That move, where she turned away in sync with the key change and a stole furtive glance back, it got me every time. The haze from the smoke machines masked the neon dance floor in pastoral veil, and for a while it seemed we were in an English romantic novel – her white blouse a beacon in the countryside entreating her darkly clad lover. Just as such words on a page would be, the mind’s image of this is eternal, and even if the meaning of the moment may diminish with time, the intensity of the memory may still burn.

She would turn back to me, and away again, following the prompts of the music, the momentum of her body, and the instinct of her mind and soul, and I would do the same. Perhaps that is why we returned over and over, to the same place to the same music, to the same dance. Perhaps it was a way, maybe the only way back then, to feel completely, and safely, in sync with and within someone else.

 

-Danny Grosso

Into the vortex they ran, in to an extra-dimensional world where they all wore long tweeds, like it was a 50’s episode of a sci-fi serial. They ran willingly, purposefully, like reporters to a schoolhouse fire; or maybe not ran – can they run here where there seems to be no ground? It looks almost like the floor of a meadow, but it is kinetic, moving clockwise, here, reversing there, ebbing and flowing here and away. It is so strange in here, but then there are familiarities in the beings that suddenly appear, and themselves: the cut of the hair, the harried looks, like hoods on the run. familiar sights indeed, every noir story has them, but what of this setting, what of the vortex?

Perhaps they are to continue in this struggle. Continue to run to assist others, to explore the frightful unknown, to set worry aside and go…go.

As they made the second turn an untraceable sound descended on them, high pitched but full, and a light shot through the space they inhabited. They felt that light surge through their bodies. Then all was black for a moment or maybe a hundred years, and then when they once again became aware, they were floating in a celestial wonderland, until they turned their heads and they were in a 1970’s den, sinking their toes in shag carpet. Elton was on the stereo system. Levon sells cartoon balloons in town. Turning away, they are bathed in the galaxies. turning back, Levon likes his money…

It strikes them that they may have to choose…

–Danny Grosso