What is my relationship with art and faith?

Art first took root in my life in the form of abrasive music. Some wouldn't call this brand of music art, but that's another essay entirely. I started out playing drums in drumline in junior high, and went on to front several bands until I was twenty years old. After a year in junior college spent mostly on my last, and favorite band, I quit.

The last band left me penniless and exhausted. I'd spent so much money and time on it, booking shows, driving my friends and their gear from the practice space to the venues and back again. I'd stayed up late many nights, surrounded by people, living like the extrovert I was never wired to be. I'd enrolled in community college and done fairly well, but when spring rolled around I ignored my studies for the band. I'd graduated from Jackson Preparatory School, a place far harder academically than Hinds Community College, but I failed American History II. I'd stopped showing up to class on time, had disregarded assignments, and earned an F. A thing I hadn't done even in my difficult high school.

I left the band, though it pained me to do so. Writing lyrics and playing shows had meant so much to me, the kids who kept coming to see our work, who responded to it and felt something, that was a feeling like no other. One thing that was different about our last band, though, that hadn't happened in any other, was that we played with signed and touring bands, bands we had albums by and admired greatly. Our contemporaries weren't the locals anymore. We competed with the big leaguers, held our own, and were proud. But losing the band left me without direction. I'd watched our efforts grow from one song with two friends to ten songs with three brothers. What had started in a practice space in Madison, Mississippi, had been good enough to take to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to play with established punk bands. I felt like I had been forced to let something go that was precious. And I had.

I'll refrain from the cliche, "But God had bigger plans!" I don't know what God's plans are, and I never have. Even Jeremiah 29:11, the verse almost all Christians recite when we need a pick-me-up, doesn't give us any specifics. "A future and a hope," it says. Honestly, that didn't do me much good. Again, I don't know what God's plans are, and I don't even know what God's will is anymore. I think God's will is mostly that we love him and love people, and if we're doing that, really working for that, then we're probably doing God's will. Dr. Green once said something about salvation, about how God invites us to live life as it was meant to be lived, and I believe that that is my story from the time I left the band to now. I believe I've lived my life as God intended for me, Ellis Purdie, a Christian, to live it.

Leaving the band wasn't the only thing I left behind. I'd been hanging on to a soured relationship during my year in the band and at Hinds. I'd hoped that Shellie and I would rekindle our flame, grow up a little and give things a shot again. She'd meant the world to me, just like the band. She'd supported my efforts in music, been at the shows, shared her writing with me and read mine. Like the band, I'd thought she was permanent, that we were permanent, but I let her go, too. Strangely enough, my faith had everything to do with letting her go. Our ideals were different, and we weren't on the same page in terms of our theology. She headed to Oxford, Mississippi, and went to Ole Miss, and I stayed behind and enrolled at Mississippi College: a Baptist university in Clinton, Mississippi, and alma mater of the late great Barry Hannah. Also left behind was an addiction to pornography. Some people would laugh at the statement, and that's fine, but I'm willing to bet those people have never seen a man broken down and weeping in the floor of a room, having been fired and facing potential prison time for the pornography found on his computer. Sobbing with the fear of losing his wife and children. See that sometime, and if you still don't think pornography is dangerous, I question your heart. My story with pornography is simple. I'd been introduced as an adolescent through the internet, and it maintained its presence until I was twenty years old. I'd grown unable to resist looking when I felt the urge, unable to refrain from lewd fantasy even while at work. Anyone who's been through this knows what I'm talking about. It was not a matter of mere horomones. It was the abuse of hormones. It wasn't a matter of simply being a sexual creature. It was the abuse of sexuality. The use of women for the sake of objectivity and short-term gratification. I'd filled my mind with it, allowed it to infiltrate the most sensitive and vulnerable part of me: my heart and mind. I was ready for a clean slate, and I found accountability and went to counseling. From that point forward, it was important for me to only allow good things into my mind.

Around this time I'd received a gift from a friend: Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I'd liked the book so much that I'd also bought Miller's Searching for God Knows What, and in Miller I found a man who spoke my language. He understood that the world was hard, that we were in a human condition, and that life was full of a mystery that while heartbreaking was also stunning and beautiful. It was all about Jesus, what he said and did, and how it had traction in our present world. In Miller I discovered how much I liked reading. I'd never read much in high school, wouldn't do the assignment given me, read the books I was told to read, or involve myself in a discussion about the humanities as many of my classmates did. I just didn't care. I don't know what happened. I like to believe that leaving the band and Shellie behind and giving myself to my God gave God the room and the space to finally speak. Things were finally quiet. I could hear, and believe me, I was listening. I wanted direction, to do whatever it that the Lord wanted, to do whatever it was that I was made to do and to do it in abundance and joy. I do not recommend anyone spend as much time looking at pornography as I did. But when you switch from putting filth into your head to feasting on truth and beauty, the difference is undeniably real and tangible. I started reading. I started out with books by Donald Miller, Preston Jones, Henry Rollins, C.S. Lewis, and Shane Claiborne. I devoured the stuff, but then I took an American Literature course with Dr. James Potts, and my whole world changed. Dr. Potts introduced me to Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Henry James, Rick Bass, William Faulkner, Joyce Carol Oates, Barry Hannah, Tennessee Williams, Cormac McCarthy, Zora Neale Hurston, and I was hooked. I inhaled American fiction, and felt smarter overnight. Like the pornography had been diffused from my heart and mind and put in its place was The Story. Fiction. Literature. The heart of the matter. The blood and desire and pain. God Himself. The stuff Christ "could find brotherhood in" as Barry Hannah once said of William Dunlap's visual art.

I did not look back. I savored literary art, and God kept on feeding me. He is still doing so today.