Chapter Text
Connecting Waves with Mikha Lim
Diving Deep with Mikha Lim
Drowning in Mikha Lim
The singer-songwriter and Talaarawan bassist talks about how music is the universal tool for connection.
*This article has yet to be filtered and edited.*
It’s half past ten in the evening at a quiet secluded area in La Union. In some parts of the beach, the exhilaration of the night life has barely even submerged from the depths of the waters; but here, the moon dawned down with intentions of reflection and thoughts that arrive with each pull of the lunar weight. Late October falls perfectly on the in-between, not quite hitting the tourist destination’s peak season but instead a period when the waves are alluring enough to bring in surfing enthusiasts from outside the province. This weekend, the waves brought Talaarawan to its shore.
Talaarawan is an up-and-coming band hailing from the heart of Manila—I use the term ‘up-and-coming’ very loosely. The four-piece indie rock band is fronted by the ever-so-buoyant Maloi Ricalde who delivers the main vocals, and is accompanied by the dauntless Colet Vergara on lead guitar, reserved and dexterous Mikha Lim on the bass, and Sheena Catacutan whose surge-of-lightning presence on the drums makes her a phenomenon on the stage.
All of the members share their talent with the pen in terms of writing songs, with Ricalde and Lim having the most number of songwriting credits under their belt. “Glacier” (2019), “Favorite” (2020), “All Year Round” (2020), and “Una” (2023) are some of the band’s most notable hits which were all solely written by Lim herself. The members fondly call her the ‘brains’ of the band, attributing the songwriting process to a group activity under her leadership. “Ako talaga madalas magsulat ng mga kanta namin dati. Siguro, there’s such a thing as ‘too personal’ lang,” Ricalde shared earlier in the afternoon, “Then when Mikha joined, parang something clicked talaga e.”
Lim’s songwriting style can be distinguished with the presence of a somber narrative of wistful longing. Loneliness, disconnect, and a desire to experience the world in all its brutal beauty are only a handful of the lyrical motifs that you might hear in a bassist-written Talaarawan song. In early 2024, “Una” went viral and opened doors for the band toward paths that they hadn’t even considered walking in their five-year run as a quartet.
Lim graduated from university last June with a degree in Legal Management. Since then, she’s been in what she calls a “well-deserved sabbatical”, occasionally appearing with the rest of Talaarawan in gigs around the Metro. Ricalde also graduated around the same time, while Vergara and Catacutan are set to graduate this academic year. I met up with the recent graduates for a weekend of contemplation on the beach. Ricalde had taken refuge in the hostel an hour ago with her long-time girlfriend, meanwhile Lim insisted on continuing the interview over a few bottles of beer. We talked about her writing process, separating the art from the artist, the struggle with human connection, and the bittersweet future of Talaarawan.
Earlier you mentioned that you were taking a sabbatical, can we expect new songs from this period in your life?
Can I be honest? I haven’t been writing much lately. No, wait, that’s a lie. I have. I’ve been writing a lot. Maybe some writing is more personal than others. Though, I’m not entirely sure if they’re lyrics per se. Talaarawan is called so because the band was like our own collective diary. Whenever we had something that we couldn’t solve by talking it out, we’d write a song. For the past five years, I gave the band every song that I had ever written. Whether it made the cut for official release or not, those are Talaarawan’s songs and no longer mine. With that kind of thing going on, I think I’ve subconsciously started writing songs that are intended to be heard by others. Which isn’t a bad thing, but for a band that prides itself on confessional narratives, there’s so much I can only expose to the world before I eventually realize that there is some writing that I prefer to keep my own. A diary writes differently when you have a conscious audience, kind of forces you to curate those experiences—again, not a bad thing—that’s the wonder of songwriting! Curation. It’s just that, I don’t know if fictionalizing experiences is what I should be doing right now.
Is fictionalizing experiences what sets your songwriting apart from other members?
Maybe? Everyone writes from what they know, including me. Though, there’s a kind of danger in it when you write something that’s entirely authentic. A lot of my songs deal with disconnect, which is something I’ve experienced ever since I could remember. I express it in the lyrics, but it’s not the raw transcript of how I truly feel. Does that make sense? It’s a narrative, there’s a persona I project my feelings onto. If it were truly how I felt about the isolation, then I would make Maloi scream into the mic for three whole minutes.
