Tamsin Murray
is the artist and producer behind Nahari Silk Veils. Australian
born, she expressed her
artistry mainly through figurative sculpture. In 1987 Tamsin moved to America beginning an intense involvement
with Middle Eastern dance and veil dance under the guidance of Sufi Master
Adnan Sarhan. Dancing with the
veil and exposure to the use of color and movement in the dance drew her into
working with silk and color.
She began creating veils
n 1997 for the people who dance in the workshops ,
conducted by Adnan Sarhan,
and founded the business in response to the demand and love for the veils. Women and men of all ages have
fallen in love with the veils and have taken to using them in ways Tamsin hadn't thought
of. Nahari Silk Veils
is dedicated to offering these silk creations to a larger audience so that they may explore
and enjoy the endless
possibilities of silk. All the models featured on this website are my friends, who I'd like to thank for helping me.
The Veil Story:
Veil dancing is a kind of untouched mine of precious experience. The veil is often used as a break fr
om the
dancing and cast off with little thought to the endless possibilities embedded in it’s very yielding nature. Over the years, in the Sufi work with Adnan Sarhan I havefound that the lightest silk brings out in almosteveryone,
young and old , a happy and wondrous discovery of their own movement, without the self consciousness of
trying
t o move their bodies alone. Like a musical instrument it can be tailored to the most specificmovements, adding
to them the ethereal quality of it’s nature as a creature of the air. However, given the right music and
atmosphere, it can draw you into a new language of movement born of that moment and it
surprises you.
In the Sufi work Adnan will dance with the veil or have others dance with the veil to show the group how
it can
be done, then everyone gets up to dance with the veil. People who don’t consider themselves dancers
discover their inner dance and some who thought they were bound by pain or physical limitations somehow overcome
them. The joy that comes from it is wonderful.
When I look back I can make this discovery of veils into a beautiful story. I thought I was just learning to dance
but there is a deeper revelation conveyed. It put me in touch with experiences in my life I would describe as heaven.
In Australia there are the most breath taking beaches on every part of the coastline and on every cliff,
the sight of the Pacific Ocean undulating to the horizon, changing to a different mood with every variance of light
and time. Many nights I watched the moon’s light dance on the ocean in a constant motion. As a young girl, I
lived as close to the beaches as our family could be. Often I would swim out as far as I could go, sometimes
beyond the line of surfers. There I would dive and swim down to the bottom and hover, and dance slowly, and
look into the blue water as it reseeded into a depth I
hadn’t the capacity to perceive. The quiet radiance of water
as it pushed and pulled me gently, was exhilarating. It was a place I could go where quietness,
nature, water, rhythm,
took me into heaven.
When I came to America I was tugged by a thought. “How in God’s name can I survive here without
the experience of water I had been accustomed to.?” In the new life there was little time to head out to a beach.
I began attending the Sufi retreats headed by Adnan Sarhan in New Mexico. In the Sufi work with Adnan
there is a lot of dancing with your eyes closed after hours of slow movement, breathing, chanting and quiet times.
Gradually the experience of feeling the space around me reminded me of the times underwater. Sometimes in the
dance all my limbs swam in the magnetic push and pull of the space, that gently undulated like the swells of the
ocean. I could dance through the space in a slow constant motion from embrace to embrace and the love
inside me swelled as an ocean meeting this living space like a lover. Coming up for air was replaced by opening
my eyes, thinking,” Oh my God?” Moments like these have
kept me dancing and dancing, and dancing.
This kind of dancing brought on such states as to give to dance the
power to transform and cleanse the being.
Some of the time dancing was struggling with ego, and if I was dancing for the group or to Adnan’s drumming
I would
freeze over, become very self conscious and look and feel quite tormented. It is an ongoing struggle of
finding a way out of the crowd of judgments that party in my
thoughts.
Veil dance had been a small part of the Sufi work ,relying on the women to take out what light material they
had
and share them around so that all of the group had a time dancing with the veil, one group after the other.
One night one
of the long time Sufis danced amongst everyone with her veil and she danced as if the veil was a person to whom she
was sharing her deepest love with.every move she took seemed to deepen the love that sprangform her intimacy. Tears
rolled down as I watched and I was mesmerized by the beauty expressed. Real beauty opens into so many exquisite
feelings. Her technique and dancing had always been exquisite but this went beyond into a place where dance becomes
an inspired, moment by
moment journey.
