Coming to Terms With Myself: Freddy Lim

This is a translation from the original 林昶佐 與自己的一場和解大會, by Chen Chun-ting (陳亭均). Originally published by Business Today Magazine (今周刊), in Issue 1176, on 7/3/2019. Translation by Tim Smith. 

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Their name is Chthonic. Founded in Taipei in 1995, not only are they a big-name group in Taiwan’s music scene, they’ve got a large presence on the international stage as well, even garnering them the nickname “Black Sabbath of Asia” in The Guardian, one of the UK’s biggest newspapers. 

Lead singer Freddy Lim (林昶佐 Lim Tshiong-tso) is the “soul” the band. He’s also concurrently a New Power Party legislator in the Legislative Yuan. From singing death metal to softly explaining public policy, he makes a fist first but brings his palms together. These are the important works of his life.

A little past one o’clock in the morning, all the TV reporters have already left. In an old rechao joint on Taipei’s Changsha Street, the fluorescent lighting buzzes on, taking a breather as the crowd of diners thinned out. Freddy Lim, the main vocalist of Chthonic, sits at the edge of a table. Hsiao-Hei, the band’s guitarist, is sitting next to him. The band’s drummer, Dani, is on Freddy’s other side. Sitting opposite from Freddy is Hong Kong Canto-pop singer, Denise Ho.

For people not at all accustomed to whispering, several of them at the table are talking in hushed tones. But they were celebrating; several hours before, Chthonic just won “best band award” in Taiwan’s Golden Melody Awards (the Taiwanese equivalent of the Grammys). The table was filled to the brim with all sorts of stir-fried dishes and beer.

Yet there was something off about the atmosphere. Nobody was laughing or enjoying themselves. This is because they had all just found out that a few moments before, a girl had tragically passed away.

Death Metal : screaming out the conflict of Taiwan 

In recent months, just across the Taiwan Strait, the city of Hong Kong was embroiled in conflict. The city’s residents were standing strong against the “China-extradition amendment,” inspiring a massive civic movement of peaceful demonstrations. However, the Chief Executive of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Cary Lam (林鄭月娥), doesn’t have any intention of withdrawing the proposed bill.

Sometimes, feelings of powerlessness and anxiety will get bigger over time, expanding drip by drip, seeming to grow ever larger. On what should have been a day for celebrating an award-winning event, a young woman had decided to jump to her death from the rooftop of the Futai building in Jiafu Village, in Fanling, Hong Kong. Her suicide note of more than a hundred words, scribbled on the wall, said: “I hope I can trade my life for the wishes of 2 million people.”

The Hong Kong police covered up her writing with black tarpaulin sheets and bags. 

At the celebration party, Freddy was wearing a black shirt. Denise Ho was wearing a black jacket. She looked completely exhausted. Sighing lightly, Denise said, “We shouldn’t have to lose a single person…..We can’t rush with our struggle. I understand the situation’s pretty dire, but I’m still full of hope.”

Denise was in attendance at the dinner because she had a part in performing Chthonic’s song “Millenia’s Faith Undone” (烏牛欄大護法). Chthonic’s songs are mostly of the death-metal variety: intense notes, rough and explosive “sound walls,” five-note scales, oboes and erhu’s, as well as the death-growls emitted from none other than Freddy’s robust, strong self. These sounds all embrace Taiwan’s unique history, legends, religious traditions, using the imagery of death metal as commentary on everything entangled with the story of Taiwan.

The main judge of the Golden Melody Awards Chen Shan-ni said that “Chthonic winning an award means their hearts are connected to the pulse of our generation. Their works have conveyed current issues, including the context of Taiwan’s history.”

However, if we talk about Chthonic’s music from its earlier years, we often just think of resistance with clenched fists at the oppressors. But at this “celebration” party tonight, they weren’t thinking of criticizing anyone. The atmosphere might have been a lot closer to a song from their “Politics” album.

