Heartbeat maintenance

I don't think my heart would know how to keep consistently beating day after day without music. It serves as a metronome to my heart, and these songs are what keeps my blood pumping, my vessels intact, what plays through certain instances in my life. These songs say everything my heart can't, basically. Be sure to listen to a couple of these.

The Messenger- Linkin Park

This song is for those moments when you need to scream about everything and just purge your emotions- I highly recommend it every once in a while

On Melancholy Hill- Gorillaz

I listen to this when a good night is reluctantly coming to an end, and I'm driving along a long stretch of highway. Kind of sums everything up.

Look What You've Done- Jet

Every time I hear this song my heart throbs. This one is a tribute to sweltering summer days, salt stinging our eyes, lethal sunburns that set our skin on fire, and every other physical pain that makes the beach worth it. 

Baby I'm Yours- Arctic Monkeys

Obviously I had to put one love song in the mix. Not sure if this kind of dedication still exists, but I like to dream about it.

21 guns- Green Day

First song I loved by this band, and it's the kind of tune that motivates me to get up in the morning.



Violet Hill- Coldplay

The bridge of this song leaves me speechless. Really anything by Coldplay strikes the core.

Semi-Charmed Life- Third Eye Blind

These types of upbeat songs I usually run or play soccer to.

Misery Business- Paramore

When everything is working out (which of course is pretty rare), and you kinda just need to sing about it.

Smells Like Teen Spirit- Nirvana

Kickin it back to the 90's, this song themes my rebellion, whenever I make stupid decisions on my own accord, knowing the risk I'm taking because "I'm only a teenager once". Here's to climbing the roof of  LP, sneaking onto the catwalk, nearly getting suspended, sabotaging band performances, pulling pranks, skinny dipping, causing a ruckus, etc.

Missing You- All Time Low

This song triggers tears. I heard it after a recent suicide and it made everything a little brighter. If you ever even reconsider the value of your life, listen to this. 

Gold On The Ceiling- The Black Keys

We sang along to this on our way to prom. Try to resist doing air guitar to the chorus. I dare you.

Polaroid- Imagine Dragons

Can't hear this one enough. 

Northern Downpour- Panic! At The Disco

This is mud puddles and flooded pipes, broken umbrellas and sidewalk earth worms. Just your typical rainy weather song. 

Creepin Up The Backstairs- The Fratellis

Here's to sneaking out well past curfew...

Talk! - The 1975

When I get sick of listening to people, of interrogations and relentless conversation, and I'd rather be an introvert in the remedial silence of my bedroom.

Painting Flowers- All Time Low

Same band, completely different sound. I like to blast this song up in my attic past midnight while the world sleeps. It changes my perception of things, and inspires me.

Car Radio- Twenty One Pilots

Mhmm. Do I even need to explain this?

Drop The Game- Flume

This is too catchy, I'm obligated to put it on the list.

All These Things I've Done- The Killers

Okay, final song since it's getting late and this list is getting long. The lyrics to this get me every time. Got soul, but you're not a soldier? You should hear this. 

Those are just a few of my favorite songs, hope you like them

Blood on my hands

This story involves a cold-blooded killer.

That being me.

You have to understand, first and foremost, that I never meant to harm anything. I went into the day with innocent intentions, oblivious to the repercussions of my stupidity, and left with a surreal experience that still haunts me to this day. If you're actually going to read this, please erase any judgmental inclinations, and try to see things from my perspective.

Here we go.

Twas a sunny spring afternoon during the ninth grade, my final year of Timberline. I was hanging with my homies at the time at my friend's mansion in Alpine. At this point, we had wasted a few hours taking frequent trips to the kitchen, raiding her pantry for junk food, whilst observing the wonders of the Animalia Phylum Cordata.

Positioned in the middle of a round wood table on my friend's back porch was a hummingbird feeder. Like a shrine to nature, stunning hummingbirds of varying hues and iridescent feathers flocked fearlessly to the feeder and partook of it's nectar, zooming right past our heads without a second thought. Little did they know their thirst would come at a cost.

My friend then goes on to tell us about how she's tried to catch hummingbirds before. We seize the challenge immediately and hatch a plan, gathering all the supplies. It was a basic operation that consisted of setting up a cardboard box over the feeder, placing a stick underneath with a string tied to it, and sitting a distance away, dropping the box while they were distracted underneath.

Hummingbirds flap their wings fifty to two hundred times per second, and can fly up to 34 mph forward and backward. We were no match for this specimen, and it took an hour and a half for everyone to accept that. Well, everyone but me.

I was frustrated with the whole thing, becoming dangerously passionate in our cause. While everyone retreated inside to get popsicles, I stayed outside and continued the endeavor, holding the box instead and slamming it down with newfound aggression.

One parched hummingbird entered the trap, it's feathers a breathtaking mixture of vibrant blues and greens. It lingered at the feeder, and I waited until my instincts told me it was right, then let the box come crashing down. Inside, I heard it rustling about, indicating fleeting success. All at once, it became eerily silent.

"I think I caught-"

I stopped mid sentence when I saw what I had done.

This image is still vivid in my mind. As I lifted that box, I saw the hummingbird laying on the table, it's head moving rapidly side to side as it took it's last dying breaths. Somewhere in the process of capturing the bird, it had acquired fatal injuries, along with the crippling loss of it's left wing.

I wish I could say that I saved it somehow, had gently given it CPR and nursed it back to health, but that wouldn't be the truth. Reality was a bitter and unbearable thing that day, but reality told me that I had just killed a hummingbird. 

Naturally, I screamed bloody murder. My friends came running out and witnessed firsthand what I had done. I explained exactly what transpired, tears filling up in my eyes, and they comforted me best they could, the horror of the situation crackling in the air around us. We slipped the corpse into a box, gave it a proper burial in her backyard underneath a flowerbed, and agreed to never speak of it again.

I learned an important lesson that day about taking things too far, where to draw the line between desire and insanity, and how unfathomably precious life is. I hope sharing this story with you can serve as a release to the guilt I've harbored for all these years, and perhaps prevent you from doing anything similar to this... Make good choices guys. 

Let's get this over with