Residency is a four-part weekly journal entry brought to you by some of our favorite artists.

This month we’re pleased to announce that Jamison aka Teen Daze—also of Two Bicycles and Cultus Vibes—will be holding down the fort throughout the month of December. Check out his first entry below.

Phil Elverum, Winter, The Human Experience, Home Recording In Isolation, and I walk into a bar.

A. SAD and You, or Me.

Seasonal affective disorder is a very real thing where I come from. From November to April, we here in the Pacific Northwest try to keep our blinds open as much as possible.

Currently, I live in a ground floor apartment that neighbors a housing complex for women who have left abusive relationships. Sometimes, the women will sit in their expansive backyard, a zen-garden-like space, and smoke cigarettes, while bitching about their current living situations.

For me, a seasonally-affected person is seemingly always in need of some sort of natural light, I now enter into their lives in a sort of parallel way. It makes me nervous to keep the blinds open for too long, only because I’m embarrassed for them to see that I spend literally 75% of my day at my desk. Some of that time is spent on productive things, but a large part of it is spent reading daily Fantasy Basketball tips, and watching whatever hour-long drama I’m making it through that week. On the most productive of days, I’ll even open up a book, put on a record, and sit on my couch and read. But of course, my couch isn’t close enough to the large sliding doors that allow these neighbors into my life. My seemingly boring life on display to the neighborhood, all because I need the Sun’s Vitamin D in order to stay productive.

B. The Mysticism Of Rain, Fog and The Ocean.

I only heard The Glow pt. 2 about six months ago. Some people consider that indie rock blasphemy, to which I say, ”Well, if indie rock is your god, then I feel sorry for you.” Regardless, the record has gone from being, “Oh, Pitchfork gave that a high rating, I should really check it out” to “There is no other music but this.”

Now as I approach the cold, wet, meteorologically-confusing time that is a Pacific Northwest winter, I find it speaking to me in a whole other way. I feel a certain type of mysticism to the place I live, in a way that I’ve never felt before.

C. Isolation, In A Sense.

I love the concept of home recording, but I also sort of loathe it. In my experience, home recording brings a level of mundane distractions that interfere more often than not. Whether it’s the neighbors’ loudly grieving their hard times, or Netflix as a whole, I’m coming to find the need to separate myself from my home whenever I want to create.

I’ve started work on a new Two Bicycles record, demoing a few songs at home, but I want to follow through on this concept of isolation in recording. I feel a strong urge to leave behind the comfort of my well lit home, and venture out into this mystical place I call my home. I want to create something that speaks the truth of the nature that surrounds me. I don’t want to make a Microphones record, because Phil Elverum does that much better than I do. I want to learn how to let my surroundings speak through my voice.

—Jamison