Extinction Letter II:
Letter II: The River of Life
Hello friends,
I’m writing you from Portland. The last two days have been spent in the company of my youngest sister Shannon, and her husband Taylor. They moved here several months ago and this trip has been to see them, and spend a couple of days in Taylor’s recording studio.
I’m still preparing for my own move. But the primary purpose for this trip was to finish a project Taylor and I started about a year ago. I’m please to say to be able to say the bulk of the work is done. At some point later this year, I’ll be able to release a five song EP called The Bright River.
This project would not exist if it weren’t for Taylor’s willingness to lend his considerable production talent to shaping a group of songs that musically at least, were not fully formed. It has been a gift of time and energy, and for me, an opportunity to become an even bigger fan of the human my sister brought into the family.
Regarding the project, I’ll say this:
I was introduced to the concept of “bright sadness” several years ago through a book about Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s music. Pärt’s Eastern Orthodox religious tradition characterizes it as the “mingling of joy and grief.” I have come to see it is as a way of speaking about when sorrow and transcendent beauty attempt to occupy the same space. When we find something that resonates with the sadness in our human experience, but the interwoven beauty lifts our gaze from despair.
I can think of no work of art that illustrates this more than Pärt’s piece “Spiegel Um Spiegel.” Among many other places, I find it in the films of Hayao Miyazaki, and the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien. Why do we cry tears of joy? Why is the transition from child to adult so bittersweet? I think this is why. We are, the world is, bright and full of sadness, and they often occupy the same lives at the same time.
Not long after, I found myself among many rivers. Walking in them, watching them, recording them. I was also spending a lot of time with Carl Sagan, dreaming along after him about being “star stuff.” Looking at existence from both ends of the telescope, wondering what it means to be projected into the universe then dissipating back into it, without a whole lot of cut-and-dry reasons as to why. I find both sadness and comfort in this perspective; heartache and belonging.
Often, flying-fishing in the rainy rivers of Southern Tennessee, I would stop to ponder how my existence mirrored the drops of rain falling into the water. With the rapids and trout rushing past my knees, and the sunlight rocketing off of the surface, I began in part I think, to give up the struggle for significance and feel gratitude to be a part of the running river.
I started playing around with the phrase “you’re just a raindrop in this bright river.”
Out of this, came the five songs that make up the Bright River EP.
The track list lays out like this:
1. One Bright Life
2. The Air Is Free
3. Space Candles
4. Raindrops
5. Glacial Erratics
Taylor and I worked through them quickly - a new approach for me, bringing along with it a stylistic departure as well. They are, as I see it, an attempt to stand still in the quick, rushing river that is life. To savor the experience, the joy and sadness that make up my own, and the lives around me. I’ll write more about the individual songs going forward. I hope you’ll step in with me.
Joel
5.10.25.
Extinction letter I:
Letter I: One Bright Life
Hello friends.
This is the first entry in what I intend to be semi-regular missives on life and my creative pursuits. It comes in conjunction with an attempt to limit my soul-splitting to one digital location: joelbharris.com. I’m under no illusions that we read to the end of newsletters these days, so I aim to keep things brief and worthy of our collective time.
2025 started with two key decisions: first was confirming the decision to move north. After a good deal of research and visiting old and new friends, I hope to make the move by the end of this summer. Second, was the choice to leave Instagram.
What do you even say about that place? I know you know the score. The lives and faces of your people, interspersed between teenagers eating rancid meat, bodies in rubble, god-mouths screaming religious conquest and deaf children being able to hear for the first time. All of it, us. But served to us without a breath. All of it all of us, all at once.
I had been there 12 years. It was both my primary look into the lives of my friends on the East Coast, and a humble metric to see that anyone cared about my little musical life. Both were losses, but the former cost is watching the children of dear friends grow up, while likely losing contact with others permanently. I pondered if I was ready to grieve that. But there was another spirit in the room.
The algorithm, verifiably, deals in envy, greed and fear. I really do wonder if we begin to see less of ourselves the longer we look into it. For me, the cost to see 5% of your humanity through 5% of my perception was too high. I don’t say this to judge, I’m in no position to.
Of my finite resources, my attention is most precious, and it is neither free nor for sale.
So. Here is one thing I am choosing to invest my attention in.
I decided to run with the title of the album I released last year, Extinction Letters. The title keeps me in mind of two things: our species has not been here long, and if we cannot change, won’t be for much longer. But also, that choosing to be creative is an exercise of writing by dying candlelight - since we will not be making it out alive, what will you do with your one bright life?
Much love,
Joel
4.4.25.