Hi we’re Various Small Flames. It’s nice to meet you. You might remember us as the people behind the website Wake the Deaf. While WTD served us well over the last few years we thought it was time for a change.
Why the change?
Various Small Flames means quite a few different things to us, and it can mean whatever you’d like it to mean to you, so we don’t want to write a ten volume piece smashing you over the head with metaphors. We like the image of a variety of small bright things existing within one large dark thing; bands operating within the endless void of the internet, writers trying to spread the word about those bands amidst the deluge of blogs and tweets and click-bait, artists or authors or even listeners/readers who want to discuss and share things important to them. Basically, any person who feels compelled to somehow participate and communicate, in whatever way they find most fulfilling.
Because art or writing of any kind involves a certain degree of belief, and there’s something especially speculative about the internet, where you must attempt to communicate without knowing for sure who’s listening. Like, communication as a process to commit to, as an ongoing task, an almost ritual attempt at connection. Keeping your light burning even if there might be no-one there to see it, no matter how modest or dim.
We’d like Various Small Flames to become a community for such people. A congregation. A collaboration. Maybe a conflagration.
The new site
As we’d finally decided to give ourselves a new name, and a halfway-different ethos, we thought we’d take the opportunity to make a shiny new website, with cool new logo by artist Heather Swenson. Things won’t change too dramatically. We’ll still let you know about all our favourite new music, but we plan to try out some new things too. Look out for more on those in the near future.
We’ve spent the last month or so creating the new site, migrating all the old WTD content and ensuring things run as smoothly as possible. That has meant messing around with things like FTP servers and CSS coding, which we had next to no experience with. We’d really appreciate if you’d get in touch if you notice any errors/bugs/gremlins that raise their heads.
Spread the word
Finally, we know that some of our readers might get lost in the move, but the community of acquaintances and friends we made through WTD are really important to us. We’d really like if you would say hi so we’ll know you’re still around. And it would be great if you share news of the new site with your friends and help build the community – share it to your social media accounts, tell your buds when you next see them, roll up a newspaper and yell through it, whatever works for you.
Similarly, if you have a friend or family member or pet who wants to find a home for their writing, then please send them our way.
P.64 F.N.#24