[e63f67dd-065b]

I think a helpful analogy here for the non-chinese is recalling the names of pieces of music from hearing a short part and vice versa. I'm classically trained, and in my circles I can probably hum out a short piece of music that'll have other musicians go "I know the piece but am drawing a blank on the name" and vice versa. I know I'm not the only one to have had that happen to pieces I'm actively practicing :)

Anecdotally, I can usually remember a few parts of the character but draw a blank on the rest. You can see the picture of the grocery list that for some characters he got basically half the character right but gave up on the other half (shrimp is the combination of 虫 and 下, you can see he remembered the first half).

I guess this is analogous to only remembering the main themes of a piece and forgetting how the rest of it goes. I'll recognise it when I hear it, but can't recall it off the top of my head.