ABSTRACT
What did you do this morning? Run me through the basics. Let me tell you mine. Nothing special:
Relating experience in a purely descriptive manner, without reflection or interpretation, is reportage of events. When the experience is itself routine (to the point of tedium) there is no point in going into detail, no mileage in dwelling on a sense of place and no call to create a subject position for a listener that makes them feel as if they were there. The bare bones are enough to put you in the picture. (Or so it seems.) Despite that, I suspect you came up with more than rudimentary visuals to accompany that narrative, which were quite likely informed by memories of similar or comparable experiences. After all, I didn’t give you much to go on. Were there any sounds? I mean then, not now – when you first read the text.