That song was called “One Thousand Eyes.” In the lyrics, they talk about loosening the tight grip of a fist that had always been clenched. If putting one’s own palms together is to pray, and putting one’s own hands outwards is to hold someone else, then Freddy’s “hands clasped” in the lyrics conveys this gentility: “walk in your path, your omnipresent ways, let me see the memories through the haze.”

Freddy looks as if he’s drained, both physically and emotionally. The excitement of winning an award doesn’t dilute his sadness in the least. There was a very muted and somber feeling at the table. There wasn’t any music playing. Everyone was just meditating upon the recently departed woman from Hong Kong.

“You need to be a bit more confident in yourself….” Freddy seemed to be telling Denise Ho. To me, it also sounded as if he was giving himself a reminder.

We didn’t stay too long. Right before everyone got up and went their separate ways, Freddy looked at Denise for a few seconds and then opened up his arms wide to give her a big hug.

The auntie at the cash register counter shouted, “keep on fighting!” Freddy and Denise both let slip slight smiles in response.

Music and politics, one and the same

The day after the Golden Melodies award, Freddy hadn’t slept a wink. He quickly switched over to another persona of his. In 2016, Freddy was elected as the legislative representative for the Jhongjheng-Wanhua District. On Sunday, there were several senior citizen groups all preparing to leave on a trip in their coach buses. Lim took the opportunity to quickly board each of the buses and introduce himself for about thirty seconds and try to talk about his efforts in policy-making over the last three years to these seniors. 

In last year’s local elections, Lim helped to fund raise and give support to city council candidates from the New Power Party, and used up all of this favors. The moment has come for Freddy himself to run for reelection. His challengers’ ads can be seen on billboards everywhere. His funding is still dry. The most important part is running his grassroots campaign.

Campaigning till it’s nearly noon, Freddy hurries home during lunchtime to give his daughter a hug and tell her “Daddy won a Golden Melody,” before sitting down for our interview with him.

In the span of less than a day, he attended the Golden Melodies, had his mind on Hong Kong, not to mention his duties as a legislator and as the father of a small child. So how does he juggle everything? “I’m struggling, but yeah, I’m still running for re-election,” Freddy laughed. His face was tired with a look of exhaustion; he had only slept for three hours the night before. He talked while he was chowing down on the chicken leg from his bento box lunch.

Some people say: “keep politics out of music.” There’s even some outlets that claims Chthonic’s award had somehow “sullied” the ceremony and made it partisan. However, just like Freddy, creativity, life, and politics – they are all interconnected. 

“I’ve felt that music is capable of being used to describe anything. Music is first and foremost a tool for expressing our feelings. We have feelings and emotions towards everything and musicians will express these feelings with full honesty. I just can’t understand why people would censor their feelings and emotions all for the sake of avoiding taboos or political choices.”

Freddy’s “death growl” isn’t desperate. He says that his “Politics” album was in fact born from his daughter, Milu’s, nursery room. He used to sing lullabies to his daughter (obviously not in a death growl). “We bring up a lot of ‘gods’ in our album. They’re all metaphors. Some are trials and tribulations. Some are also hopes and bravery, too.”

“We used to make music mostly to support or oppose something,” but after becoming a legislator, the place he invested himself in within his album might resemble what’s called “Battlefields of Asura” in English, a cloister of trials. “Sometimes it’s very discouraging. It’s like when we were backing marriage equality, some people would just yell at me. But what could we do? Some people believed that marriage equality meant that people could marry whatever they wanted, like Ferris wheels or telephone poles. Sometimes you just couldn’t discuss anything or try to reason at all.” But he also remarked. “so we have to be patient. Aside from support or opposition, we need to understand how to communicate.”

Living with anxiety: the Nine-Star Tattoo 

He rolled up his sleeves. The tattoos on his arms form nine suns that he designed himself. Each one represents an aspiration. The “suns” are magnificent. It looks like they’re bathing everything in bright light, but they can also burn people too.

