Well, FWIW, the page did seem to be floating in front of my eyes. Maybe a foot in front of me and slightly below eye level. And the “image” page was magnified two or three times larger than the original page.
Speaking as a layman, I think the ability to call up visual images of things seen but not particularly noticed, as I did that time and as Irishman described occurring on the admittedly fictional Psych, would a) exist, and b) qualify as “photographic memory” or whatever you choose to call it, regardless of whether said image appeared floating in front of one’s eyes or was “merely” in one’s mind.
I was going to come on here and coin the phrase ‘phonographic memory’, but you guys are already talking about it. Hur hur.
I’m not as good as Mozart, but I think I have something in the direction of a ‘phonographic memory’. I have an ability to recall the sound of things, sometimes to what subjectively seems to me anyway to be to a very high level of fidelity. A piece of music I’ve heard a few times can be separated into parts, slowed down, instruments isolated and followed by themselves, layered with other separated parts, etc. But I never learned to *transcribe *music, alas, I tried, I can only speculate what went wrong there. This kind of memory can last ~30 years and counting.
Anyway, as I said it isn’t as quick as Mozart’s. OTOH, if something is important I will recall the whole thing verbatim and can review the whole ‘text’ (it isn’t text) in my mind at leisure. Phrases and speech really ‘stick’ if I’m attentive. I talk too much- I sometimes believe I can influence others audibly (which admittedly may be fantasy) by virtue of ‘seeing’ what others ‘can hear’ and playing to it. ‘Phonograhic memory’ translates into text too (I can remember what I read by the sound of the words), but isn’t as pronounced. I also feel like I can ‘judge animals’ (especially dogs), and sometimes communicate with them, though I hardly think I’m alone in this, and admittedly may be deluded by merely very friendly dogs/wild animals.
Sometimes I remember remarkably long strings of words, though this particular probably is declining with age. I bet I could not recall random words/sounds if tested. I sometimes believe I can ‘see through’ or ‘measure’ a person by hearing their voice for about 1 second. Some people seem somehow ‘invisible’ to this.
I’ll leave it to others to judge my level of delusion- I’m likely mildly mad, though rather functional or even successful regardless. At the very least I have a noisy mind.
Several years ago I took a course in Mind Mapping as promoted by Tony Buzan. It was so much fun, I highly recommend it. It was only a 2 day class but during that period I learned how to remember a list of 40 words and list them back forwards or backwards or give the word in any position asked for. I could surely do a longer list, they just used 40 to teach the method. I had a normal to good memory, not exceptional, but I could not have done that before the class. My point is that they taught the method that made this fairly easy. It was all mnemonics and associations. I could easily see how a person with a better memory than mine could use the method or perhaps even more refined methods and go on TV shows and seem amazing to people that don’t know they could do it pretty well themselves. The class didn’t make my memory any better, it just showed me how to use what I had better. I think some of the people that do ‘amazing’ feats of memory are just using good methods. Also it would not surprise me a bit that out of almost 7 billion people on this planet that some people may even do this naturally without having to be taught. I’m not saying this explains all people that do memory tricks but it might explain a few. Maybe it was a 3 day class, I forget (just kidding).
PS - They also taught me how to do speed reading and juggling. I had tried half heartedly to learn juggling many times over the years without any success at all. In 2 sessions of 15 minutes each they taught me to do basic 3 ball juggling successfully and on my way to doing 4. Teaching these things was not the goal of the class. They were taught early in the class just as a means of opening my mind and removing my misconceptions about what is possible. Only then did they proceed to Mind Mapping.
If it is that one, you can see that there is a lot of structure to the piece. To a musical genius, memorizing it after two listens might be a simple matter of tracking the variations. Be impressed by the nine voices if you like, but to the mind’s ear they are usually a single event.