Ironically, art requires detachment. To make something good, you kind of have to be unbiased about certain things. Storytelling is about being able to see things from different perspectives. That’s not to say that you have to accept all perspectives, it’s just the acknowledgment that the world is bigger than your own.
What Maloi said earlier, I don’t think it’s a case of her being too personal, really. But if I hadn’t filled in her shoes of being the band’s lead songwriter, I don’t think us four would still be in speaking terms today. Colet talked about it in a podcast once, so I think it’s okay to mention this. Still, it’s not my story to tell so I won’t go into detail. In Maloi and Colet’s case, I think it was really just being too personal with each other. We were two years into the band, in their terms it was like six years of unresolved tension already by that time. Most of their songs complimented each other, which would honestly be so fucking metal if the lyrics weren’t a jab at their personal issues with each other. Our band practices used to happen in this small rehearsal studio in Quezon City that we rented for three-hundred pesos an hour. Each week we’d spend nine-hundred pesos to stay there for three hours. In the first hour, Sheena wouldn’t even dare to go inside the studio because the only thing those soundproof walls would absorb was the two’s arguing.
That’s why I like placing a persona in my songwriting. Whatever the song is saying, I’m not the one saying it. Not in a literal sense, Maloi’s the one who sings all of them anyway. But in a sense that the experiences told by the lyrics aren’t necessarily things that have happened to me, the people aren’t necessarily real people, nor are the emotions expressed what I feel now.
How do you feel about the notion that the art is separate from the artist?
I think that only applies to old dead people. When I said art requires detachment, it’s more of like—well, there’s two things. Art requires detachment in the way that whatever emotion or experience it is that I want to write a song about, I am at a state where I’m removed enough from it that I can reflect properly on what I want to say in the lyrics instead of being blinded by emotions. Napag-isipan ko na siya. The storytelling is cohesive, the theme is concrete, it’s not just me vomitting words and Sheena layering a beat onto them. Second, whatever song we put out, we all agree that it is no longer in our hands. The band learned to practice detachment. No matter how hard we worked on a song or on a performance, we recognize that whatever the public’s reaction to it is beyond our control. We can set our emotions and creative obsession aside to be open to criticism.
Detachment isn’t to say that we no longer bear any responsibility with our craft. Our songs still reflect who we are as a band, of course. No matter how good the music is, I wouldn’t want to give my money to an artist who’s actually a horrible person. Don’t listen to our songs if we end up being shitty people.
“Ang bilis mong mahalin / Ang tagal mong kalimutan,” Una is a sleeper hit that rose to virality earlier this year. Walk us through the story behind the song.
I think you have a pretty good idea of what the song means.
Mikha Lim.
Sige na nga. Mapilit ka e.
Wala pa nga akong sinasabi.
Hindi, pinilit mo ‘ko. Ito na nga. “Una” is a pretty straightforward song, I’d like to think. The first two lines are in reference to that one Pablo Neruda poem, “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” It’s about a first love and the persona’s inability to move on from it. Or them, rather.
What’s the difference?
Hm?
It and them.
First loves are tricky simply because we’re victims to nostalgia. We place so much value on ‘firsts’, even making it kind of like the standard at times. I get it, though. I do. But again, nostalgia. It’s difficult sometimes to pinpoint if you miss ‘it’, the feeling of firsts. The sort of childlike naivety that comes with falling in love for the first time. The innocent hesitation, the lack of worry, everything is so exciting and carefree. Maybe we just miss falling in love without the added baggage. Not necessarily the person attached to it, but, sometimes we do. We do miss ‘them’ instead of just the fleeting feeling of innocence, it’s acknowledging the first love as a person beyond your experience of the relationship and realizing that you miss that individual and not just the thrill that came with that time in your life when you were with them. Am I making sense? It’s a cliché topic, I know, but it seems to resonate with a lot of people.
Yeah, that makes sense. Una dealing with first loves is a bit different from your usual topics of isolation. Is there anything that led to that?
