Strobes, dirt, an open field. Speaker arrays, droves of people, wristbands, brand activation booths. A dark sky, the air carrying a mix of human moisture and evening dew. At least three massive LED displays—two in vertical orientation, focused on the performer. The big one in the middle is for the art, the band name, the vibe. And at the very top of the steel scaffolding, the glorious nametag, the callsign, the way the organizers want you to remember the experience.

This is a music festival—the Aurora Music Festival, to be specific. I didn’t know much about it before going, and probably wouldn’t bother knowing more after. Why should I? I don’t need an introduction; the performers don’t need an introduction. Almost everybody who’s anybody in the Filipino mainstream music business today is there. They’ve been played over and again in heavy rotation; I don’t even know how that happens in the streaming era. Fans! Right! They have fans! Lots and lots of fans who swear they love these artists the same way these artists say they love them—every. single. night.

This is pop music. This is the commercial complex of sonic and personal creativity. These are the sparkling cash cows. You get all the “heavy hitters,” get all the people in, and count your money—rinse and repeat.

“Clark is a little bit far away,” you say. Well, why worry when you’ve been to almost the exact same thing for four consecutive nights in what we now must call the UP Fair Activism Festival? No? You didn’t go? Well, don’t worry, there’s the Circus Music Festival happening in Makati, an MRT ride away or two, serving an expanded list of the exact same thing.

So what in the world have I been doing showing up to it? After going through the gauntlet of attempting to pick up on what younger people are into, resolving to be the least pain-in-the-butt when the initiative grew into an excursion of nearly ten people, and porting my expectations back into an entirely different baseline (the “UP Fair baseline”), I regret to report that I do not know. Or at least, I no longer know why I showed up to something I have the least affinity for.

Dammit, I’m a “metalhead”—and how that makes me want to puke. “Heavy”… heavy is the crown when it comes time to identify for the sake of conversation: I am a heavy music enthusiast. Not a “rock fan”; again, not a “metalhead” (hair metal comes to mind), not a “post-hardcore kid” (what the swooping heck), not a “raver” (yet—maybe on my honeymoon!)—I’m a heavy, loud, bouncy, angsty, weird, tension-y, avant-garde-y, high-adrenaline, violate-your-feelings, disrespect-your-surroundings music person-listener-thingy.

So why in the actual heavens am I doing my lobotomized zombie impression, fading in and out of the sonic landscape of “Kabisado,” or getting whiplashed into “Gento,” staring into the sky near the back row explaining to my peers, “This is what I came here for!” upon seeing the pyro? Just what I came there for almost escapes me as I write. This is the fifth time I’ve mentioned the cost of being post-30 trying to do pre-30 things; my feet hurt, and I’m, quite frankly, tired.

I went in there trying to start something in me. There’s got to be a spark that will push my being over into the person I think I should be. Functionally, I’m a creative producer—a catchall phrase I just invented to describe how I see myself at this point in my career. I wanted to be “in.” I wanted to come in there and say, “Today is the day I become a real human being: friendly, accommodating, agreeable.” I will have my yangnyeom sauce on my chicken and I will like it. How dare I not like it!

I’d always loved the sound of a good ol’ Nord Stage, and thanks to this Armi “Di-Mo-Lang-Alam” girl for reminding me why. It’s bell-y, it’s dark, it lingers, it sparks, and it fits the night. Epileptic, glitchy, dynamic LED feed filters and overlays are the best thing that has ever happened to modern production design, short of integrating AR. We’ve truly come a long way with portable on-premise video processors! And again, this has been by far the best large-field FOH configuration I have ever experienced; I’m starting to get a feel of how much better analogous Western festival setups must sound. I wish local heavy music promoters would at least get near this level of configuration. Those drop-tuned guitars aren’t coming through with just the subs, my friends!

Is it because this is just my very convoluted and expensive way of stress-testing my new Loop Earbuds—which, by the way, worked very well? Did I just get bored, wanting to put myself once more through the wringer of this sick satisfaction I get from “day-tripping” long-haul travels because I kind of hate myself the way Rick Sanchez does?

I danced to a few songs. I threw myself into the experience so much that my feet still hurt as I type. By then I had become your quintessential festival excursionist with an Airbnb booking to drive the point home—a first, to say the least!

By all counts it was nice—nay, it was great. It was the extravaganza it’s always made out to be. Unlike the heavy music organizers that I mercilessly rip apart every time I come home from one of their affairs, this one is something the majority of people would have nothing to say against: polished, familiar, memorable—clean.

And indeed “pop!” it went. Poof. Gone—almost. Like the many “snobs” who have founded things non-pop, that’s the thing about pop culture. There’s a subset of humanity that lacks the emotional receptors for what makes popular things popular. Everybody sings, the tongue recoils. Everybody raises a salute, an arm crosses.

Everybody feels caressed, lullabied, serenaded—seen! And somewhere back here is someone who thinks it’s gloriously beautiful; honored, even, to have been part of a remarkable moment in contemporary Filipino culture.

And that someone is now back here, having just gone through an entire Warped Tour live video of Saosin, finally able to call the concert that started last May 2 a night.