A few years back I wrote a song about a Mermaid for my album. The words of 'Mermaid' are:

Mermaid was swimming in the dark sea 
Seven thousand miles away from me 
She was surrounded by many sailors 
Perplexed by her beauty 

The sailors looked upon her form 
And desire within their hearts was born 
They wanted only what they could see 
A piece of her beauty 

The waves began crashing wildly around 
There was no hope for her left to be found 
They were so blinded 
And tried to grasp 
Her heart was broken in two 

Could it be broken, is love just a token 
That can be bought and sold 
What is a pure flame, unspoiled by the soul's shame 
This fire that remains unquenched 

A young man was staring so intently 
Into the blue eyes of serendipity 
He wanted only to make her happy 
But she could not be owned 
She could not be owned 
She could not be owned

A mermaid is a creature of two worlds: the ocean and the earth. She doesn't fit into either world perfectly. She is neither fully human, nor is she fully fish. She is both. Her hybrid state makes her ephemeral, ethereal, other-worldly - a creature of fantasy and myth. Some would even use the cruel word, 'freak'. As much as there is awe and fascination with her, the mermaid also evokes a sense of aversion or a feeling of discomfort because she is a hybrid of two very different creatures. As Ariel from Disney's 'The Little Mermaid' can attest, she longs to be a 'part of your world' because she doesn't really belong anywhere.

I want to talk about that sense of 'not fitting in'. Of feeling like you're not a part of the accepted crowd. It's that feeling that you felt when you just started school, or were perhaps bullied, rejected or simply ignored. That hollow feeling of disconnection.

That feeling has always been with me from my early years and has caused me much pain. Voices have rung in my head like:

"Why can't you be more like her?"

"Why do you have to be so different?"

While the natural human instinct is to run from pain, I believe pain has a transformative power and can carry important life-changing lessons if channelled in the correct way. Pain often has a purpose. Before giving birth, a pregnant woman experiences a great deal of pain. While it is awful, she knows that the pain carries a purpose. It leads to something wonderful. It leads to a newborn child.

The pain of 'not belonging' has also been transformative for me. The pain has been awful but it has also blessed me with empathy, humility and it has taught me that being different is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a gift from our Creator. While the mermaid belongs in neither the ocean or the sea perfectly, she is a magnificent creature of beauty, mystery, uniqueness and well loved by many. She may long to be a 'part of your world' but it is her uniqueness, rarity and hybrid form that makes her incredibly valuable and beautiful. Perhaps that is the price that we pay for being unique and valuable - the price is not fitting in and being misunderstood.

Creativity requires unusual and rare foresight. Oscar Wilde said, "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." In order to create, you must see things that are not there. You must be able to see things through different eyes. I guess that is why so many artists felt like they didn't belong. Vincent Van Gogh, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson and the list goes on.

As much as social media champions individuality and being unique, ultimately human beings were built to connect and unfortunately being different does not encourage connection. This is the price that artists pay. Art is often born from pain. There is always some sacrifice.

While art can be beautiful and have great meaning, the artist pays a price in order to create that art. Mermaids are beautiful, but their beauty comes at a cost. The mermaid embodies every person who has ever felt like they didn't fit in. She lives in my heart. This is why I believe in mermaids.

Written by: Cheryl Lim - Jade Diary

[Picture from: this link]

Let me tell you a story of a little singer-songwriter who embarked on a CD launch and thought that she could fill a 450-person capacity venue with enthusiastic fans of her music. 
  
She believed the Hollywood-concocted myth from the motion picture ‘Field of Dreams’ that ‘if you build it, they will come’. So she built it. 
  
But on the day of the launch she only had about 4 to 5 tables of 10 filled with people. This left 400 seats painfully empty in a large hall. 
  
She performed to an unenthusiastic crowd. It was difficult for her to keep up the energy when the room was so lacking in enthusiasm. 
  
