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.