The Power of a Feeling by J D Cooper

What is it about the way the clouds slowly and silently creep overhead?  The gravelly sound of rain hammering on a tin roof?  The bleak slant of shadow across a deserted street?

An odd thing about me, and, I suspect, probably not just me: I pick up atmosphere.  Whether it’s the interaction between people around me; or the general ‘feel’ to the day; or – most interestingly – the feel of a place; the atmosphere is what will stick like toffee in my memory.  I’m quite likely to forget your name, have no idea what you were wearing, or what we said to each other.  I will probably be oblivious to a crime unfolding right under my nose, and deaf to the content of an avid conversation taking place at the next table. 

But before you think I must be the most self-absorbed person you’ve ever had the misfortune to meet, let me tell you this:  I will remember exactly what it felt like to be with you that afternoon, in that town/city/bookshop/train station, and I will probably recall the shape of the clouds that day.  I will most definitely recollect the smell of approaching autumn, the smoke from the neighbour’s bonfire over the fence, the quality of the fading light.  And I’ll immediately sense if you are sinking into the ground with heaviness, or floating above it, light as a dandelion seed.

During my years of travel, I became sensitive to the atmosphere of places I visited.  This would occur almost upon my arrival.  It was both a good and a bad thing.  Good, because I found this interesting and memorable, and therefore immediately wanted to try to capture the feeling on paper. Bad, because no matter how friendly the locals, or how interesting the happenings that followed, the impression that forever remained with me was first and foremost how the place ‘felt’, and if it was full of heaviness and sorrow, then that was what stayed with me.  I don’t believe this was dependent upon my mood at the time, either.  Just as I am ridiculously affected by the weather, to the point where I cannot get through winter without a SAD lamp, I am changed by the atmosphere of a place.  I may arrive in a new country in buoyant spirits, but before long find myself drowning in it.  

The same thing goes for stories I read.  The ones that stay with me, long after – years after – I’ve read them, are the ones imbued with a strong sense of atmosphere.  And so I try to inject my own stories with that same distinctive sense of place, whether they are about a garden, the sea, a block of flats, a house in the woods, or a person.  Character development and plot are important, of course, but for me they are secondary.  The character of the story itself is crucial. 

For me, the residual ‘feeling’ is everything.

By J D Cooper

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