When we first met Indigo Sparke for Jane last year, she was finding her footing in a new chapter of life. A year later, the Australian singer-songwriter has come into a different understanding of herself, shaped by motherhood, creativity, and the confidence that comes with both.

Memory has for ever found its way into Sparke's music; the songs act as records of past experiences and transmit emotions which would perhaps otherwise be hard to retrieve. This applies also to the things that we keep, such as a guitar given to us by a friend, a ring made by a mother, or a photograph which serves to remind us of a life we once led.

Indigo wears Jane (Leather) in Gold/Champagne/Olive

For Sincerely, Jane, we caught back up with Sparke to look at what changes as time passes, what stays with us, and how becoming a mother has transformed her relationship with the past and the present.

BREDA: You first wore Jane last year for BREDA. When you look back at the woman you were then, what do you recognize immediately?

Indigo Sparke: I recognize the woman in me who was still discovering a new version of herself. Now I see and feel like the woman I was always meant to become, and am still becoming. I was still fresh in the first year of becoming a mother and was carrying a lot of anxiety about so many things. Now I feel like I have a newfound confidence and trust ~ in myself, in my creativity, in my mothering.

BREDA: You’ve written about finding old videos and almost needing them as proof that a former life really happened. Why do you think we sometimes need an object, image, or song to believe our own memories?

Indigo Sparke: Time is such an elusive and mysterious thing, which can change so much inside our minds and hearts. Things can fade and morph, and time can stretch, so I think having some kind of tangible or emotional memento is such a beautiful reference point and anchor for remembering a specific time or chapter.

Indigo wears Jane (Leather) in Gold/Champagne/Olive and Jane (Time Charm) in Silver/Ivory

BREDA: Are there periods of your life that feel very far away in years but emotionally close, or the reverse?

Indigo Sparke: Yes, absolutely. There are some periods of my life that feel like many lifetimes ago. Like a distant dream. But somehow still very emotionally present and close in quiet moments when the world exhales. I used to spend a lot of time sifting through chapters of my life, but now that I have a lot less time on my hands, I find that my relationship to my past and my memories has changed a lot.

BREDA: You once described a song as a time machine. When you sing something you wrote ten years ago, where does the past actually live: in the song, in your body, or somewhere else?

Indigo Sparke: I love this question! It’s so interesting because when I listen to other people’s music and relive my relationship to a specific song, it very much lives inside my body. Songs that have become soundtracks that narrate my life as if inside a movie. But with my own music, when I am singing something I wrote in the past, I don’t have a visceral feeling of it in my body… It’s more like an out-of-body connection with something nondescript and abstract that lives outside of me in the ether. I think if all my songs still lived inside my body, it might be too intense emotionally to sing and perform them over and over.

Jane (Time Charm) in Silver/Ivory


BREDA: Is there something you own that has become more valuable to you simply because it has traveled through different chapters of your life with you?

Indigo Sparke: There is a beautiful little parlor guitar that a very dear friend of mine gave to me. I have written so much music on it over the years, and it has this very rare magic that I feel every single time I pick it up. And it is definitely more valuable to me because it’s traveled through time with me. It’s probably the most special thing to me. As well as a beautiful silver spiral ring my mother made me!

BREDA: Has motherhood changed what you want to remember?

Indigo Sparke: Well, my brain and heart have been so stretched since becoming a mother, I don’t remember things as I used to! Ha! I feel so much more full of beauty and memories, and recalling things has definitely become more challenging. Maybe it’s by design that it happens that way, because if you remembered the most challenging, painful moments of birth or early postpartum, you may not do it again. There’s a kind of amnesia that happens in becoming a mother. Like you go through the sea of forgetting ~ your old life, identity, etc.!

So yes, motherhood has very much changed what I remember. My daughter is at an age now where she has started wanting to hear stories about me when I was a little girl, which is forcing me to really focus and dig deep back in time. Certain things stand out, and I remember clearly, and other things are so distant and foggy now.

BREDA: What is a piece of advice you’d give to young mothers or mothers-to-be?

Indigo Sparke: The more you can surrender, the less difficult the whole experience is. Set up your support system before doing it! Family, community, mothers’ groups. Resource yourself. And know that everything is a season and “this too shall pass.”

BREDA: How has having a daughter changed the way you think about the woman you were before becoming her mother?

Indigo Sparke: I think you realize when you have children the kind of selflessness and devotion that is required to become a present parent, which gives you perspective on how you lived your life pre-baby. Mostly everything in my life revolved around me ~ my timing, my desires, my process. And now it’s all about her. I wouldn’t necessarily have called myself a selfish person, but we are all, for the most part, at the center of our own universes… until someone comes along who requires full presence and care and guidance. It’s a ride that, once on, you can never get off.

BREDA: Are there things you have started keeping because you imagine giving them to her one day?

Indigo Sparke: Yes! Certain pieces of clothing, jewelry, guitars, ceramics. Things I love ~ that I wish my mother had kept for me, I’m keeping for her.

BREDA: You’ve described songs as ways of metabolizing experience. When the feeling that created a song has passed, what relationship do you have to the thing you made from it?

Indigo Sparke: They are kind of like artifacts that live inside me. Like relics of time. Sculptures that I can observe and appreciate and feel moved by…\nI feel a lot of gratitude to be able to preserve and transmute emotions in this way. The process is very cathartic and healing.

Jane (Leather) in Gold/Champagne/Olive


BREDA: If you could send something back through time to the woman you were when you first wore Jane, what would you send her?

Indigo Sparke: Oh! What a cool thought! Maybe something like a vintage convertible Mercedes with a film camera inside and a handwritten note that said, “Go on that road trip and show your daughter this beautiful world.”

BREDA: What would you like to remember about your life right now?

Indigo Sparke: All of it. Every single moment. I wish I could remember all the small things ~ the things my daughter says, the tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, her smiles, her laughter, the smell of her breath, the feel of her skin, the hot California summer days, the smell of the cowboy sage on the warm mountain winds, the cool mornings, dinners with girlfriends, singing, the exhaustion, chai in my favorite mugs, taking film photos, all of it! I wish I would never forget this time. It’s so precious, and I feel so lucky.