Life.

It’s so short, don’t you think?

Blink and you miss it. Whether someone is on the planet for 9 years or 90 years, it flashes past in the blink of an eye, and before you know it, they’ve come and gone. Feels like forever, but our existence is a mote in the eye of the universe.

I was reminded of this forcefully this week, when I heard the news that Lucretia, aka The Knife Lady, a blogger who has spent years writing incisive, sharp-witted articles about the music industry, had passed away.

I was lucky enough to meet her once, at a gig where, admittedly, none of us were at our best. It was held in a small, cluttered pub in York, packed with students and an excitable, chatty after-work crowd, very much not conducive to a thoughtful, acoustic music experience. She had travelled a long way and was tired and stressed about housemoving (and, I now understand, symptoms of terminal illness), and I was feeling lousy with flu and had a lift home in a warm car waiting for me – a blessing when normally I wheel or carry my keyboard and stand across York.

So, to my regret, what should have been a cosy post-performance chat with a pint in hand, enjoying the acts that followed, became a rushed dash for the exit, a breathless “nice to meet you, but I have to go now”.

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. We never know until after the fact that we should have done things differently. That night, I was focused on how tired I was, how early I had to be up the next day, how I was afraid that my flu would lead to missed work, lost earnings and all manner of other small issues.

If I had known that would be the only chance I got to meet her, I would have made different choices.

Here’s what I knew about Lucretia.

Her real name was Sarah. She was an avid music lover and supported many artists on the crowdfunding site, Sellaband. This was how I originally came to know about her in fact, she followed my progress in the short time I had an account on there. She started blogging as The Knifelady in 2008, and reviewed dozens upon dozens of artists, as well as making observations about the music industry in general. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but she always had something valuable to say, and I found myself agreeing with her more often than not.

She was devilishly good at chess. She played for Buckinghamshire as a teenager, beating both AI and human opponents.

She worked in software development, loved gaming, and had a particular fetish for rock/metal from Finland.

She was honest. Brutally, painfully honest. Knifelady was an appropriate moniker.

I’m not sure how our friendship would have developed had her life not been ended, far too soon, by cancer. I’m pretty blunt, in contrast to her hatchetry, and its entirely possible that we’d have butted heads and clashed, our respective opinions like opposing weather fronts, causing thunderous downpours all around us. It’s also entirely possible that had things been different, had she lived, we’d have ended up at gigs, drinks in hand, putting the music world to rights. That would have been awesome. Somewhere, in another lifetime, I like to think it is. And I hope that wherever she is, with her perspective altered by her entirely new state of being, I hope that she forgives me for not having the time that night. For being in too much of a rush and for missing that chance to get to know her better.

Life.

It’s just too damn short.

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