We are now only a few hours away from the start of the 11:11:11 UpStage Festival, the fifth annual festival of online performance in the UpStage platform, and there is a strong sense of cosmic alignment going on. Last week a show had to withdraw due to injury, which was a real shame – but the silver lining is that we now have exactly 11 shows for 11:11:11. Then yesterday, with two last-minute nodes coming in, the number of “real-life” access nodes screening sections of the festival for gathered audiences, came up to 11 as well! And as if that wasn’t enough, today one of the artists involved in the festival alerted us to the fact that the UpStage group on Facebook has … 111 members!!! Methinks that full moon smiling over us is a particularly powerful one …

Naturally, no sooner had we delighted in this perfect congruence, than someone asked to join the group; the symmetry will be broken – but it’s someone important, worth breaking it for; and perhaps we’ll get to 1111 during the festival …