Cut & reorder. Feed the page with your own writing, a myth, a poem or today’s news. Slice the text and reassemble. New meanings emerge, fragmented dream imagery escapes. Perhaps it is a means to escape the feedback loop, or at least glimpse beyond.
The idea has a Dadaist past. In 1920, the poet Tristan Tzara published these instructions:
Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you. And there you are
In 1959, Brion Gysin accidentally rediscovered the method in Paris and introduced it to William S. Burroughs. Together they pushed the cut-up through writing, recordings and film. Burroughs came to imagine language as an alien parasitic virus, controlling our ‘thoughts’ and perceptions. He considered the word something that could be dissected, recombined and made to speak again.
Keep what startles you. Throw the rest away.