In the mean, there will be moving – much moving, places to go again, futures to make and remake. Writers shaking the plume. Virtuous benefactors vindicated. Rogues redeemed.

The coming age galvanized the generations young enough to suspect that a bit of time was left to put right when had been wrongly placed; enough time to find peace and nurture it dearly, and to live, live, desperately live, with empathy, kindness, and a resolve that the legacy left would be restorative.

The slow building of the sound of reawakening moved them from their apathy and into the syncopated march of the future. The dance of the new world begins again.

–Danny Grosso

Excerpt: Outside, the feeling of liberation belied a rebirth of community. Poets expressed their understanding of the new covenant with their words; dancers did so with their bodies. Correspondents presented the big and small events without embellishment; there was no need to guild this blossoming lily. Leaning into the cameras, they said “Look; see.” and pointed to the scenes of enterprise and empathy, of collaboration and kindness; of relief, as the breath of possibility spread over the nation like a cool breeze.

-Danny Grosso

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Those entrenched in the corridors of power were shaken. A gentle transition to a new generation had begun to manifest itself politically. The streets calmed, further unnerving the intransigent elders. They were banking on the unrest to be avenue by which to ramp up the march to martial law. Now attuned to the wiles of their adversaries, the movement presented no purchase for a declaration of hostilities. As the tenuous calm spread over an election season, great masses lined up in cold, in rain, in blistering desert heat, to exercise the franchise. Slates were chosen, scoundrels deposed, fresh faces abounded.  The unconventional neophytes adopted conventional settings to rally their causes. Looking out over the assembled, the vitriol of past gatherings put on by the old guard went missing. The gentility of the wave of liberality and commonweal mimicked power and peace of the sea in a gentle breeze.

If this was to be different, it would have to stay this way, in a world where nothing ever stays the same. Nonetheless, somehow, the calm confidence coursing through the air made it seem possible.

 

–Danny Grosso

Even out in the sticks, where the commotion was muted by nature’s own symphony, heads were turning. Up on the rolling dunes, those becoming aware ascended the promontory and afforded themselves a new vista. Something so old and staid, rarely affected by change, was moving, out there, somewhere.

In the skies above the harlequin patchwork of shadows, the light begins to guild. Another sun appears, an illusion perhaps, but another star is expected, somewhere in time. For now, the roiling clouds filter the light into a glittering dazzle.

-Danny Grosso

 

 

 

Fanfares and flags unfurled with the new light of a new day. Those listening could hear the echoes of victory foretold; those unattuned to such sorcery simply sampled the sweet music of joy. Voices lifted, choruses swelled. Someone danced across the grand avenue, another joined in. This was how the tide was turned; one action, joined by another, and another, and on. A gathering of power. A commonweal of good will put to action.

Those there drank the clearing like manna, as if the blue tide of it in the sky would ebb, but the departure of darkness seemed, somehow, permanent. Something had changed about the relationship between the combatants. It was as if the acceptance of a preternatural ebb and flow of dominance had ended.

Light still tarries with its rival. It needs to be vigilant within the dynamic of the natural order. Dark clouds can gather on the horizon. Night falls. The light respects all of this, but it may never again long for the false promises of evening’s embrace.

–Danny Grosso

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Copping was produced as a graphic single – an illustrated story with a CD of an original song co-written and performed by Danny Grosso and Russ Offman.

Some kind of underground throwback – hoods dressing like ’30’s movie gangsters; taggers putting up bespoke swells in boss hats. The alleys seemed odd on those days, like movie sets that had sprung up out of nowhere and without notice. Maybe that was it, who knows. lots of things happened in the alleys back then, before the city cleaned the places out. Model shoots and music videos, impromptu parties, and sure, movies as well. They were keen to film those old time scenes while the old time buildings were still there, crumbling brick and missing mortar. The costumed feel was not an hallucination. Lots of actors and poseurs dressed up as if from another time, scattering about in the shadows, and memorialized on the alley walls.

-Danny Grosso

That hat, or the girl with that hat, is what one remembers. How she spun it around on her finger like a circus act, and your eye would follow its turning until it dissolved into the light show and the beat of the music and all this together was that good kind of dizzy.

Arms and legs and that hat – from a distance it all could look like one animal, pushing in a hundred different directions, but in rhythm. That boom boom boom that moved us all. The D.J. is king for a set or two, a few hours at least before the hats go back in the closet, the animal breaks off into separate lives, and daylight comes.

The break in the neon darkness saved many lives; still, all that everyone wanted was another night.

-Danny Grosso 

The Traveler first appeared in The Loyola Phoenix in 1982 under the title D.C.. Many of the original strips were damaged in the layout and printing process, so the author reworked them in 1990-91.

 

–Danny Grosso

Back then the city was less visited, especially at night, but some, like your vendor, carried on…

 

From Chicago Gothic (2007). Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.