Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek:
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über www.dnb.de abrufbar.
© 2019 J.C. Manto
Claudia Toman
Zentagasse 31/7, 1050 Wien, Austria
claudia.toman@gmail.com
Herstellung und Verlag: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt
Cover und Layout © Traumstoff Buchdesign traumstoff.at
Motive © olgasoi007 shutterstock.com
Illustration the storm © J.C. Manto
ISBN: 978-3-7504-7321-8
About
J.C. Manto alias Claudia Toman is a writer, designer, photographer, feminist, resister and geek from Vienna, Austria. She has published half a dozen novels under her real name and the pen name Anna Koschka, designs book covers for a living and writes poetry to survive.
A while ago I sat in the auditorium of Wiener Konzerthaus and listened to Amanda Palmer singing and telling stories of her life. I tried my best not to think the obvious thought: that I had avoided this place, the whole area for four years. It was the last place my dad went before he died. He had a ticket for a concert in his pocket, they handed it to me with all his other belongings. I’ll never know what happened that day. He must have fallen on the way from the car to the concert hall. Someone found him lying on the pavement and called an ambulance. He was in intensive care for two weeks when his heart suddenly stopped. They couldn’t explain it to me. Except that there were a lot of medical conditions that somehow multiplied. He never fully woke up in those two weeks and I wasn’t able to talk to him. I was in therapy for over a year just to get to the point where I could accept that I had never talked to him. In all our life together we had never had a real conversation about pain and pride and loss. You see, my mum had died of cancer when I was five. Dad and I, we both never healed. We just lived side by side in our individual bubbles. So when he died I was left alone. A singular bubble. And because there are no coincidences in life the day before he fell, the last day of my old life, Amanda Palmer published her song Bigger on the Inside. I remember lying in the dark with my headphones on listening to it.
In the weeks that came after the end, the song was my companion. Everything I felt and couldn’t put into words was there in the deep, profound sound of the cello, the hyperventilating ukulele and the fragility and boldness of Amanda’s voice.