Lighthouse Within – اوپرای فانوس دریایی
Migrant Cloud- Tracks 3 & 7
5:51 | Baritone | Strings, contemplative saxophone, timpani, staccato unity theme | G major
The immigrant’s life: a journey without compass on turbulent seas. Some reach familiar shores and call it destination. Others make home in the middle of fog and waves. The difference often lies in having someone in their lives who serves as lighthouse, a beacon marking the direction of home wherever storms may drive.
This composition is for those whose beacon has gone dark.
The original poem was written in English (July 2025), then translated to Farsi for operatic arrangement, a migration of its own. The composition opens with desperate questioning and disorientation: ‘On this path without compass, where is my wake?’ The seeker clutches at elements: one hand grasps wind, one hand grasps water, seeking a lighthouse that has since disappeared, with cascading questions: Where is the shore? Where is home? Which way? Where is the destination? Where is the light?
The breakthrough arrives as recognition: ‘Ah, here it is, my lighthouse within(āh, īnjāst fānūs-e man)’. The lighthouse that moves, that follows wherever you sail, it lives within. The poem fuses Eastern mysticism (nūr-e bāṭin, inner light) with Western Enlightenment imagery (lighthouse as navigational beacon), creating something that speaks to both traditions while belonging fully to neither. The resolution: my lighthouse and I walk together, journey together, seeker and sought, integrated.
The composition employs a dramatic ascending arc, the clearest journey structure in the album. Sparse opening in pregnant darkness: strong bass foundation with minimal mid-range, creating vast empty space around the voice. As the text invokes wind and water, orchestration responds, strings fill the mid-range, brass clarity emerges. Music becomes substantial as the poem names the elements.
The moment of discovery, āh, arrives with sustained realization rather than explosive orchestration. The music holds at full density while the vocal line settles into centered warmth. Triumph expressed through arrival, not bombast. The melodic direction shifts from turbulent ascending to sustained plateau: the seeker has found; the music no longer needs to climb. Maximum orchestral intensity arrives during companionship with the lighthouse within, every instrumental voice joins the celebration of union. The final questions return, ‘Where is my wake (rad-e pāhāyam kū?)’, and ‘Which way is the destination (kojāst maqsad?)’, but transformed. No longer desperate cries; now meditative contemplation of what once caused anguish.
Among the four tracks, Lighthouse Within is the only narrative that achieves genuine closure. Mirage dissolves into emptiness. Will You Stay suspends in unanswered petition. Ignite Me persists in unresolved crisis. Lighthouse arrives home.
The original “Lighthouse within” poem (Parsa Mirhaji, July 2025):
My tears carry promises I cannot keep
My heart racing while my feet tremble deep
This crossing cuts deeper than any tear
The lighthouse of my life has disappeared
The lighthouse of those cherished shores
Once stood proud against the dying light
I clutch the water, I clutch the air
As waves widen between what was and what might
My heart drums against its cage
Each beat a mile, each beat an age
The void gazes with hollow eyes
At wandering souls where memory lies
Heavy stares weigh upon my back
Promising comfort, calling me back
To familiar hills and circling beacons in the dark
But where is the harbor?
Where is the light?
Only endless water stares back at night
Black mirror holding nothing but a gaze
Suspended between sky and fathomless maze
No shore, no light, no golden thread
To guide me through these labyrinths of foam
Only ocean vast, revealing truths I wasn't ready yet to know
Some journeys swallow their own wake
The lighthouse that moves!
The lighthouse that moves!
When you sail beyond the edges of your dreams
It is the lighthouse that moves
Drawn toward horizons that retreat
Read between the waves that widen
Home is not the land you have left behind
Home is the courage to sail into the dark
When the void drowns out the light
Home is the journey that carries the spark
The lighthouse that moves
Follows me now The lighthouse that moves
Lives in my heart somehow
Keep sailing toward what light!?
The lighthouse that moves is in me
The lighthouse that sets me free
July 2025
گاهی، نگاهی 