Sus, alam mo naman kung anong nangyari.
For the sake of the interview, Mikhs.
Sure, for the sake of the interview. I’ll start with this though, I’m not as awkward as I used to be. But for a large part of my life, I was alone. I grew up as an only child with no other family living nearby besides my parents, it’s not something I particularly label as bad. I got used to the solitude, no harm in that. I grew up with movies and books, and endless nights of talking myself out of insanity. I had one close friend as a teenager, her name is Gwen. We got along well because we both preferred to be alone, so a lot of the time, we were alone together. Kind of strange, now that I think about it. Though, that’s the thing about human connection that makes it so interesting. They’re complex. In high school I used to watch my classmates who were part of those big dramatic cliques and think that there has to be a certain charm to being included. It’s something I touch briefly on in “Glacier”, the lyrics “Take the lead / Proceed at glacial speeds / Would we know what the quiet heart / Truly needs” is about being vulnerable enough to admit that it’s madness to want to go through life alone.
When I entered college, I was scared. Like, embarrassingly terrified. Gwen went to another university, and for the first time in my life, the thought of being alone again terrified me. Then Maloi and Colet found me, Sheena eventually came into the picture not long after, I felt like there was somewhere I truly belonged. Everything suddenly clicked, you know? I understood why people seek companionship, why friendship was held to high regards, why people would depend on their friends despite being capable. Being able to connect, I started longing for it too.
Then I met my first girlfriend, I suppose I could call her my last one too. It’s crazy, actually. We went to the same university but I met her at church—of all places! Maloi had a crush on one of the girls in the choir. All of her songs that time had something to do with angels. We all thought she was going crazy, seeing heaven in the dirty tiles of Quiapo church. I’d say Colet was seriously considering worshiping the devil out of spite, but she’d kill me if this ever made it to print. But, yeah. I went to mass one Sunday with Maloi and there she was, not Maloi’s choir girl, but the one sitting on the pew in front of us. Suddenly, I understood. I’m not entirely sure how prayer works, but God must’ve heard me talk about her a million times.
Unfortunately, I was twenty and stupid. The notion of romantic love intimidated me. I watched Maloi and Colet crumble right before my eyes, I knew how intense romantic love could be, and I had only started comprehending human connection in general—it was all very new to me. We lasted for about a year, I think. Maybe a bit more than that. Then I discovered a new emotion, heartache.
You mentioned earlier that your songs are usually told through the perspective of a narrator.
A fictional persona, yes.
A fictional persona. Would you say that “Una” is heartache told through a fictional lens?
Wow. This is going to make me sound like a hypocrite. I think “Una” is one of the rare instances where I don’t fictionalize my experiences and emotions. We’ve only performed it live maybe a total of two times. I say that it’s a song that’s unfinished, it’s so raw. No reflection, no ounce of thoughtfulness, just raw heartache and the yearning that comes along with it. That’s why I was a bit hesitant when I found out that it was doing numbers, was I ready to let all these people know how I felt?
Do you still feel it then?
What?
Heartache and yearning.
Is this still part of the interview?
Sorry. Moving on. How has it been dealing with this newfound fame?
I wouldn’t say we’re famous. We’re probably below the D-list. But I’d say that the past few months have been incredibly overwhelming, in a good way. I think. I do genuinely appreciate the support. Talaarawan is a band that the other three formed in high school, and suddenly I’m thankful that I failed my first-choice university; because I met them, and the rest is history. I don’t think any of us expected this, honestly. We weren’t playing to make it big; it was a weekend activity we did for fun. We’d pour our hearts into songs that were heard by a crowd totaling fifteen people on a good day at a small bar in Manila. We did that for five years, and we were content with that. Just that.
Then one day, we woke up and there’s an email in Maloi’s inbox. An invitation to perform at a festival, soon enough more invitations kept coming. We don’t even have a manager or any of that. It’s difficult, for sure. Trying to align our schedules when we’re at that point that we’re doing different things, especially with Maloi having a full-time job and both Colet and Sheena still in school. We’re trying to accommodate everyone, really. We’re flattered at the invitations, we try to respond to each one whether we accept or not.
