The urge to kill your consciousness

Greg Guevara, also known as Jreg, is a personality nutcase with enough consciousness to run a YouTube commentary channel. Through satirical magic tricks and ironic detachment, he debunks political hypocrisies and toxic influences of the internet.

He built the creative studio called the Canadian Cybernetics Research Unit (CCCRU) which is a “fleshspace” populated by philosophers, freakazoids, and artistic fellas.

What is the urge to kill your consciousness?

It’s about wanting to be in the flow-state where you’re not thinking about anything. No rumination on what has to get done, or worries over interpersonal dramas. Certain flow states are more helpful than others, like making art, that’s a good flow. But scrolling, playing video games, any typical distraction, that also brings the flowstate, and that dopamine hit is lot easier to achieve than creating art.

Usually your brain is actually trying to help you out, which it does by filling your thoughts with reminders of your tasks, worries, imperfections, and these thoughts can come across as horrible. If you’re an especially sensitive person (most artists are), that pain can become unbearable and you feel the urge to numb it out.

Usually your brain is actually trying to help you out, which it does by filling your thoughts with reminders of your tasks, worries, imperfections, and these thoughts can come across as horrible. If you’re an especially sensitive person (most artists are), that pain can become unbearable and you feel the urge to numb it out.

Can you build a tolerance to this mental sensitivity?

It’s possible to build a tolerance, but I would say you shouldn’t. If you build a thick skin towards sensitivity and block it out, you’ll lose the perception that makes your art better. What you’re making won’t connect as much to people or reality, instead you’re just stacking layers of psychosis and not getting anywhere.

How does it feel when your art is misunderstood?

I’ve been fundamentally misunderstood plenty of times throughout my life, as all artists often have been. “Why would you wanna be an artist? Why don’t you get a finance job? Why don’t you do something that makes sense?” But they don’t understand, I’ve born with the terminal illness of wanting to be an artist. No matter how much you try, that’s not something you can escape.

On my main channel, the whole idea is that I’m going to be misunderstood. I play with the fact that I’m employing so many layers of irony that nobody can tell what I’m actually thinking or saying, and they ask: “Who is this guy really deep down inside?”

What is the ‘Magic Potion’, and how do you make it?

• One third manic episode • A few tablespoons of a stimulant, seven hundred milligrams of caffeine, Vyvanse, Adderall, Nicotine, you name it. • Time

I use this metaphor that I share with my clients, especially the ones just starting out. It’s called alchemy. You want to be a successful artist, but you don’t know what works yet. You have to be an alchemist with your work, and start trying different things, like switching your format, genre, presentation, or style. Maybe you make rock music, but this time, you switch it up, and you try mixing a pop soundtrack. Then you’re making something unique, because your pop music will have rock influences in it.

That’s the key. If you try new things for longer period of time, eventually you’ll find something that works. The only time it won’t work is if you don’t try new things, which I’ve seen. That’s the folly of so many artists, they do the same thing over and over again for years.

How do you remain experimental and bold after you become established as an artist?

The YouTuber motto is one for me, one for them. You make something for the algorithm that will get a lot of views, and you can coast on that for a while. Then you put out something completely different. Now, if you switch between consistency and creativity long enough, you end up building a following who is interested in you as an artist and aren’t there for just the a transactional relationship with your content.

Fact is, when you find your magic potion, aka the success formula, you realize that it’s impermanent. If you don’t find something new, your online presence will stagnate, as well as your character as an individual.

There are Minecraft YouTubers that blew up when they were 17, and then ten years later they’re still making the same stuff… But they didn’t grow up, they’re still 17 on the inside, that’s why they end up dating 16 year olds.

What are the consequences of becoming a productivity machine?

I don’t know how much people value being human beings these days. Seems that we spend most of our time trying to stop being human beings, whether that’s drowning out our consciousness with video games or drugs, which is just a flow-state that keeps us docile.

You shouldn’t have to post on these five social media platforms 10 times a day, that’s not a good thing, but that’s just the way it is. A lot of a lot of my artistic advice is about getting out of your own head and shaking hands with the way things are. We exist in this unique technological moment, where we need to figure out a lot of new wisdom on how to be artists again, because sending your voice-actor tape to the radio station isn’t going to work anymore.

(Greg points at the laptop) “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you machine. Fuck you. Fuck you robot. Fucking fuck.”

Why do you hate robots so much?

The original CCRU, the late 90s techo philosophy group that inspired the name of my current studio, was founded by a guy called Nick Land. His ideology is that we should progress as quickly as possible towards the singularity, because he sees enlightenment on the other side. But his definition of enlightenment is not for humans. It’s for robots.

I don’t give a fuck about robots getting enlightened. When you exist within an inefficient, fleshy body, there’s a gap between who you are, and what you want to create, it’s that artistic struggle of getting from A to B. When you ask ChatGPT to write you a poem, there’s no gap, because the gap is you. You are the inefficiencies, the inconveniences, you’re everything messy and wrong. And in this simple-minded pursuit of increasing efficiency, we are automating everything that’s human.

I think Nick Land, along with all these other types like Elon Musk, they’re all big nerds, and the should be shoved in a locker. I use technology all the time, but I’m complaining about it. There’s an inherent conflict in immersing yourself in what you ideologically stand against, and it makes me a chain rattler. I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t complaining about things, that’s my entire existence.

Why is it important for your art to interact with other people’s opinions?

The point of art is to communicate, relaying some emotion or idea to another human outside of yourself. Now that’s not to say you can’t make art for yourself, totally can, but what’s going on there is you’re communicating to yourself. If you read a poem and it’s just for you, that the purpose of that poem is you go back and you read it ten years later.

You can isolate yourself, tinker and question infinitely “will my work resonate with people?”, or “will they find this interesting?” and the only way you figure that out is letting others see your art. If a million people have seen your work, but nobody resonates with it, you’re doing something wrong.

After you found creative community at the CCCRU, did the nature of your art change?

My work has stayed pretty similar. But now there’s more collaboration, I’m including friends in my videos, and working with musicians in person. It’s helpful to see other artists go through their difficult creative journeys, and watch them come out of the other side.

I’m also just a happier person, but that doesn’t matter as much.

What’s next?

Don’t watch my videos, don’t listen to my new music album, don’t look up the Horseshoe Theory Podcast.

Go outside, sit in silence, and see how that feels. Probably uncomfortable. You should face your consciousness. That’s my call to action.