Ready for a night of play on Valentine’s Day? Real Art Ways offers Surrealist Games with musician Roger C. Miller

As the pop duo Mickey & Sylvia sang in 1955: “Love is strange. A lot of people take it for a game.” On Valentine’s Day, Real Art Ways is offering the “Surrealist Games” with a return visit of Roger C. Miller.

Miller says the idea of playing Surrealist Games on Valentine’s Day came from Real Art Ways director Will K. Wilkins.

“He thought it’s a good time for it. I believe he’s correct,” Miller said. “We’ve had couples meet at these shows. It’s a safe space to unload your unconscious.”

Surrealist art doesn’t exactly reek of romance. Key artworks from the movement include Salvador Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” (with an image of a melted watch), Max Ernst’s “The Barbarians” and René Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images,” which depicts a tobacco pipe above the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”).

The artists offered bizarre juxtapositions and unusual perspectives. Meanwhile, Surrealist writers fomented cultural revolution, partly in reaction to the unsettling horrors of World War I. In his “Manifesto of Surrealism” Andre Breton wrote, “The mind which plunges into Surrealism relives with glowing excitement the best part of its childhood. For such a mind, it is similar to the certainty with which a person who is drowning reviews once more, in the space of less than a second, all the insurmountable moments of his life.”

Miller, however, sees how social Surrealism can be.

“These artists had something in common,” he said. “They were friends. For some of them, it was definitely a social circle. These were the games they played at the cafés. We’re doing what they did.

“I’ve seen how these games work. When you create something, you don’t know what the person before you has done. It’s a collective creation. It’s egalitarian. That’s what causes the Surrealist acts. Most people are amazed at what they produce.”

Miller has played these games with friends since 1975. He’s brought them to museums, galleries and other spaces throughout New England. This is the third time he’s been at Real Art Ways, where the games have drawn 70 or more players a night. He first crafted the public Surrealist Game night years ago for Arts at the Armory in Somerville, Massachusetts.

“I love setting the situation up. There’s a lot of paper at each table, all blank. Rules are posted on the wall. It’s a lot of paper, pens, pencils and rules.

Miller originally thought he’d need to add a historical context to the games, perhaps “doing a little talk” about the Surrealist movement of the early 20th century. He learned that explanations were unnecessary. People were coming to play the games, and the games spoke for themselves.

“It’s better to have an experience with God than have a priest explain it to you,” he decided.

“The big difference between Surrealism now and in the ‘20s or ‘30s is that then it was a threat. It’s no longer a dangerous game.”

Most of the games Miller brings to these events are the ones created in the 1920s by the original Surrealists and Dadaists, particularly the French writer André Breton. One of them, however, was created by Miller’s son Chance as a fifth-grade class project.

“He wrote down all his dreams for weeks, then structured them into a board game where fresh dream images are created.”

One of the games, “Exquisite Corpse,” is well known, though not necessarily by that name. The player collectively draw a body, but the paper they draw on is folded so that they can’t see what the others have drawn. “Exquisite Corpse” can be played with words. The Surrealists began playing that game around a century ago.

“It’s a pretty slick production,” Miller said of the event. “There’s a PowerPoint slideshow. There’s a Surrealist soundtrack with Brian Eno, John Cage and some of my music on it.

Miller is best known as a musician. He was the founding guitarist of the legendary Boston band Mission of Burma. That band, which anticipated elements of the post-punk and hardcore movements and pioneered the use of tape loops in live performance, originally played together from 1979 to 1983, releasing the classic album “Vs.” and the EP “Signals, Calls and Marches,” then reunited from 2002 to 2013 for considerably more recordings than they did the first time around. Miller has also been in several other acts, including M2 and M3 with his brothers Ben and Larry (from the Michigan band Destroy All Monsters), the original line-up of the art-rock ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and Alloy Orchestra, which provides modern scores to old silent films.

Miller’s art and musical interests often intersect. Mission of Burma did two songs with German Surrealist painter Max Ernst’s name in their titles, and he called one of his ‘90s projects Roger Miller’s Exquisite Corpse. His latest album is the complex solo composition “Eight Dream Interpretations For Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble,” released in August on Cuneiform Records.

“It’s a technique I perfected years ago,” he said. “It’s highly composed. In one part of it, I had 107 different buttons I had to hit during it.”

The next time Miller finds his way to Connecticut, it may well be with a tour of that album, For now, though, he’s spreading love and surrealism.

A Night of Surrealist Games with Roger C. Miller takes place Feb. 14 at 7 p.m. at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. Admission is $10, $5 for RAW members. realartways.org.

Reach reporter Christopher Arnott at carnott@courant.com.