Memory Midget

an excerpt from

Anecdotes from the Western Bubble

by  Thoreau Lovell

Did I really just hear Memory Midget on the radio?   Before I had to run across the parking lot to catch my train?   Was Memory Midget really a female piano player with a name that sounds like a therapeutic farce by Vaudeville Jimmy, AKA Dagger Jane?

Yes, I find out.   Memory Midget really existed.   She played piano with Billy Holiday.   Spelled her name “M-e-m-r-y M-i-d-g-e-t-t.”   Maybe Memry was still alive in Oakland?   Probably not, and the only reason she was on the radio now was that she was dead.   How had I never heard of her?   Me!   The music man who knows all about 7th Street, who has given money to the Oakland Blues Society, who almost went inside Ester’s Orbit Room before it closed, but was too afraid because I was white.   If I was a bum, I’d have an excuse!   Wrapped in dirty blankets waiting for the library where I work to open.   But I’m no bum.   Not that kind of bum.   I try to hear what the music tells me.

Last night I watched Grendal and Beowulf throw shadow punches at each other in a fake boxing ring backed by a pounding and swinging band.   Three critics sat directly behind them on stage, arguing with each other in song about the meaning of strength, quickness, resilience.   Why wasn’t Memry Midgett there on stage, playing piano and singing with them?   Maybe the combination of Weimar cabaret and Black American Story Blues could finally coax literate musical theater out of the filing cabinet?   Maybe a little blackness is all you need?   That’s my final thought, I think, as I take my place behind the reference desk, hiding a coffee and sticky roll, ready to help the first stranger who comes my way.

	Theme Song
					Kitsch
The Old Checkmate
			Leaving the Compound

[ photos by the author ]

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