#sparkstember2025

This was originally two bracelets, from two lines in 'No. 1 Song in Heaven' that always kinda stuck with me. I liked the purple color-and-texture combo I ended up with and decided a) that I was going to keep it/them and b) I'd make them into a single Sparkslet. One Dremel hole and some trial and error later, I have this. (Let us all thank the Swifties for their many bracelet-making tools and tutorials.)

I intended to make more of these to give away, but it was kind of a lot of letters. And I didn't want to lessen the sentiment by lumping it with silly, jokey bits from TSB like 'Slightly Horny' or 'Team Russell'. So I kept this one just for me. It's like a black armband, but with color and joy.

12 months and 51 weeks ago I became a Sparks fan literally overnight. It's still the best-slash-worst exercise in grief.

I didn't plan on a band meaning this much to me, let alone this band that I'd managed to be only surface-level aware of for 40+ years. As I've said before, there's never gonna be anything Sparks for me without the memory of him woven into it.

If you understand infodumping and/or penguin-pebbling as a love language, then his appearance in TSB was a valentine to all present and future fans; handmade, trimmed with paper lace, with a lollipop attached. When he loved a thing —a band, a cause, whatever— he stepped up with his words, his actions, and his capital. He fought for it, consistantly and with his whole goddamn chest.

I don't love Sparks because he loved them; instead I finally understood why he loved them, and it hurts that that happened too late to share in that big love with him. I can only yell 'you were right' and 'I get it now' into the ether and hope he can hear me, wherever (or whoever) he may be now.