I was interviewed by The Pride Review this week. You can check out the original post HERE or keep reading below for the transcript.

From The Pride Review: (6/28/2012)

Who is Logan Lynn today?

I’m still trying to figure that out.

Was music your first love and who was your first human love?

Music and I have always loved one another. My first human love was a boy in high school. He was an 18 year old senior and I was a 14 year old freshman. I ended up having to move to Tennessee midway through the school year (without saying goodbye) when a Christian counselor I was made to see outed me to my parents and then said if they didn’t remove me from the school he would report the boy. So, I left the next morning. It was devastating. When I returned later that year, we picked up where we had left off, but he moved away for college after that summer and we didn’t see much of each other after that.

What can we learn from our first love?

I learned to keep my fucking mouth shut to Christian counselors.

What can we learn from music?

I’ve explored the deepest parts of myself through songwriting and have said things melodically that I never would have had the courage to speak. For me, it’s the most honest place.

How did you get into the music business and did you experience it as a fair playground?

I got signed originally in 1999 and my first record was released in 2000. Nothing really took for another few years, though. I’m pretty sure this “fair” you speak of doesn’t exist in any business, music or otherwise. I’ve been really lucky at times and down and out at others. It’s a tough business, and I’ve made a few really public fuck-ups over the years.

What are the experiences you feel like you had to go through and Read the rest of this entry »

(This month marks the relaunch of Just Out, Oregon’s only LGBT glossy news magazine. I have a monthly column in the publication called “In The Trenches” which is on stands now or you can click HERE to read the online version. I have posted the original version of the piece, titled “Forgiveness Is A Huge Pain In The Ass”, here as well. Be sure and pick up your copy of Just Out all over Oregon or click on the cover below to download the PDF. I happened to write this month’s cover story too, which you can check out HERE if ya wanna.)

From Just Out, June 2012 Issue:

Forgiveness is a Huge Pain in the Ass.

by Logan Lynn.

There. I said it. My hurt is my hurt. As so many of us do, I carry it on my back, bring it with me to bed, and keep it fed and alive so it can grow alongside me as I make my way through the years. I notice more and more that there is deep sense of my identity found in and around my own history of suffering and that I still sometimes guard those old feelings with my life even now, years after the initial infliction occurred. Much of the connection I feel to my humanity seems to have been formed during sad times, more than once having had the experience of stepping closer to my true self in moments when all had otherwise been lost.

Recently, after I reviewed Lee Hirsch’s documentary “Bully” for another gig and recounted my own horror story of being tortured by my peers as a young man for being ginger, queer and different, I received a message on Facebook from a name I had not seen for nearly twenty years but instantly recognized. In a flash I was transported back in time and broke into an all-too-familiar sweat, my hands cold and clammy with panic. The message was from one of the ringleaders of this group of mean kids I had grown up with and I have always counted him as one of my primary tormenters from back then. Suddenly I was 14 again and all alone in the world, just me and my teenage fear.

As I had done many times before in locker rooms, classrooms and hallways when I spotted this particular bully, I puffed myself up and prepared for the worst. Once I had worked through the acute PTSD around even seeing his name in my inbox, I opened the message and, to my surprise, took in the following words: “Hey Logan, I read several of your stories on The Huffington Post. In short, I just wanted to say that I’m very sorry for any bullying that I did when we were younger. I know that’s not much (if any comfort), but I wanted to say it. I sincerely hope my own kids are more tolerant. Congrats on your sobriety and best of luck with your community work.”

It was strangely comforting. I burst into tears. This jerk had made me cry before, no doubt – but this was different. Read the rest of this entry »