Much like that tattoo, Freddy is also learning how to communicate with himself. In fact, he’s been suffering from anxiety since his youth. “At night, I would worry that the front door wasn’t locked or that the fridge wasn’t shut. I’d get up several times throughout the night to check. When I was dealing with my hysteria, I couldn’t sleep for several nights. I would read every night, or go to see a late-night movie. Finally after a long struggle, I’d fall asleep in a bout of exhaustion.”

When it first started, Freddy didn’t suspect that he had any illness. “I also had suicidal thoughts. I’d fight a lot with my dad. On impulse, I’d feel as if there wasn’t any meaning to living. I felt like life just wasn’t something I wanted.” After he became an adult, he didn’t really have a close relationship with his father. His father was an old-fashioned antique dealer, and held conservative views. With the exception of both their dissatisfaction with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarianism, the feelings of both father and son were also damaged from the separation of Lim’s father and mother and the conflict and even violence between them, eventually creating a gulf between Freddy and his father.

Making peace with his father at the last moment

In 2016 and 2017 were busy years for Freddy. He went from a musician to a politician, and then his daughter was born. Shortly afterwards, his father suddenly passed away due to a heart attack. This was a story about life, death, and opening of hearts. 

“My dad’s health was always very good. It was May 1st – Labor Day. I went to an event when my father’s girlfriend frantically called me to tell me that ‘He’s not gonna make it.’” Freddy thought back on that moment. Perhaps his emotions were all knotted up in a ball right then and there.

The relationship between father and son gradually softened after Freddy entered politics. His father was very well read, especially on the issue of national identity in Taiwan. The two finally had something to talk about, to break the ice. Freddy took his daughter to see her grandfather for the first time, but that was only a few days before he died. 

“I feel the distance between life and death is very short….When my daughter was only just a few months old, my father was 69 years old when he had passed away.” Later on, Freddy saw among his father’s remaining possessions several newspaper clippings of Freddy as a main vocalist and as a member of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan. At that moment, both shores along this gulf – father and son and their two eras – were somehow bridged. 

“That taught me how to settle myself down. In politics, you have to take care of the expectations from the previous generation, but also be responsible for the next generation. What do I do next? How do I not slack off and create something better? Every May 1st on the day of my father’s death, I visit and clean up his grave. I’m not really the type to believe in spirits, but I want to communicate with him, much the same as speaking with my child,” Freddy said. In his mind, making music is much the same thing.

Facing pressure from above and below, this generation of working age people must keep communicating and keep working. He said that at one point, he also thought it simply impossible to participate in politics, but then he paused for a moment and then said, “You need to find a path, no matter what.” It seems that he’s not at all certain whether or not his anxiety has subsided or been cured, but with his reliance on music and a semi-permanent prescription, he’s now already reached a point of peaceful existence with his illness.

Reconciling isn’t easy. You might need to strongly resist – much like what Hongkongers are doing. It’s like the meaning conveyed by Chthonic’s songs. That young woman from Hong Kong lost her life. Freddy put his tattooed arms together. Rising and falling, like life and passing away. He clasped his palms together.

I asked Lim what the meaning was behind the nine stars. “Some are my personal hopes and dreams which I won’t discuss here, but among the other tattoos is my hope for Taiwan to become an equal society; to become a normal country,” he explained. This hope is for his daughter, Milu, and many other subsequent generations. He then finally let out a smile. “Milu can sing Chthonic songs such as “Millenia’s Faith Undone” and she can even do death-metal screaming!”

Just before this article went to print on the morning of July 2nd, Hong Kong’s anti-extradition bill movement escalated again. Protesters had occupied the Legislative Council Building and the police were preparing to move in on the protesters. Lim messaged me: “They’ve (the Hong Kong police) shot off more tear gas canisters. I hope my friends are safe.”

(Feature photo by 陳弘岱, at Business Today Magazine.)