Performing in front of a crowd that sometimes reaches hundreds or thousands is nerve-wracking. But there’s something almost reassuring about getting the lyrics you wrote screamed at you by a crowd. Like, it’s surreal to realize that this is the length that music reaches. I spent most of my life unable to connect with people and now I found the thing that allows me to.
What are the band’s plans for the future then?
Can I tell you a secret?
Okay.
Nothing.
Nothing?
I’m in more of a gap year than a sabbatical, really. I’ll start applying to law school before next term. Maybe I’ll dye my hair back to black by December, maybe take out the nose piercing too. I don’t mind. I don’t. This is always what I’ve wanted to do.
Law school. Yeah, I know.
Sheena’s in her last year of college, she keeps complaining about the board exam that she has to take right after. Colet’s in her last year of clinical training, she has to take the boards too afterwards. We got an email from a record label. We told Maloi to take it, if she wants, without us.
Nakuwento ni Jhoanna, ‘yung about the offer. Maloi feels guilty daw.
No shit. That’s Maloi, she’s selfless, she wants everyone involved. Sinabi naman namin e, sinasabi namin sa kanya. That’s her dream, you know? The whole music thing. We were just in it for the ride. It was a hell of a good ride at that. This is it for us, though. A band we did in college. Maloi has the heart to dream bigger. I hope she does. Maybe Jhoanna will knock some sense into her.
Maybe.
Ikaw ba?
Ano?
What are your plans for tomorrow, Aiah?
The twenty-five-year-old journalist stops dead in her tracks, her fingers hovering frozen over the keys of her laptop. The October air brought in something else that night, the gravity dawned over by the watchful presence of the moon pulled along subterranean uncertainties that were previously drowned underneath the depths of the never-ending ocean of possibility. Aiah’s lived in La Union for months now, and yet this one night has seemingly brought in more waves than she’s ever witnessed. The sound of weighted water wrecking into the brittle beachside boulders reaches the chaos in her ears. Even when elevated floors above sea-level, the persistence of the ocean follows Aiah in a small terrace connected to the hostel’s room. Her eyes flicker away from the blinding glow of her laptop screen, avoiding the figure seated in front of her and instead glancing through the glass sliding door behind them. Inside, she sees two figures peacefully asleep underneath a tangled mess of a blanket, Jhoanna has her arm wrapped tightly around Maloi’s waist and her glasses were hanging loosely off the edge of the bed as it sat on a stray part of the thin fabric. Aiah smiles fondly at the sight before making a mental note to place her friend’s eyeglasses on the bedside drawer later.
“Yang,” Mikha’s voice cuts through with the timbre of the sea.
Aiah’s fingertips touch the faded pads of her keyboard, then Mikha laughs, “Are you seriously going to type everything I say?”
“Sorry,” Aiah chuckles awkwardly, retreating her hands from her device and instead choosing to fold them on her lap. She doesn’t know where the sudden discomfort came from, it was as if all her confidence and professionalism had washed away with one question. She makes the mistake of looking at Mikha who sat on the opposite end of the small outdoor table, all of a sudden Aiah feels twenty-one again.
“Sorry, what was the question again?”
“I was asking if may plans ka tomorrow.”
Aiah raises an eyebrow, “Is this still part of the interview?”
Mikha whines, “Now you’re just being mean.”
The conversation fades out with a ripple of soft laughter. For the first time that day, Aiah has her gaze settled on the redhead within her reach. Earlier, her eyes landed on anything that wasn’t in the shape of Mikha Lim. She was caught staring at the blinding rays of a clear sky, at the trees that swayed with the movements of the wind, at the grains of sand that lasted infinitely. Her eyes shifted so often that it almost looked like she was looking for something. When a lost pair of hazel finally meets the stretching blue of the ocean, the voyage reaches its end. For as long as the Earth exists, there will be the ocean to reach even its most impossible endings. That is a universal truth that Aiah has known since she could remember. There is something about the complexity of it that interests her, how the ocean seems to contain all air, land, fire, and water. It is everything, and yet mankind knows little to nothing about the constant presence that surrounds the entire planet. They say that there is something sinister about the ocean, how its depths hold things that were not meant to exist in the pursuit of humanity’s peace. Aiah thinks that it’s just the human inclination to demonize anything that we cannot comprehend. The ocean, filled with its wonder and mystery, is a spectacle of the universe’s weaving. Aiah looks in front of her, she sees the ocean in Mikha’s eyes.
