Zachari Logan: A Natural History of Unnatural Things

 

 "The artworks I become enamored with offer simple clues about their creators" (from "Paper, Petals, Leaves and Skin").

 What is it about queerness that announces itself to me?  How do I perceive, from a single image, that there was something queer in its creation?  The above work, used to advertise an exhibition by Logan at the Peabody Essex, was one such image, and it moved to the top of my list with a glance.

Post-facto analysis gives some hints at a logical underpinning for the phenomenon.  Clearly male lips, surrounded by flowers: very queer.  A prominent gap between the incisors: almost stereotypical in its queerness.  In the moment, however, none of those thoughts occurred to me.  I simply knew that whatever this exhibit was: A. it was queer as fuck, and B. I must see it.

And it was marvelously queer.  Every one of the works spoke to me, and each in a very different way.  Logan's queer voice is a very specific one, seemingly obsessed with expressing the raw sexuality of the intersection of life (often flowers), and death (in many guises).  In his poetry too, this equation is visible.  Occassionally it is as elegant as his visual art, as in "Tattoo", where the scabs of a tattoo render it mute, dead, though life runs below it through a large vein, 

"until spoken,

not by a voice,

but by the brushing 

of your beard

on my arm."

More often, however, his poetry invited me to a dinner party where he is Truman Capote, and I am nobody.  Invited by chance or fortune, to a world in which I have not made a place, I am instantly defensive.  My ego sounds alarms, and every pointlessly arcane reference, every self-congratulatory asyndeton, and especially the myriad places where the host chooses the seemingly most clumsy, prosaic word possible, is a chance for that ego to save itself and affirm its own existence with a sneer.  I adopt a grimace intended to convey incredulity, saying "Am I the only one who sees that the host is nude?" 

 Queerness is, as in Logan's art, the old made new with a moan.  We are the flowers that bloom from the decayed remnants of culture that are left after all that is insincere and false has rotted away.  We are also a thin shell of art over a gaping void where our place in the world should be.  Capote was a boring writer, and a truly ugly man in many ways.  Logan is rather bad at poetry.  Both wear the elaborate decorative shell of queerness, for brashly is the only way we are allowed to exist.  It is fickle, though, and can come apart with a pin prick.  And this writing is my own version, a desperate attempt to join the party, for although I have no real place in the queer world, at least my facade fits right in.