Logan Lynn had been home for four days when he joined us for a Flawless Talk. He had come off a whirlwind tour of advance community screenings for The Pain and The Power, staying after each one to talk with audiences. The tour left him tired but that morning he felt ready to work again. “I think I’m back in the swing of it,” he told us.

Logan is a longtime friend of the Flawless Foundation, and an award-winning musician, songwriter, filmmaker, and LGBTQ+ mental health advocate. For 30 years, he has made art from the parts of his life many artists keep private, including a childhood inside a fundamentalist church in rural Nebraska and Texas, and 16 years living with addiction. The Pain and The Power, an award-winning documentary by transgender filmmaker Cai Indermaur, follows him back through those years. Portugal. The Man released the companion record through PORTUGAY, the LGBTQ+ division of their label, KNIK Records.

Five and a Half Hours of Footage

Logan’s contract gave him final say over the film. He pictured himself watching one finished version at the end and signing off. The filmmaker, Cai sent him a first cut that ran five and a half hours, and he watched version after version from there.

Watching the footage, he met a version of himself he could not remember. “I didn’t have a memory or an experience of myself during those addicted years,” he said. “Experiencing that person by way of the footage was quite intense.”

Cai had a massive archive to work from, with family home movies from decades before Logan was born and three decades of career footage. Logan credits Cai with choosing the pieces that served the story and leaving out anything that felt exploitative. “I wasn’t interested in people being like, oh, you poor thing,” he said. “That’s not my vibe.”

Some scenes make him pause, and he has watched parts of the film through his fingers at screenings. During editing, he learned to sort one kind of discomfort from another. “It’s not that I don’t want this in the film,” he said. “It’s that I wish this hadn’t happened in my life.”

Logan has been in recovery for 18 years and has made amends along the way. The film gave him something new. “This is one of the first times I’ve had the opportunity to understand what I’ve been making amends for.” His family has grown closer through the process, which he did not expect.

A Record of Goodbyes

Logan describes the songs on the soundtrack as goodbyes. He wrote the record during a stretch of loss: a fire destroyed Burn Money Music Studio partway through recording and a relationship ending.  “I’m always writing through my experience to try to identify what experience I’m having,” he said.

He built each track from sounds he had used in an earlier era of his career, so the album plays like a walk through his past. In the film, Logan says goodbye to something larger, to “the suffering and the carrying it around,” and to the habit of holding everything himself instead of sharing it with the people he needs.

The record closes with a cover of “Rainbow Connection.” Logan grew up with the Muppets and sings the song to himself in the shower. He met its writer, Paul Williams, through Portugal. The Man and felt compelled to record it. He hopes it offers some comfort to queer and trans people facing hostility in this country and around the world. “It’s a love letter to queer and trans folks.”

Recovery as a Filter

Logan has taken a harm reduction approach from the start. His therapist and recovery counselors have worked the same way, meeting him where he is and valuing progress over perfection. Recovery does not define him. “It is the filter that I see through,” he said. “It is how I am calibrated at parties, on tour, in my home.”

In early recovery, he lived with an itch in the back of his head that he fought not to scratch. That itch left a long time ago. His recovery today keeps him steady. “I get through the day fine. I’m having happy days.”

Don’t Give Up

We asked Logan what he wishes someone had told his family. He answered in three words: “Don’t give up.”

He pushes back on the tough-love advice families hear on family days at rehab facilities, the instruction to set a boundary and kick a loved one out. “You wouldn’t kick someone out who hasn’t cured their cancer yet,” he said. “It’s so wild that we treat things that are happening upstairs as not part of your whole body and part of your whole ecosystem of care.”

At Flawless, we make the same case. A person living with addiction or a mental health condition deserves the patience you would give someone in cancer treatment. Logan also acknowledges that the medical and rehab communities can hand out plenty of bad advice, and that recovery looks different for each person. His message to families holds steady through all of it. “If it takes their whole life, it takes your whole life,” he said. “You don’t ever give up.”

Faith and His Family’s Story

Logan grew up in a church that was not a fit for him and he tells that part of the film from his own experience. “There’s many pathways to healing,” he said. “Some people might get something good out of the church. I wasn’t one of those people.”

Cai is a friend, and that friendship let Logan talk about hard things on camera. “I felt safe, and I knew that I was in good hands.”

Art That Catches People

Logan founded Keep Oregon Well to challenge harmful stereotypes about mental health, and he has launched several campaigns and nonprofit partnerships since. His advocacy reaches the most people when he treats it the way you learned your ABCs, through song. He can still recite the books of the Old and New Testament because he learned them as a song as a child.

He brings lessons from LGBTQ+ activism into his mental health work, and he sees both as coming-out movements. He designs his campaigns around one question: “What did I need when I was struggling and so sad?” For him, the answer was often musicians and television. “This sort of art and entertainment is the net that I use to catch people.”

Keeping the Lights On

For years, Logan wrote his songs from a place of despair. “It was all tunnel all the time,” he said. He worked with his care team to get his medication and therapy right, and he found his way out.

He finds hope in big moments, like his invitation to celebrate Pride on the White House lawn, and in small ones, like his dogs on the floor at his feet. “I know how to keep the lights on over here,” he said. “And I know how to help other people in my life keep the lights on too.”

He hopes viewers leave the film believing “your current reality or your past reality doesn’t have to be your forever reality.”

A Flawless World

Logan’s first answer to our question of what a Flawless World would look like, it was dogs, everywhere. Then he described a world where people feel safe, know they belong, and can be who they are. “That looks different for everybody,” he said. “That’s the point.”

Thank you, Logan, for your honesty and your music. Watch The Pain and The Power, follow along at @loganlynnofficial and @ThePainAndThePower, and catch the full Flawless Talk here:

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