Jun 22, 2016
Editorial Feature on Logan Lynn’s “Go There When You Want To Be Loved” Charity Single on MySpace Homepage Today
Thank you to the Myspace Music Editorial Team for interviewing me this week about the Pulse Orlando tragedy and what my band is doing to help with the release of our new charity single, “Go There When You Want To Be Loved”, in support of the families and survivors of the tragedy.
You can read the full piece on the MySpace homepage today HERE, or check out the transcript below.
From MySpace Music: “Logan Lynn is Raising His Voice in the Face of Fear” (6/22/16)
As the victim toll rose from the shooting at Orlando’s PULSE nightclub on the morning of June 12, pop-rock singer-songwriter Logan Lynn, like many others, was shaken, saddened, and angry. He was also scared, and that was the emotion that would push him most. “My reaction to my own fear is to be louder,” he explains.
“I think a lot of my friends, and my band, and my producer, and my publicist, were all like, what the hell do we do,” he says of the days after the mass murder. The answer, they concluded, was to release Lynn’s latest single, “Go There When You Want To Be Loved,” ahead of schedule, with all of the proceeds going to support the recovery efforts in Orlando’s LGBT community.
“It made me feel like I wasn’t just sitting here helpless,” Lynn says of the decision. “I’m a gay man, so I can’t donate blood, even to save other gay men who are dying because they are losing their own blood, so it felt very much like I needed to do something other than sit on my hands.”
The song is a personal one for Lynn. “I wrote the song about feeling like I didn’t have a safe place in the world as a gay man. My struggle to find love, or acceptance, not just externally, but internally. This feeling like I’m a man without a country, I’m a man without a place to go.”
We spoke with him about that feeling, and what everyone can do to foster more acceptance.
When the news broke regarding the shooting at PULSE, every hour the reports of how many people had been killed rose. How did the way that information continued to come in affect your emotions?
I came out in the Midwest when I was 14, so I have a relatively lived longstanding experience of what it means to be gay in the world, in a place where it’s not safe to be gay in the world. As I woke up that morning and started hearing the news I did what everybody did, I was glued to the TV, and at a certain point someone came on and was talking about how one of the police officers had spoken about how loud the sound of the cell phones (of the deceased) had been in the club, all of them going off at once, and I had a moment where I just was like, I can’t look at this anymore right now. I had to step away and try to figure out where to put my own grief, and my own feeling of not mattering, that we’re animals who don’t matter, or something, LGBT people.
My brother texted me and was very sweet and had some sentiment around how maybe this is so awful change will come now. I want to believe that, but also I think in the moment I was really discouraged. I know Harvey Milk’s death would have been an opportunity for that to happen, and Brandon Teena’s death would have been an opportunity for that to happen, and Matthew Shepard’s death would have been an opportunity for that to happen.
I feel discouraged knowing that we are still where we were, on some level.
It was hard to see other gay people suffering, especially because oftentimes there’s no safe place for us anywhere in the world, and to be minding our own business, and be in our own safe spaces dancing, and trying to celebrate our own culture, and have that space invaded by violence, and suffering, feels especially hard.
Have you ever been in a situation where you feared for your life because of someone else’s reaction to who you are?
Oh for sure. I got beat up as a child pretty badly by other boys for being girly. I also experienced trauma as a child, which is largely what the record is about, and had my own mental health struggles starting when I was seven.
As I became a gay man, or a gay teenager, or a gay young adult in the Midwest, this was pre-Will & Grace, it was not safe. It was not culturally acceptable, and I was young and fearless, or at least wanted to be. I was scared at times. I think I started using drugs around that time to not just mask who I was, but mask the pain of what that meant, to be myself.
It wasn’t easy, then, coming out. I think it’s easier now, but things like this, this sort of violence, is a reminder that just getting marriage equality doesn’t mean the fight is over. Just because we have gay-straight alliances in some schools doesn’t mean that all LGBTQ youth are safe. I wish there was a way to remind people of that without queer people bleeding in the streets. I wish straight allies, and people who might be on the fence, cared about us in times of joy, as well as suffering.
You mentioned Will & Grace as a bit of a landmark moment.
There are things we’ve done legally for the community, and there’s people like Ellen, who kissed a woman on her show, and Roseanne, who had the first lesbian kiss on TV, and Will & Grace, who made people all across America fall in love with gay people. These particular gay characters were fun, and it wasn’t steeped in sadness, and they weren’t serial killers. It really was a moment.
I remember watching [Will & Grace] for the first time and really feeling like, unlike Ellen, which had been lesbian focused, that was the first time I saw positive gay man characters on TV, and saw myself reflected back. Had I grown up in a world where that was happening more I would have probably had different feelings about myself, but when all you see reflected back is this sort of sinister, creepy, lurking in the shadows archetype of the gay man, you do internalize that, I think, on some level, and certainly society has accepted that.
So when Will & Grace comes along, or when LOGO happened, and I was asked to be one of the people on LOGO when it was first happening, I remember thinking this thing that I’d been abused around my whole life, this thing that has really been a struggle for me in every corner of my life, is now suddenly a selling point. I felt safe for the first time as an out gay artist. I felt like oh my God, we’re moving into a new place, at least in the entertainment industry, and I think that’s continued.
Over the past few years we’ve seen laws legalizing gay marriage, but as you touched on earlier, laws don’t necessarily create acceptance. What steps can be taken to create more acceptance?
Right now I just feel even a Facebook post from people acknowledging the gay community, acknowledging that we’re suffering, is a step. Starting those conversations in your own networks, in your own lives.
I also want to hold people to the fire a little bit more. I want people to donate to LGBT organizations. I want people to care about queer, and trans, youth. People like Jack Antonoff from Bleachers, he started an organization called The Ally Coalition, and I’ve partnered with him, and them, on a bunch of stuff. They go to rock shows and they create safe space for LGBTQ youth at those shows, similar to what we’re doing around mental health. I have this Keep Oregon Well campaign where we fight stigma around mental and behavioral health at shows through rock and roll.
That’s my world, that’s how I’m showing up, that’s how Jack is showing up, but we all have jobs, we all work somewhere, we all go places to shop, we all are in a community in some way, so it’s really about standing up to violent, or problematic language, it’s about talking to your friends about what it really means to be gay, or to have a gay friend, or a gay son. The coming out is not just for gay and trans people, it’s for our allies, too. We really need people to say the words. That’s why it was so cool for President Obama to say the word transgender in one of his speeches. That was the first time it had ever happened, and those things matter. He’s using his power to at least try to spotlight (the community).
It does feel like a time where straight people, and other people who might not be so close to it, could rally around [us]. We have pride parades happening all month. People should go, and cheer the drag queens on. If there ever was a time to show up, it’s now.