Moki Cherry

Today, Oct. 30, is artist Moki Cherry's memorial/party at her loft in Long Island City. Sadly, I'm not able to be there but trying to remember that last night with her...

After the performance, we went out drinking at a local pub in LIC, got smashed on Johnny Walker Black, and wobbled home holding onto each other. Moki had fallen and broken some ribs earlier in the summer and now had bad sciatica, walking with a limp. When we got back to her loft, she warmed up leftover spaghetti and meatballs, the best damn meatballs I'd ever eaten, and we talked late into the night. But it wasn't until the morning, after a breakfast of caviar and hardboiled eggs, that she finally opened up to me, telling me she had given up drinking alone. That winter had been the hardest of her life, holed up in her loft, spending days in bed, not talking to anyone, not going anywhere, just fighting the demon drink.

She pulled it off too. After that long winter, she totally stopped drinking on her own, but still allowed herself a drink with friends. In retrospect, how lucky I'd been, sharing a night with her on the town. That was Moki, incredible, generous Moki, with her deep ha-ha laughter and thick Swedish accent and remarkable dead-on-arrow-wit aimed straight at your heart. When she died suddenly, her friends found out just how many people loved her: many hundreds over the world. And how she loved them back, everyone of us. She died at home in Togarp, Sweden, after a breakfast of porridge, resting on her favorite couch, looking at a map of Greece.