13. Thick Air
- Tom Payne
- Jul 10, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 16, 2025
I put the question—and pass round to the other side. Such a clearness, though a certain forerunner of rain, is not always its forerunner. Far the contrary. Thick air is a much more frequent forerunner of rain than clear air. In cool weather, you will often get the transparent prophecy: but in hot weather, or in certain not hitherto defined states of atmosphere, the forerunner of rain is mist. In a general way, after you have had two or three days of rain, the air and sky are healthily clear, and the sun bright.[1] If it is hot also, the next day is a little mistier—the next misty and sultry,—and the next and the next, getting thicker and thicker, end in another storm, or period of rain.
Footnotes
‘Where the Sun Finds Her’ – a short DIY film response by Ming Kuen Tang, BA (Hons) Acting and Performance, Sheffield Hallam University, Thursday 11 December 2025.
This film depicts a young girl's arduous journey away from home to a foreign country, her emotional struggles mirrored by the city’s unpredictable weather. The story is about a transition from suppression, to embracing emotions.
According to the passage by Ruskin, the air needing to “solidify” before a rain. This phrase became the main idea of the film, suggesting that negative emotions must be allowed to gather and intensify rather than hidden. Besides, the "fog" is temporary. Like the weather, growth and light always follow the storm.
Creating this film revealed how deeply weather changes impact human emotion. From "Thick Air" by Ruskin, I discovered that nature is a lesson in acceptance, thunderstorm is a normal, indispensable weather phenomenon, just like our negative, unwanted emotions. It changed my previous idea of avoiding these emotions.
This project encourages me to observe my surroundings more closely. In the future, my work will focus more on the environment, inviting the audience to enjoy and learn from nature with my characters.