At first dancing with the veil was a struggle to keep it graceful, let alone synchronize the finer shades of feeling with
the music, look out from the corner of your eye to see how everyone else was doing and judge the
beauty or lack of, my
veil dance. I danced as if emotion
was outside of me, learned from something I had seen and was trying to imitate. Many
people would continue dancing with the veil and look completely absorbed. As my
capacity to concentrate grew from
doing the Sufi work, the relationship with the veil changed. Emotion found a
way to focus and create for itself new expression
and each time we danced with the veil more discoveries arose. Seeing others dance with the veil, though they were not
dancers,
taught me new ways to play with the veil. It was the innocence and individuality that found unique moves and feelings.
One summer, a few years back, a need for color emerged, as if someone craves chocolate. My craving whispered, “color, color, let me be surrounded with color, let me sit in it, sleep in it, walk through color.It was a strange romantic vision.
In the odd jobs that I had I would make lists that said, color, movement, softness, mobility, and nothing else, no clue as to
how that might come together.
After one summer there came a deep inner crisis, a kind of spiritual death occurred. I felt fallen, worse than
anything I
can remember. I vowed to make up for it and as low as I felt there came signs that hope was not lost This experience of
forgiveness blossomed into the desire
to live the dreams I wanted and not take life so much for granted.
The Sufi workshops were happening in New York and I thought it would be nice to make a few veils. Adnan helped
me cut the first bolt. I made ten and peoplebought them. I made fifteen and dyed them all different colors and people bought
them. The next summer, something extraordinary happened. I looked out over the people one night and saw an ocean of
colors, undulating and intermixing, moment to moment in a moving painting.
Pinks, blending with greens and golds, dancing
over to
lilacs and periwinkle blue and suddenly dashing through, a deep red. An endless motion of color on color on color
to music through the night. It was the ocean calling back to me revealing itself in a new way. A love whispered
into the underwater
depths whispered back. It carried out the illusion of being alone like the oceans carry out coconuts.
Dancing with the veil isn’t a struggle any more. It is an ongoing relationship with an invisible partner made
visible by the yielding lightness of silk, of light and color. It yields to every feeling and thought that passes
through me. It gives other life to my
being. It talks to me. It tells me the depth of what I am experiencing. It
holds me beyond any form of suffering I might experience and gives my expression to creating a state of love. It
sometimes even illicit such ecstasy that I don’t remember where I am or who I am. When Adnan asks me to
dance with the veil it feels as if something is coming to
life in the atmosphere. Self consciousness and judgments and all the discomfort of dancing by myself in front of people disappeared when I danced with the veil and it
he
helped me to experience dancing in front of people as joyful and not frightening. Dancing with the veil feels
beyond dance in a
way because concentration on the veil
becomes like an ecstasy. I follow the veil’s dance and my body becomes an extension of
it and it becomes an extension of me. Sometimes it is like a storm, sometimes
like a river and sometimes like the slow wafting
of
clouds. The unfolding of possibilities in motion with the veil is endless like the seas. I peer into the folds as it floats above me and I haven’t the capacity to
perceive it’s ending. If the world about me is too noisy with drama it’s door opens into a quiet and very gentle rapore that savors the quiet beating of the heart, the breath and the moments, when the silk floats and becomes the
lilt of a soft voice that is singing the secrets of a living eternity existent always inside the
moment. Songs of a love between
humanity and creation, that blooms like a rose at the calling of day, like light
moving into cold shadows, like the ebb and flow of
the ocean and the moon.
As I respect the veil more and respond with an intent to feel it’s moods so to does it give back to me a
reflection potent with
revelation that I may follow, and I truly don’t know where it will take me but it has given life already to the most hidden regions in
my
heart. It has softened the most irreverent creatures in my soul. It has offered it’s form to give expression
to feelings I could never
have spoken of so eloquently and it continues to evolve a temperament born of the days
dancing on the sandy bottom of the
ocean, yearning to express the nature of water as the messenger that love
gave to me to learn about love. I always say yes to the
veil, and follow it into a journey across into the time of love, to innocence and wonder, where happiness is easy. I see others
with their veils find the opening and they come and together we discover that the lightness of
the silk and the air, the light
and the music have become
smiles and laughter and healthy breathing and bliss in motion.
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