The Writing of Logan Taylor Brown
On Love
“We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we do the best we know.”— Voltaire
The most vile, the simplest, and the catatonic are among those who have been clutched, at one point or another, by the soft hands of love. This is so -- no human who has passed through a lifetime can escape an encounter with the immeasurable dance that is love. One cannot move through life without being grazed by it, no matter how strange, brief, or distant. If the span of life were but a single moment, then mixed within the chorion and villi of the placenta would be the first act of Love: the consumption of nourishment. We are not to escape the radiance of this ethereal concept, for if we could, the paradox that is a human being would cease to exist. Even if one tried to run from love, they would only trip over the contradiction of their own existence — a beast caught between love and the loss of it, between what we crave and what we are afraid to hold.
The dual nature of being human is not born of good or bad, I believe, but from the ideal of love and its absence. The gambler who loses everything, the alcoholic who laments only pain and sorrow, the spurned man-child who deals in cowardice — all can recall the fabric of care once draped upon them. The widow, the mute, and the blind, if asked, can each procure an example. Even those imprisoned for wicked actions, though they have contorted and manipulated the concept of love, are not exempt from the experience of a time remedied by a guest of higher calling.
Love is not what the human makes it out to be. There is the idea of it — this we can try on in our minds and hearts. But like water, love is neither ours to define nor to design; rather, it designs us. It grows legs to run with. It hides in the charcoal of an artist’s instrument, in the trembling note of a song that pulls one apart. It is the cliff one overlooks, and it is the trust that lends itself to the fallen’s landing. Heartbreak is as painful as it is because love is abandoned. Sometimes, it seems a great distance must be traveled with love left behind. Sometimes, the work is to understand that all of it is internal — that love is the bridge permitting mirrors to face each other. And yet, profundity is never beyond the grasp of intention. What will free one, suspend one, bind one, and transfix one will remain hidden in plain sight.
Love and perception are the best of friends. It is learning to see that is hard. A slew of other pillars are uncovered in the process of bringing order to one’s experience: respect, dignity, and integrity come out to play. In the field of one’s mind, the frolicking of being human blends a little of each, creating the whispering notion that life is worth living — worth uncovering, exploring, deciding, and letting go. There is love within commitment and spontaneity, within the mundane and even the profane.
“La raison d’aimer, c’est l’amour.”
Guy Bourdin’s “Red Dress”
On Fear
“A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.”
— Montaigne
They tell you as a child: face your fear. Head-on. No shield, no armor. Bare as you can be — the only weapon you carry is yourself. Fear can be starved, but it can't be ignored.
When you come down from the tornado winds of panic — ripped up, scattered, in pieces — you'd do well to realize there was never anything to fear. Fear is yours to command. It's when one forgets this that the beast of cemented ideology seems to loom, casting a shadow one foolishly believes spans unseeable distances.
But you persevere. You make up reasons to lean into other feelings — pull from joy, anger, hope, and understanding. And when you're naked, raw, alone, you call out to trust, to choice, to belief that won't deplete. With some rope — imagined or real — you tie those anchors to your soul and keep moving. One foot, then the other. You follow what every human carries, somewhere deep inside: intuition.
And when you eventually reach the end of the shadow, in that pixellated space where light and darkness meet, don't be surprised if a great portion of you bemoans perplexed emotion over leaving the shade. What was scary has become familiar, and your bare self rings the last bells of trepidation over the idea of leaving a makeshift shelter in fear.
Until you step into the day that rains light over you — you whose strength was but a pinpoint, you who grew strong in all you overcame, perhaps at first, when the dazzling calm of a storm passing runs the length of you, you shudder in its warmth. In time, now clothed and shielded in safety, in the quiet calm, you realize: fear doesn't vanish. It slips into the back of your mind like a worry stone in your pocket, a thing you can rub without even thinking. And somewhere, deep inside, you cradle the version of yourself that used to be ruled by fear.
You carry that part with you — not as a weight, but as a reminder. Because without it, you would never have tasted what it means to live without obstacles. You'd never know the freedom of the fields you now run through with wild abandon.
“Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.”
© 2025 Logan Brown. All rights reserved.