Aiah clears her throat, “I don’t think you were stupid, by the way.”
The younger girl blinks at her, confused, “Huh?”
“You said you were twenty and stupid. I never thought you were stupid.”
Mikha’s confused expression extends to something akin to amusement, “I could count the number of times you called me immature.
“And you were,” Aiah rolls her eyes, “But not stupid. You’re one of the smartest people I know.”
When Mikha laughs, there’s a certain shiver wedged between the soundwaves. It’s an indicator that she’s flustered, even beneath the darkness of the night, Aiah could see the faint red reaching up her ears.
“Don’t put this in the interview,” Mikha starts, “Pero alam mo ba, may writing credits ka dapat sa ‘Una’.”
Aiah tilts her head in curiosity.
“The Neruda poem,” she points out, “You were the one who showed it to me.”
“May nakalimutan ka pa ata na isa pang poem na I showed you.”
It was Mikha’s turn to be confused, “Ano?”
Aiah speaks despite the whirlpool of butterflies in her stomach, “Read Me, ‘whenever my voice flings arrows / your way at a fiery pace, / read, discover there is that / something in me that dies to go gentle.’”
“Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta,” Mikha whispers the author’s name, to which she nods in confirmation, “It shouldn’t have gotten to a point na you had to fire arrows at me in the first place.”
“Are we going to unpack that now?”
“I suppose not,” Mikha shakes her head, “Pero I’ll always be apologetic about it.”
“I know,” Aiah sighs, “I’ve forgiven you since the night it happened.”
What to do when you consider the ocean as an ex-lover? Move to the beach, take up a remote writing job in an online publication, spend the days watching tourists take a jab at surfing, and spend the nights watching college students live out their ‘I’m Drunk, I Love You’ fantasies. One day, you will hear your friend’s girlfriend’s voice on the radio, and the first two lines will sound like an awful lot of your favorite poem. You will search the song on the internet and realize it’s from the band that your ex-girlfriend is in. You will receive an email from your editor asking for a feature. You will ask Jhoanna, unsuspecting and lovesick Jhoanna, if you could interview Maloi’s band. She will ask you if you’re ready to face Mikha. You will say yes, you can keep it professional anyway. That was a lie, Aiah had broken her professionalism the moment she stepped into the terrace an hour ago.
“You’ve grown up a lot, Mikha Lim.”
Mikha smiles at the statement, Aiah feels like she’s got water in her lungs. People fear the ocean simply because they cannot uncover the depths of the sea without succumbing to the pressure. Aiah had drowned long ago. She could navigate the depths of the ocean like the blood in her veins, the ocean has fiery red hair and a metallic nose piercing. The ocean runs her fingers through her hair when she’s nervous, her laughs become shaky when caught off guard, she spends most nights throwing her worries at the moon. The ocean plays the bass. The ocean likes to ask questions.
“You haven’t answered my question yet, Yang.”
“Hindi ba bukas alis niyo papuntang Baguio?”
Mikha shrugs, “I was thinking of an early breakfast. Jhoanna’s driving anyway, and the gig’s not until gabi pa. Hapon na rin ata dating nila Colet sa Baguio, baka late raw sila makaalis ng Manila. She’s bringing her new girlfriend along, si Stacey. Nagrereklamo na nga si Shee, third wheel na naman daw siya.”
Aiah is silent, her teeth chewing on her bottom lip. Then, slowly, her lips curl into a smile, “I have plans, actually.”
“Oh.” Mikha breathes out, defeated.
“What time is your set again?”
“The event starts at 6:00 pm, pero second to the last pa kami sa performers. Sa The Cozy Cove.” Aiah almost feels guilty at how the other girl’s tone has faded into a dejected whisper.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll watch your set.”
The thing about the ocean is that it has its way of washing exactly what you need into the shore.
Kahit sa’n nakatingin,
puso ko’y bumabalik.
Ikaw lang,
Ikaw lang.