Modern Art Desserts

Cakes for Coconut

5 (which turned out to be 7) QUESTIONS FOR COCONUT:

1.  Can you tell me the story of how you and Tomo started playing music together and how you came up with the name Coconut for your ensemble?

CJ: I worked at Jumpin’ Java over on Noe Street for a while (where i had my first art show in the city too). After quitting, I continued to frequent the place and was struck by some really great music being played by the new barista, Tomo. I probably asked him what he was playing and we got to talking. Tomo invited me to his practice space and we hit it off immediately, both musically and friendshipally. Tomo often made a coconut latte for me using coconut syrup. After drinking that drink for a while and after playing together for a while, Tomo suggested we call ourselves coconut and it seemed to fit…Also, we were probably drawn to the letters in coconut subconsciously since they share many of the letters of our names (except for the mysterious ‘nu,’ which is neat in itself since it’s two u’s (you’s), one upside down, the other right side up, which is like the flipping coin that is 2-D coconut…3-D when spinning).

I met Colter and Tomo in front of Jumpin’ Java, where they first met many years ago, with two cakes strapped to the back of my bike to mark the occasion.

2.  Colter, you are an artist in many respects.  From drawings to music to writing.  Do you have a preferred medium?  How do you find they each feed eachother?

CJ:  I don’t have a preferred medium. Though I have to say, each medium you mention, they are all good bedfellows. Maybe we need a potluck where everyone brings a medium as an ingredient to see how it mixes? Or maybe the stone soup story is even more appropriate? You start out stirring nothing but maybe it’s the very whirlpool movement of stirring that creates nothing into something?

At certain points in the process of drawing I am able to listen to music or poetry. Lyrics of songs or parts of poems often find themselves written in the margins or on the backs of my drawings. Drawings can accumulate meaning in this way just like songs can accumulate different meanings over time. For our last album Coconut covered Bas Jan Ader’s Searchin’, itself a sort of cover of the Coaster’s Searchin’. Another song on that album, called Rocksteady, was inspired partly from a drawing by Chistopher Garrett. It depicts two sleeping men, naked but for their sneakers, that share the same beard. The lyrics go like this, 'your smile is a hammock/ i’ll take a nap in/ palm trees on fire/ leanin’ in on me/ two rip van winkles share the same beard/ sleepin’ for a hundred years/ the half dome was once a whole dome/ worn glacially…’ It lingered in my head years after its completion as i worked on a Rip Van Winkle-esque drawing for a recent show.

 Tomo, it is my understanding that you have juggled being in many bands over time,  how do they and your other creative pursuits impact eachother?  And what do you learn from one thing to the next?
TY:  bands are kind of like doing something with other animals. i’m probably trying to be careful and enjoy within the careful world. i’m always learning. learning to be in the moment with friends(animals).

3.  What are your thoughts on collaboration (making music) versus the more solitary nature of a studio practice?
CJ: nerdy fantasy versus instinct
TY:  instinct versus nerdy fantasy

I really can’t get over these two.  A laptop in the park, the nerdy vs. instinct method to their practices, their willingness to feed each other cake.  If I could make them a cake everyday until the end of time, I would.

4.  Do you have a memory of receiving or eating cake that you would like to share?

TY: i was thinking of a pie (anthony took me and colter to mission pie recently) but now i’m thinking of a cake. i would like a memory of cake. when shall we meet?
CJ: you mean share my memory like a piece of cake? ok. here’s the slice- this story is only peripherally about cake. I’ve collected dino dung for sometime. I had only collected small samples of these dino dung (which were actually the poo of prehistoric turtles). I would buy them at a rock shop up near Ukiah. There was one very large specimen that i really wanted but it was expensive shit…like $45. And i was told by the clerk that it was the petrified poop of a three-toed sloth! It looked like a crumbly cow patty. Fast forward to eating in a somewhat fancy restaurant for my birthday with my beau…after the main course we got the dessert menu and we both agreed on the crumb cake. Out came the crumb cake on a nice plate and i chuckled, “ha-ha, it sort of looks like that three-toed sloth poop I’ve been eyeing at the rock shop.” Then i took my fork and stabbed at it only to find it was rock hard! In other words, it WAS the three-toed sloth poop. My beau had pre-arranged the whole thing with the waitress, slipping the actual dino dung to her incognito while i was in the bathroom. We laughed so hard it made other patrons uncomfortable. And only afterword did we tell the waitress what the 'rock’ actually was. One of the best gifts I’ve ever received, hands down.

it was a hot november day in san francisco.  here are tomo and colter and their coconut cakes. 

thankfully, we were able to tie in many references to the piece of elephant dung mentioned in above answer as we looked for a spot to eat cake in Duboce park without sitting in “dog dung”
5.  What were your thoughts about the coconut cake we arranged for you when you played for one of the Now Playing events- you mentioned at one point that you never even got to eat the cake we made for you, but that you had a good time getting to disperse the cake to the audience.  Could you expand on that just a bit?

TY:  that was amazing and so sweet! hmm. yum. i totally forgot about eating that night. 
CJ:  When I first saw the twin coconut cakes with white icing I thought of my moon memory drawing, Clair de Lune (which is a reference to the earliest recorded song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vqvq-f-UtU ). At the end of our set I remember getting so carried away with the act of handing out the coconut cake slices to the audience from the stage that I forgot to keep a piece for myself :( ): But even so, handing out the slices was my favorite encore ever! Song and taste should be choreographed together more often, like Proust writing about the effects of asparagus (it’s his madeline that so often steals all the credit!)-

“… asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from their heads, finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of imperceptible changes to their white feet, still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed: a rainbow-loveliness that was not of this world. I felt that these celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the disguise which covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern in this radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening shades, that precious quality which I should recognize again when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played (lyrical and coarse in their jesting as the fairies in Shakespeare’s Dream) at transforming my humble chamberpot into a bower of aromatic perfume.”

this was one of two coconut cakes presented to colter and tomo in 2011.  yes, those are a pair of eyeballs sticking out as cake toppers.  it’s a long story.

6.  Have you ever written a song about cake?

TY: maybe. i want to.

CJ: I don’t think so. I want to too. I’d be surprised if Tomo hadn’t written a song with cake in it. Small list of his song titles, lyrics and band names: Montaña Creamery, way-too-hot-tamale, wonton, Hello Fruity, Banana Papaya, Syrup, Mango…

Coconut playing at SFMOMA rooftop for the SECA 2010 Now Playing event.

7.  Lastly, and this is more of a ridiculous thought and maybe more of an outlandish proposal.  As I was making the coconut cakes for you, I was listening to your music.  It seemed unfair that I can listen to the music you make (ie. Coconut) while I work in the kitchen and baking cakes.  I thought it would be quite entertaining to watch you play a song in a set in which you eat cake in the middle of it.  So…

TY: sounds fun!
CJ: yes! let’s!