Music videos are extremely well defined as a genre, but within those confines they are intensely creative. They follow a certain rhythm. Artists make a song, and then release it with a video. Repeat.

And so, music videos can be used represent the heartbeat of modern pop culture – especially for a musical people like Filipinos.

With each of these song-video heartbeats, the entertainment industry pumps out a stream of poetry set to music. Supporting it, an orgy of graphics, costumes, set designs, dances, and animations is set in motion. All of this is recorded and arranged by an emerging experimental cinema scene – the video directors, photographers and editors.

We spend countless hours watching these music videos, or letting them play in the background while we talk or surf the internet. Isn't it natural that If you fall in love with a song you have a moment of pure excitement when you see the video for the first time. In my home in San Francisco, or in an internet cafe in Dumaguete, these videos reflect our fears, struggles fantasies and aspirations.

From bundok guitarists and YouTube cover-kids to QC art-school hipsters – and all the way up the food chain of the entertainment conglomerates – music videos in their various forms lead naturally to other pop culture products. Variety show hosts interview bands on television after live performances. Film stars are obliged to become singers, often pairing in love-team duets for their soundtracks and trailers. Every dubbed Korean telenovela and personal care product ad campaign needs an OPM theme song. Pinoy music video directors who work on these projects are offered long-form TV and Film work as a reward for their excellent service. The experimental artist becomes part of the mainstream, and the cultural center moves a little bit, the way Jupiter wobbles in space just a little from the periodic gravitational pull of it's tiny moons.

Make a song, make a video, Repeat. 

And somewhere on a crowded island there is a "kinda strange" kid with a guitar and a webcam, an inspired lyric scrawled on the back pages of her school notebook, ready to start the cycle again.