“Longing”. Elegiac video art from Iraqi artist MOHAMMAD AL SHAMMERY. “A few years ago I made a short film about the sectarian war raging in my country, Iraq. I used the ‘misra’, a tiny twirling object used in children’s games in Iraq. My intention was not to denigrate an innocent game, but rather employ it as a metaphor to transform it from the realm of child play to one full of idiocy and hatred. It is a demonic game, the object is mobilized from without to twirl on a small space and then empty itself and fall off like a dead body. Some of these misra`s are drained and stop twirling to stumble and fall. Some cause the others to fall because of friction. Everyone comes out of the twirling game empty handed and having aggressively caused the other to fall. That is war in its final shape: draining energies and sapping them to the point of destruction. No one is left standing. Everyone is fatigued, empty, reeling. If I find myself in the end hastening to be near our master Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, it is because I believe that this man can capture all hearts irrespective of religion and mode of thinking. Listen to this: After the Tatar armies crossed the land striking people’s necks with swords when Baghdad, the center of the Abbasids had fallen and its libraries drowned in the Tigris, our master uttered this poem: “People run away from the Tatars and we pray for the creator of the Tatars.” For Rumi, all are equal in creation and humanity. I believe that the story of his life, poetry, and experience is there to console our sad hearts and give us hope. I think that humans are searching for what they lost, or think they possessed, but have lost because of their predatory obsession with life, greed, forgetfulness or distractions. One’s moral and spiritual desire is an attempt to regain lost innocence. The Mawlawi dance is distinguished by specific clothing and rituals that include music and dancing. The latter involves twirling around the right foot and hand motions indicating singing and signifying the exalted name of God. The musical instruments usually used are the nay (reed flute), violin and tambourine. But playing these instruments is, generally, a whispering type of play that doesn’t overwhelm the voice of the singer and the motion of the dancing disciples. What I am attempting in this experiment is approaching the Mawlawi dance as a spiritual practice. I approach an act in which I am not a stranger to people’s desires to enrich their lives. Who wouldn’t want to be a singing nightingale? Not to be a nightingale with feathers, but to feel a nightingale deep inside wanting to soar high. Who wouldn’t want to dance and feel free in body and soul? IN the Mawlawi dance you dance alone, relying on unusual physical and spiritual training in order to be transformed from a body to a motion of yearning. The circular centrifugal motion and the ecstasy accompanying it turns you into a bird and the bird turns into a ray of light rising to the sky. I invite you to dance to the words of our master Jalal al-Din al-Rumi about the nay (reed flute): Who has ever seen a poison and a cure like the Nay? Who has ever seen a companion and a longing lover like the Nay?” | © shammarey/
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 07:10:08 +0000
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