Indigo Sparke

With her new album playing in the background, I sat with a cup of tea on a drizzly Byron Bay morning and spoke with musician Indigo Sparke about her experience of this time and her creative collaboration with photographer, Ming Nomchong.

Interview: Nat Woods
Written words: Indigo Sparke
Photography: Ming Nomchong

On the unknown of this time ...

I think it’s about acceptance. You really have to accept it to be able to find the gratitude, I think otherwise I’ve been feeling super, at times, kind of irritable and like restless, you know, and when I get to that point where I’m surrendering to the acceptance – fully accepting that I’m here and that this is what’s happening and it’s completely out of my control, I can find a lot more gratitude and I feel more graceful in how I move through the world with myself every day.

On growing a garden ...

I’ve been growing a garden for the first time. I am so happy it started raining because my flowers – I’ve been growing Cosmos and they’ve just started blooming, like six or seven flowers, and they’re my first flowers that I’ve ever grown and they’re my favourites – and so I was so happy when it just started raining and that they’re going to get some really good, beautiful water!

It’s a wild thing too. I’m in this space at the moment where I’m finding it kind of inevitable that any practice that I’m in, that I’m linking it to some metaphorical, existential kind of self-analysis, so I’m growing this garden and then I’m realising that you really have to tend to this thing every day and be patient. And I’m watching these things unfurl and they’re unfurling at their own pace. There’s no rushing them or trying to change them. They’re just unfurling. And it’s also beautiful because I think that in the world today, there’s so much seeking for external validation and I was watching the peas grow – I’ve become totally obsessed with them – they’re so beautiful and they’re just growing, they don’t compare themselves to the pea next to them. They just grow at their own pace.

On the shifts of this time ...

It’s like a huge shift back into like integrity in a way, like back into integrity and also just self-reliance and self-work and self-reflection and re-evaluation of values, and that process can often feel like such a huge uncomfortable death, you know, but we’re blooming now and it feels great. Like I’m sure there are moments in this where everyone’s feeling really grateful for the stillness, but you know, I often talk to people and they tell me that it’s been so uncomfortable and things have been coming up from ten years ago, and that’s so unsettling. There’s so much shifting.

But it’s generally a good time to be creative and channeling that. Usually when I feel really unsettled or emotional, when I’m processing something, I can channel that into my music or rather, it’s almost like the music is like breathing. It’s the remedy – I have to do it or I feel like I won’t survive if I don’t have that space to pour into. In the last few weeks I’ve been really struggling to find the space in myself to get into that mode of that, you know, outpouring, which is interesting.

Mind you, actually this morning I had a wave of feeling like I need to play and I got down with my guitar, plugged my electric into the amp and put my pedals in and then like got out like six different notebooks and started writing out lyrics, and then got out my paints and my desk is covered with like notebooks and candles and stuff and now I’m feeling like I just want to do this for days and days and days!

On the pressure to create ...

I feel the pressure, the pressure from myself. I feel like it comes back to that external comparison thing sometimes.

As a woman or as a creative woman in the world, I guess you’ve come to feel like if you don’t get it all out by a certain time, you’re going to be taken less seriously – if you get older and you get past your ‘use-by date’. So it’s almost like, okay, well I’m in this peak of my life, I really should be creating as much as possible and getting it out there, which is actually not true at all – I look at people like Joni Mitchell and even Lucinda Williams and these really amazing songwriters and women in the arts and they’ve still been releasing records, you know, way up into their fifties.

You know, it’s also beautiful, the comparison thing or looking out at what other people are doing, it can also be really beneficial. Fiona Apple just released a new record and that was like 13 years or so since she’s released a record. And it was like she was living a life and doing her thing and being in her experience, then she came back out.

It’s always going to be better when there isn’t any pressure when you’re not putting pressure on yourself and other people aren’t putting pressure on you to produce work. It needs to come naturally and from a really authentic expression.

On living and working in the US ...

I feel really connected to the landscapes in LA, like I feel actually way more at home in the States than being here, surprisingly. I’ve spent a lot of time in Big Sur and also out in the desert, out in Joshua Tree. But then actually this trip I spent a lot of time driving across the country, so spent time, a lot of time, in New Mexico and also driving through Utah and all those huge sweeping desertscapes. And I think that the desert evokes something in me more than any other landscape, like those American deserts. It’s really funny. When I was a little younger I was always much more drawn to LA. I felt more comfortable there. I kind of resonated with it more and it has those coastlines that are a little bit more similar to here. It’s kind of a bit more relaxed, a bit more chilled out, a bit more health-conscious.

And then in the last few years, I just felt this really strong draw to being in New York. And I think there’s this real drive there. It’s really gritty and everyone’s moving a million miles an hour. There’s just that underlying grit to create and be better and make, you know, like to excavate. I don’t know, it’s just that city… it’s like that city is this beast, this mechanical beast, that’s churning. There’s so many different aspects of it and it’s complex and there’s layers and that felt kinda much more suited to where I was at in myself in the last few years. And I met some really amazing people there, some amazing community. I have a lot of community in LA as well, actually. A lot of amazing friends and a lot of people who I’ve made music with.

And that’s actually where I recorded this new album between LA and New York, and actually a bit was also recorded in Italy.

On the Tiny Desk performance ...

