Rilo Kiley: June 2 and 3, Terminal 5, NYC

Architecture in Helsinki: June 8, Irving Plaza, NYC

Sigur Ros: June 16, The Grand Ballroom, The Manhattan Center, NYC

Kimya Dawson: July 2, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Kimya Dawson: July 16, United Palace, NYC

Akron/Family: July 24, Castle Clinton, Battery Park, NY

Wolf Parade: July 31, Terminal 5, NYC

Grizzly Bear: August 8, All Points West, Jersey City, NJ

Animal Collective: August 9, All Points West, Jersey City, NJ

Cat Power: August 10, All Points West, Jersey City, NJ

Anyone interested in going to any of these shows? I’ll definitely be going to a bunch of them… Sigur Ros, Wolf Parade, and Animal Collective, at a minimum. Jed, you’ll be in town, won’t you? Come with me.

Love, Inga

from “The Three Incestuous Sisters” by Audrey Niffenegger

I lick the cheese from the end of my pen.
Some read lovelorn letters on benches
and Beautiful Girls have no reason to look up.

I was a little one
too. My mother
held my hand and led me
forward as I looked
back wishing I could
chase the pigeon
just like you.

If I poured this coffee all
over my face
Say I missed my mouth
Could it burn more
than this sun?

Well, would it eat my pores
and galvanize my metaphors
into fluid flowing from the tip of a tit?
And still, hours later, we chased the pigeons.
With no desultory climax.

“Dad if we walked a million blocks would we die?”

… I had just come up the stairs and I had to go down them again.

No, no, your room’s not ready.  You must come back, come back.  Come back between five and six.’  ‘What time is it now?’  ‘It’s half-past ten.’

‘Courage, courage, ma petite dame,’ she says.  ‘Everything will go well.’

I go down the stairs again, clutching the banisters, step by step.

I stop a taxi.  The man looks at me and hesitates.  Perhaps he is afraid I may have my baby in his nice new taxi.  What a thing to happen!

No danger at all, I want to say.  Hours and hours and hours yet, she says.

I get back to the hotel and climb upstairs to my room.  This is a hard thing to do.  Has anybody ever had to do this before?  Of course, lots of people - poor people.  Oh, I see, of course, poor people…. Still, it is a hard thing to do, walking around when you’re like this.  And half-past five is a long time off - centuries of time.

When I climb the stairs again I am not seeing so well.

‘Courage, my little lady.  Your room is ready now.’

A room, a bed where I can lie down.  Now the worst is surely over.  But the long night, the interminable night….

‘Courage, courage,’ she says.  ‘All will be well.  All is going beautifully.’

This is a funny house.  There are people having babies all over the place.  Anyhow, at least two are having babies.

‘Jesus, Jesus,’ says one woman.  ‘Mother, Mother,’ says another.

I do not speak.  How long is it before I speak?

There are hooks from me to every object in this room. Hooks attached to my eyes, hooks protruding up my nostrils into my brain. Supposing I took a bottle, smashed it on the floor, kicked the shards into every corner, spread them around the floor - the cut from these hooks would still be deeper, even if I walked around barefoot.

“He might have sunk into mental chaos; instead, he triumphed through discipline, work and meditation.” Words written in the book about Van Gogh. Who was he? That he that might have but instead triumphed? That is, who almost sunk but was saved by discipline? Which one was that?

Or this one, this book by Dogen under my sheets. I had been reading it last night. It’s quite different, you see. With your little hooks a-moment, you see. He says this. “The multiplicity of one flower is five petals, the opening of five petals is one flower.” That’s good, I thought. The multiplicity of one is five, the opening of five is one. Becoming is what happens, quantity is what is. But there’s something missing in all that. A bit more about the one and that five. It got captured by ol’ Jimmy pretty well, you know the man, the one who sang about his friend, the end: “Five to one, baby, one in five, no one here gets out alive now; you get yours, baby, I’ll get mine, gonna make it baby if we try.”