The Titanic’s Orchestra Had 2 Hours and 20 Minutes. What Will I Do With Mine?

The orchestra aboard the Titanic is believed to have played for almost the entire evacuation, continuing as the ship slipped beneath the freezing Atlantic. For around 2 hours and 20 minutes, while panic spread and passengers searched desperately for lifeboats, they played on.

These were their names:

• Wallace Hartley (Bandmaster and Violinist, aged 33)
• Roger Marie Bricoux (Cellist, aged 20)
• Theodore Ronald Brailey (Pianist, aged 24)
• John Frederick Preston Clarke (Bassist, aged 30)
• John Law Hume (Violinist, aged 21)
• Georges Alexandre Krins (Violinist, aged 23)
• Percy Cornelius Taylor (Cellist, aged 32)
• John Wesley Woodward (Cellist, aged 32)

They were remarkably young, between just 20 and 33 years old. They were not even employed directly by the White Star Line, but by an agency contracted to provide musicians for the voyage.

This may seem an unusual way to begin a blog about Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), but I have found myself thinking about those eight men more and more.

They understood something profound. They could not change the outcome, but they could change the experience of those around them.

Living with PSP sometimes feels as though I am on a ship or a plane which, at some point, will come to grief. I do not know where or when. I do not know exactly when the journey will end or what lies around the next bend, but I know enough to understand where it is ultimately heading.

The question, then, is not simply what will happen to me? The more important question is, how will I choose to behave while I still have that choice?

I have every reason to complain. I live with a disease that steadily takes away my independence, my mobility and my certainty. There are days when I am frightened, frustrated or simply exhausted. Sometimes I become angry. Sometimes I become sad. Those feelings are real, and they are justified.

Yet whenever I can, I want to choose a different response.

I think of the Titanic’s orchestra.

Those young musicians had choices. They could have abandoned their instruments and fought for their own survival. Instead, they remained where they were, playing piece after piece. They could not save the ship, but they could offer something almost as precious in those final hours: calm, courage and reassurance.

Their music did not stop the tragedy. It changed how people experienced it. That is an extraordinary legacy.

I am not suggesting that I am anything like those men, nor am I seeking recognition. But I do believe I have a responsibility, while I still have the capacity, to try to do something similar for my family, my friends and everyone who walks this journey with me.

If I can reduce their fear rather than add to it…

If I can project hope more often than despair…

If I can remind people that even difficult days can still contain purpose…

…then perhaps I, too, will have played my part well.

Unlike the Titanic’s orchestra, my “2 hours and 20 minutes” is measured not in hours but, I hope, in years. PSP is relentlessly progressive, but it often gives us time. Time to love. Time to encourage. Time to comfort. Time to leave something behind that is greater than our illness.

I know I will not play perfectly.

There will be days when I miss notes. Days when fear gets the better of me. Days when frustration is louder than courage.

But I hope that, when people look back on my journey, they will remember not every missed note, but the music that kept playing despite them.

None of us chooses the ship we find ourselves on.

We only choose how we spend the time before the music stops.

My prayer is that G-d grants me the courage, the strength and the grace to fulfil the role I have tried to describe above: to continue bringing comfort, hope and calm to those around me for as long as He allows me to do so.