At the end of the night she could not sleep because the word ‘failure’ kept resounding in her head. 
  
The next day, she was in tears. The harsh reality came into view: if you build it, they may not come. 
  
About two years later, she had a brand new CD launch to promote. This time she learned from her experiences that it is better to run out of seats at a small venue than only partially fill a massive hall, so she booked a much more intimate and classy place for the launch. 
  
She remembered that the expense spent on printing posters and hanging them in public spaces did not bring in many people, so she avoided that cost. She also learned the importance of pre-selling tickets prior to the event date – realising now that people tend to bail out of events on the night due to unforseen circumstances, bad weather or sickness. 
  
This time, her launch was sold-out a day before the event. Hallelujah! It was a wonderful night. She felt like a star because they bought her CDs and asked for her autograph after the show. 
  
She learned from her previous experiences. 
  
The little singer-songwriter was of course, me. 
  
Maybe you’ve heard the story of how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. It took him 10,000 mistakes to refine the light bulb. He is quoted as stating: “I have not failed. I have just found 9,999 ways that do not work”. 
  
And J.K. Rowling said, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” 
  
I have come to the realisation that failure is not something that I should be afraid of, because if you live your life in fear of failing, you will never try, and if you don’t try, you stop, and if you stop, you also stop creating. 
  
And ultimately, you rob yourself and others of the opportunity to create something great. 
  
It defines your boundaries; it gives you clarity and guidance. It tells you what not to do next time. 
  
I don’t mean to trivialise it. Yes it is humiliating. It is painful. 
  
But if you can learn from it, it grows and moulds you into the person you were born to be. 
  
The creative life is a life filled with failure. 
  
It is not for the faint-hearted. 
  
It is not for a weak-willed person. 
  
It is not for one who gives up easily. 
  
It’s time to stop seeing failure as your enemy, and start seeing it as an honest and truth-bearing friend. 


- Cheryl Lim - Jade Diary

Top 10 Worst Back to the Future Mistakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL6Pp5-R5DY

or click on the picture:

Music Video news

No, not really. In fact, I don't think I'm any kind of winged creature or close to being able to fly. Wish I could sometimes. Don't we all?

Lim matches her melodic tones and emotionally rich lyrics with some fantasy-inspired synth to produce a debut album with a dream-like quality that’s second-to-none. Introducing us to her work, Lim pulls you in with opening track Mermaid, which, funnily enough, familiarises us with the idea of the mermaid’s beauty, while simultaneously allowing us to explore every gorgeous facet of Lim’s melodic and haunting vocals.

An album with more highs than lows, each track has a different selling point – whether it is the lyrics in Cold Hearted that Lim passionately sings, “Your scent it lingers and it steals away my sanity.../Blinded by beauty and seduced by my vanity”, the perfect match of synth and percussion in A Thousand Days, or the soaring, lingering vocals in Lucid Dreams, each song wraps itself around your eardrums and tugs until it has engulfed your whole body.

The album is an exploration of various sincere, well-articulated emotions, without sounding whiny and repetitive. Like the swift, yet graceful movement of a mermaid, this album flows flawlessly through a saturated music scene, leaving you in bewilderment of what you have just experienced. It’s hard to fault this album. Jade Diary’s debut is something Perth, and Australia, should be proud of.

New Dance Track: SILVER CLOUDS

I collaborated with UK dance music producer, Pentaprism, to co-write and sing for a song called Silver Clouds. In the first day of Pentaprism uploading the track to his Soundcloud profile, the song attracted more than 1600 listens! Have a listen here by clicking on the picture below and please share it with your friends on Facebook or anywhere else: 

Acoustic Duo shows at Easterfest:
28 March Thurs 8pm - The Olive Branch
29 March Fri 3.20pm - Cafe Forte
30 March Sat 11am - GPO Cafe

FULL BAND (6 PIECE) show at Easterfest:
31 March Sun 11am - Big Top Tent