After going to the same festival for nearly 30 years I now see grandparents, their children and their children's children. All growing up in the same memetic spaces as those before them. In villages they sit, telling stories of themselves, of others, of people passed, usually of vintage age.

 

While another flirts Spring with youthful enthusiasm, falls in love, have children, then to maintain their cultural connection family spaces emerge in their once radical parties.

Those who have passed are usually young through tragedy.

 

These are my biological bookends of mass gatherings, birth, death and the telling of a stories of in between. Some result in changes to ritual, some become traditions and it's very much in the telling power of the stories, both collectively and individually, do we sense something more is going on. Something very different to an afternoon at a random event.