That was kind of wild. I had gone over to play at South by Southwest and I had a couple of showcases and one of my main showcases was in the nighttime and it was a really nice venue. It wasn’t like super loud and chaotic and yeah, Bob had stumbled across my music – he likes to usually listen to bits and pieces of who’s going to be at South by Southwest, and then he kind of chooses who he wants to go and see live. So he had said that he had listened to a bunch of music and had kept playing that song of mine, ‘The day I drove the car around the block’, over and over again. And so he came to see the showcase. And then at the end he asked me if I wanted to come in and do a Tiny Desk. And um, yeah, I couldn’t quite get my words out and, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that would be absolutely amazing’.

You know, it’s such an amazing space, that space that he’s created. There’s so many incredible inspiring performers that I have listened to since I was young and watched play on there. It’s in [Washington] DC at the NPR offices and I actually felt like I kind of blacked out when I performed. Like immediately after I couldn’t remember what I was like! I remember asking my sister ‘What was it like?’ And she was like, ‘Oh yeah, you were really sensitive and beautiful.’ And I thought it was really authentic but I was really struggling because I couldn’t remember it. So then when it came out … I dunno know what I thought ... I thought maybe it was just going to be me like practically whispering [laughs].

It was a really amazing thing to be asked to do. I feel super honoured. Such a cool thing to do. And now they’re doing kind of like live Tiny Desk from home. I love that, because then you get to see the artists in all their different spaces, which is really nice.

On this photoshoot ...

Well Ming and I had been planning to do a shoot for a long time. Like for the last four or five years we’ve been in contact. And yeah, I guess the time just aligned for now, which was really nice and it was really cool. It’s really cool to work with her. I feel super comfortable in her presence and it was really nice just brainstorming some ideas together and sending each other references of what was creatively stirring in me and then actually to feel that both of us were totally on the same page and she just kind of … she has a way of focusing it in more specifically, which was amazing. And she had a few ideas, which was really cool because it kind of pushed me slightly out of my comfort zone a little bit.

I was saying to her, ‘You know, I feel like it’s been so easy in the past for people to just be like, oh, you know, it’s a kind of hippy, flowery, flowy girl from Byron Bay, you know, with the long hair.’ And I was saying to Ming that I just don’t feel like that, you know, on the inside anymore. Like there are times where I still feel quite ethereal in my experience of life sometimes – I often feel myself kind of floating off and that can be like a really beautiful dreamlike experience or it can also be like quite abstract and a little bit scary at times because I can just kind of disappear. But I was saying, I really feel like I’ve been wanting to feel more into my edge and this expression of what it is to transition from being a young girl into a woman, essentially.

And where that grace comes into being, you know, just like more comfortable in your body and more clear about your values and your boundaries. And I feel like that has started coming through in the way that I’ve been dressing lately, which is interesting. Like I used to just wear silk dresses. That was my jam! [Laughs] Now I really need to be in the right mood to put on a silk dress, it’s more shirts or suit jackets or just jeans – I never used to wear jeans, you know, when I was much younger. So that was really nice to have that incorporated.

It was really nice to work with women, you know, women who are in that space and who are really comfortable in themselves – just straight-up authentic.

On where home is ...

[Laughs] My sense of home is a confused state! I feel like I’m working on separating my identity from my sense of home I guess, or my attachment to what home means, because I’ve moved around so much in the last two years. And I feel like if I was gonna say home was a place, my heart’s scattered in so many places and that has left me feeling kind of bit discombobulated because I have the deep yearnings to go back to these places where I have attachment or memories or even just something that made my soul feel spacious, you know? So I’ve been trying to recalibrate all those feelings and draw them back into like this space of the heart which is really close and way more accessible instead of living in a longing or a yearning feeling.

A home for me ... it’s in a community, it’s in a song, it’s in a landscape. It’s been in so many different hundreds of hotels or Airbnbs or you know, it’s been in conversations in random places like cemeteries, on the beach, in the ocean. Like home can be most of the time, for me, like coming back to making a cup of tea – the really simple things. But again, if I was going to have to choose a couple of places that my soul felt like really at home, it would probably be either Big Sur or Majorca … I’ve spent a little time in Majorca and it felt really amazing there. But I’m so sentimental so on any particular day it could change. And I feel like my biggest sense of home or grounding is in a handful of people.

But it’s kind of cool to feel a sense of physical home here for the first time in a few years. I’m in my own space and can get all my things out and I’m in my own timing. I live with one of my best friends and the house is really beautiful with chickens and a garden. And that’s a beautiful pause to have as another reference point – home can be like this tangible steady thing, this thing that can tether you, it’s not just an ethereal kind of memory or longing for or some dwelling in the past or in the future.

On the quarantine playlists ...

Yeah, that was cool little project. I didn’t really know what to do to help or how to be of service, so I just decided to ask some of my friends to make playlists. And I did it for the amount of days we’re supposed to be quarantined for. This two week kind of idea.

It was so beautiful actually and was so special to listen to these playlists that were made. They were getting me through those days and because I know all those people it was nice because it was so specific and pertain to the shade of their heart or soul, you know, it was like really coming through. So that was really, really nice. It was like a special gift for me as well. And fun. Really fun. Just to have something to look forward to every day

Indigo’s new album, Echo, comes out soon. Keep an eye out for it!

Article originally published in Paradiso Issue 14, May 2020. Download and keep the designed-for-iphone feature here.