Aphantasic here. This is an odd subject for me because growing up I was always "the kid who could draw." I can paint surprisingly good portraits from life, an

Aphantasic here. This is an odd subject for me because growing up I was always "the kid who could draw." I can paint surprisingly good portraits from life, and my sketchbooks and old canvases have lots of gems. And... a ton of crap, which now I realize was me struggling with my lack of mental imagery. If I try to conjure an image in my mind's eye, I get zilch. Just a scramble of shapes that won't hold still, not for one moment. So ask me to draw Obama, whose face I've seen a thousand times, and it'll be a miserable failure. Ask me to draw a hand, and (because I know how to "construct" it) and it will be expressive and fluid. But at the same time, I have excellent musical memory. I can recall music from 20 years ago, and pick out the exact synth line that comes in at the 2-minute mark. I can easily separate the winds and the strings and the brass in my head from whatever symphonies I'm familiar with. And I hear them back as near-perfect recordings. Only thing is: I can't play back the lyrics accurately. They'll be muddy usually and mostly indiscernible. The brain, huh?