Create surreal ideas from television and life

How to process television using your brain. Can you watch Hey Arnold and come up with an actual story idea or gain insight from Beyonce? This lesson gives real tactics for consuming media.

The situation: You're watching a re-run of Hey Arnold on Nickelodeon.

The problem: You can't concentrate or come up with anything other than low-level, schizophrenic blurbs of ideas

The solution: Mute the television

The other solution: Turn the television off

When you mute the television, something amazing happens. Your brain fills in the gap. You're allowed to think about what's happening, and you start applying societal concepts and higher-level processing skills to garner insight into what the show means, what you think about the show, or anything else that your own brain wants to think about -- if you let it.

Turning the television off or pausing with your DVR after every scene is an even better tactic for viewing television. I do it all the time. It's almost exhilarating the ideas and insight you can garner using this technique. The images from the show have to be recalled and when they are recalled they have to be processed. It's these processes you want to funnel onto the page for your surrealist writing.

So next time you listen to a song, pause after each stanza and record your thoughts, be it an analysis of the song or random ideas. By the end of the song, you will have a nice few paragraphs full of surrealist content when can be edited into your prose.