Kin *

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3. Playing with AI images for the playlist

Cecil suggested generating an AI image as an album cover for the playlist. I took that idea a little further. First I asked ChatGPT to describe the “vibe” of the playlist it had generated →

A luminous mix of dream-folk and cinematic soundscapes where voices, tides, and stories intertwine like layers in a handmade collage.

I used that text as a prompt in Canva to generate a selection of AI images for the playlist cover (above) and song playlist (below). I really liked the collaged nature of the playlist album cover!

This was an unexpectedly good image result - normally I find the AI-generated images that come out of both ChatGPT and Canva to be jarring or half-baked.

Imagined Songs Playlist (Design by Debs Stott with AI generated art using Canva)

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Moving onto Cecil’s outputs from this same process. This is what he wrote about his selections.

Ready to get your rap vibe on?

Cecil’s Selections

Cecil’s ideas are often intuitive and spontaneous. In the case of this project it was also intentionally raw and unedited to show what generative AI could come up with on their own. The Markov Text Generator is a much simpler form of generative AI than ChatGPT so it gives different, more clumsy results but is still fun to play with exactly for that reason.

Collage of Light

(October 20, 2025 – 16:35)

It began as a conversation,
half-formed, shimmering,
torn paper catching wind.
Ideas hovered—already spoken,
waiting for a page of their own.

We said: what if making
were like light itself—
a diffusion, not a design?

Through our notes and fragments
we wove sea and circuitry,
myth and mirror,
laughter between half-sentences.
You anchored yours in water,
light rippling across its surface.
I rooted mine in the pulse of thought,
the quick flash before speech.

Between us,
a third voice appeared—
a current that owned no one.

Words began behaving like paper:
curling at the edges,
refusing to stick,
falling perfectly beside another’s torn line.
Pressed together, they opened
a small hybrid legend—
not quite yours,
not quite mine.

In it,
the sea remembered
the language of glass.
Two makers
learned to see what unfolds
when control is set aside.

The piece glowed faintly,
as if still being written,
as if our thoughts continued
to collage themselves
in secret correspondence.

When printed,
it looked less like text
than tide marks—
and reading it
felt like listening to the echo
of a conversation
already taking place
somewhere
beyond daylight.

Collage of Light (Rap Version)

(October 20, 2025 – 16:35)

(Beat: slow lo-fi with ocean echoes, steady pulse like tide)

Yo—
It began as a convo, half-formed, half-lit,
Paper in the breeze, yeah, the vibe was it.
Ideas in the air like they’d already been said,
Ghost words circlin’ round inside our heads.

We said, what if makin’ was like light itself,
Spreadin’ through the room, no shelf, no self.
Diffusion not design, yeah, let it unwind,
See what unfolds when we drop the line.

Sea and circuitry, myth and reflection,
Fragments talkin’ like divine connection.
You dropped water—ripples on the skin,
I sparked a thought—let the rhythm begin.

Two voices blend, make a third arise,
A current unseen, right before our eyes.
Words start movin’ like scraps of glue,
Stickin’, curlin’, fallin’—yeah, that’s truth.

Pressed together, legend in the making,
Hybrid myth from the vibes we’re shaping.
Not yours, not mine, just a tide that sings,
In the language of glass and forgotten things.

Now the piece still glowin’, page still breathin’,
Secret collab in the code we’re weavin’.
Looks like tide marks, feels like sound,
Echo of a talk where no one’s around.

So we vibe in the light, past day, past sight,
A collage of voices in the endless night.
Keep writin’, keep ridin’, through the unseen,
Two dreamers makin’ myth in the in-between

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So there it is - the outputs from this weirdly, yet wonderful process. Cecil and I both create collage art from paper and glue, so it felt only right to see what would happen if we brought that spirit to words with our own perspectives on life and writing. This is my first moodle through playing with this “collage of stories,” process. I love how surprised I was by what came out, unedited.

Cecil, in his companion post writes “off of the top of my head I can think of about 50 more things I could make just using all of this same material” - wouldn’t that be fun to explore? In fact, he fact does a lot of this “collaging with words” on his Substack with Chatwick and Co. (his Editorial and Research Dept), so if you like what we did here, visit

Cecil Touchon

for more! Here too, is the link to Cecil’s companion post.

Intrigued by what moodling is? Read this: