Perception: Art & Culture Magazine Vol. 1 | Page 16

and writing it has help me move on from childhood abuses. Stan Lee has officially endorsed this and after all the lack of support from loved ones for my artistic endeavors that was the beacon of light that has set me on the path of feeling that i am on the correct one.
PAC: You actually have fans. What is that like?
CJ: I dont see them as fans. again i dont buy into my own hype, thats for fools and celebrities. I dont really care for that. I see them as family. they support my passion the way a blood family should. I love them for caring about what i have sacrificed everything for.
PAC: What are you working on now?
CJ: My current projects are my pinocchio book“ Pain from the Scar on a Wooden Heart: A Pinocchio story by CJ Draden” and another book i just finished writing called“ The Sublime Nature of lifelessness: A Frankenstein story by CJ Draden”, which is a dark romance about personal vulnerabilities when we fall deeply in love and the monster inside us when we feel heartbreak.
PAC: Finally, what is your motivation?
I dealt with this for years and it all kinda came out in college and i suffered from alcoholism and depression becasue of it. Really i just needed a person to stick by me and help me through it and i didnt get it, it was actually quite the opposite. I felt a lot of myself inside the gepetto character and wanted to write a tragedy about a man enduring an event that would change his life forever and eventually cause to build his son. Its such a crazy thing to want to create life, and only the darkest people on the planet believe they are they can achieve this god like status and create life, be it music, or a painting. As I grew i kept writing this tragedy and it slowly became more of a“ non literal autobiographic esque” tale about what it means to endure darkness and create from that canvas of blackness and pain. That’ s the over all theme. What it takes to find yourself and ultimately what it can do to you in the process. Its an extremely sad story and it one ive lived with since childhood
CJ: Anything that enables me to feel connected to people, and darkness, and love. I’ m very obsessed with melancholy and depression, its a strange fetish but its always been comfortable for me it holds equal power to me as love does. the reason for this is it enable me to feel like i need improvement and keeps my mind questioning its intent and purpose. I dont ever want to feel complacent, becasue I don’ t ever want to stop probing the depths of how my mind body and soul fits in this universe among so many others. and love becasue its allows me to know what to strive for if i ever fall to far inside my own black chasm of chaos and mental instability when diving inside myself to write a book. when i write.. im so honest with myself and my surrounding and this causes so much sadness. so i strive to stay grounded for what I want to exist in and what I want to achieve. the finality of goals are illusions, the journey is the destination. I stay on the path of finding myself.
search: The Art of CJ Draden