The Human Organs were out in Ulverston last weekend for the Lantern Procession. There have been 30 plus years here of making and lighting and marching, and many more of fireworks and noise but you can still find conflicting accounts of what the event is and what it should be, of the clash it delivers between expectations and fears engendered when we gather in the dark.
We were in town for the finale this year. We began at the end of Market St in near daylight. We were discreet; two debutants meant a steady fade in was necessary. Every corner seemed to have a stall in place from about 5pm, their dayglo automata had cooed and whistled at each other across the streets as I came out of Tesco. We had a bit of mouthing off, done from a distance; easily dealt with, an ice-breaker really..a few little kids came up for a parp, another decided to conduct us. Older kids demanded Beats; ("We are doing Beats. We can't do anything but Beats.") We got into our stride and ended up accompanying a Silent Performance of Melie's Journey To The Moon and wandering back to our spot via the empty paths alongside the A590 before finishing up downwind of the mainstage and the firework finale.
No -one knew quite what to expect this year; the usual finale venue, a large park under Hoad hill withdrew amid questions about access and restrictions related equally to safety and (further) building on the site. A stage went up in a town centre carpark, other performance sites were established, costumed stewards gently nudged and coaxed and the procession had made its looming, flickering way. It was good. Ulverston is well used to this and to the woozy herd instincts of the procession and the sharper edges of its' flanks ; any town with a history (however short) of self-supporting, autonomous quasi-carnival should be familiar with the buffoon-ery that accompanies the main event. The lads from the distant settlements making their way into town, the underage drink on the train kicking in early; the temporary license bestowed by darkness, colour and crowds, and the seemingly upturned consensus on excess. A Fairground a few yards from the route provides a locus for first-goes at the rituals of display; bottles and piss streams glint at its boundaries.
There were complaints. Not many. Online mutterings that once wouldn't have made it out of the taproom; Didn't like the finale band. ( Laptops, beats, masks, Haribo fuelled K-Pop rather than our so-and -so knocking out Wonderwall.) (Kids loved it.) Didn't like the site. Didn't like the inconvenience. (why cant I drive through this crowd of candlelit paper lanterns and park my car?) Most of all, didn't like the kids. Drunk kids. Out of town kids. Noisy, sweary kids. non-decorative, unaccepting, un-co-optable kids. Trying it on. Pushing and shoving their way out of one life and into another.
It seems some of us now write the story on sunday that we want to read on monday. The local paper picks up the lead from the social media winge, Grey heads are shaken. A few even greyer heads note that 'twas ever thus, that absent from the old kodak photos and Super 8 is the sound of glass underfoot.
Spectacles, firefests,The Wakes, Lanternnight, AFF's all- inclusive multi-platform reboot of the old carnival night buzz , these allow the creation of liminal spaces and interzones, not always pretty, but valuable. And look at the rest of the year - not just here but anywhere where the bought-in and chucked-up arrives for the weekend and leaves with a couple of local caffs' takings under its belt. Where, on the crowded cobbles and around the 5-star streetfood kitchens, where amid the tophats and goggles, the bonnets and cemetery photo-ops and alcohol-free mulled wine is the artful dodger?
There's no room for such a being, and if there were room there's nothing in the assembly instructions that will tell you what it wants.
A mornings' debate on Radio Cumbria, beginning with producer James Leather interrogating some milk bottles. We then go into a conversation with Val Armstrong about musical instrument / sound sources and the theory and practice of the Human Organs, blurring into a duet from me and Alex and ending with an unashamed plug for an appearance at the Ulverston Dickfest late november...
It's a community effort: there's a committee, a roster of performers, artists and volunteers that run the making sessions, raise funds, do the books, put the event up and take it down. Undeniably something has been lost since the move, but a lot has been retained and built on; the moss has been allowed to grow. The trail of candles and flares is still best taken slowly; smoke doubles as marsh gas and the trees hang with homemade charms, shadowscreens, eyes (photo: Iain Raven) and phosphorescent fruit and veg.
(photo:Lindsay Ward) 
I usually make some a/v; for the sake of continuity there's usually the sounds and images of running water and unspecified nighttime gatherings. This year a volunteer cast met in the woods and at other familiar sites. Under Hammer and Tigon greenery and grey skies, we placed daemon children and Silent Observers by the river that runs along the original route. A macabre
domestic scene with echoes of Beatrix Potter played out under low ancient
ceilings. 
For the Walk, we project the results onto an open-air screen hung against a wall of ivy. An eldritch usherette points to seats
and offers dubious snacks. Slowly, the focus of the evening changes from the
procession into a series of clusters around storytellers, a clairvoyant, musicians, an aerialist, installations, stalls and
tableaux. Our seats fill and others watch from around an Arbor where vinyl DJ Ste Tyson fuses tweedy BBC cabbage-stabbing SFX with clammy fogbank synths. 
My continuing digging at Dalton Castle has turned up a song. The Dalton News of 1886 ran a column of games, riddles and poems called Charades, and this comes from a John Myers, a regular contributor of state-of-the-nation verse..this one is in the vein of Hard Times Of Old England, but it's references are very specific...a snapshot of a moment.
Some exciting news.. "Ingredients Serves Twelve" is scheduled as part of Radiophrenia, the international radio arts festival. Radiophrenia broadcasts out of Glasgow on 87.9FM in the Glasgow area and to everywhere else online. There's a link to the festival site here, including the full schedule and links for online listening.
An understanding might come from a look at the self-assigned social mores of communities performing Mummers and Pace / Pasche Egg plays,and the structures operating within them, by mapping the archetypes - Jung's "universal and inherited patterns which, taken together, constitute the structure of the unconscious" - onto social groups. Rather than the plays themselves, the enduring product of the tradition is the continued will to expression arising from these structures. "The English Mummers as Manifestations of the Social Self" by Christine Herold offers some useful examples and perspectives. During the revival the tropes of Mumming and Pace / Pache Egging were assumed to refer to pre- Christian rituals of rebirth and sacrifice.The plays themselves though are comparatively recent; the oldest written script is from the 18th. If there was any single source it may have been an appropriation by the community of an existing play with that theme, which was further disseminated and gradually coarsened and infused
with new elements and characters.
The relationship between hills and the people that live in the land around them is worth looking at. In the affection there is an echo of the security offered by hills as lookout points or shelter. There is something of the awe of their size and the fear for their stability. 