'Light the Candles and Lamps, We're Having a Wedding Tonight'

If you think about your home's lighting right now, what do you see? Do you have a chandelier? How big is it? When do you turn it on? Is it lit on ordinary days too, or only when guests come? What about when you're alone?

Ambassador Arjan; Fardin Alikhah* - When I hear this part of Shah Rukh's old song called "Wedding", I think that the lamp in the house is no longer just a lamp. As if someone is informing the house that something important is going to happen tonight. The house must be lit, something must be brought out of the darkness, the guests must understand that this house tonight is different from other nights.

The light in the house is not always visible. Wedding and mourning are both inextricably linked with light and lamp. For both, the house and the place where the ceremony is held are lit differently; The lights announce that this night is not an ordinary night. Once the light is for coming, happiness and the beginning of a new life and another time for seeing someone off, mourning and leaving. As if the lamp is not only the lighting of the ceremony; He himself is part of its announcement.

One day I talked to a man in the pool who had a dispute with his wife. He asked his wife to leave work early and come home before him. His request seemed a little strange. Do you know what he wanted? That when he gets home, the house light is on. There was a special emphasis on the lamp. He used to say that when he approaches the house, he first looks at the windows from the alley. If the light was on, he would be encouraged that someone was waiting for him.

For him, the bright light was not just the lighting of the house; It was like a sign that he has a home and a family where someone is waiting for him. For him, the light was a sign of the life of the house, even at night when there is no more light. But what made it worse was that one day the lights were on and he came home happy. He thought that this time his words didn't stick and his wife returned home earlier. But when he entered the house, he realized that his wife had left the light on in the morning, after he left, so that his words wouldn't fall on the ground and somehow deceive him. The light was on, but no one was waiting for the man.

Maybe the bitterness of the story was here; Chereg had not lied. It was clear, but not in the sense the man had expected. It was left on for another reason.

Sometimes a light is just on, and we are the ones who demand a different meaning from it being on. I emphasize that writing this experience does not necessarily mean that I agree with his request. His request may have been a strange or difficult request for his wife in that situation.

What seemed interesting to me in this story was the lamp itself; How a bright light could be a sign of presence, expectation and even encouragement for someone. I defined this experience from this angle; To tell about the lamp, not to judge their relationship.

But the story does not end with this example. Again, a light may be on and no one is home. I myself have seen many times a house whose owners have gone on a trip, but left a few lights on; It is as if the house should have a sign of presence even in the absence of people, so that when someone who looks at the house from the outside, imagines that someone is in the house.

The light here is not supposed to indicate anyone's presence; It is supposed to hide his absence. The light can tell the truth and it can lie. That is why the lamp is not just an electrical device for us. Sometimes the light informs, sometimes it creates illusions, and sometimes it hides something.

In my childhood homes, most of the lights were simple 100 watt bulbs hanging from the ceiling without any decorations. If a house had a chandelier, even if it was the simplest possible chandelier, I thought the occupants of the house were "classy" or at least wanted to look classy. Part of this impression came from television.

In the sixties, television showed the house of "Taghoutis" with large and magnificent chandeliers; The chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings seemed to us to be part of that aristocratic and glamorous world rather than a means of lighting the house. It was almost impossible to think that the chandelier, like some other things, is an object belonging to the imperial system and is installed in the house of the westerners.

Once in the simple world of my childhood, I split the famous striped plastic ball and put a hundred watt bulb inside. It soon became clear that this strange invention was useless. The ball blocked the light and actually dimmed the very light that was supposed to illuminate the house. My mother scolded me and I took the ball out from around the lamp. That day I realized that the light is not my toy; It was everyone's house, and touching it was not a safe game.

Sarah Pink and Kirsten Leder-McLay, in an ethnographic study in the UK that they published in 2016, looked at night life at home and the role of light in everyday habits.

These two researchers showed that light cannot be understood apart from the movement of people in the house and the way they spend their night; By turning the lights on and off, people actually change the atmosphere of the house during the night (Pink and Leder-Maclay, 2016). That's why the reading light is not just for lighting the book; When it is turned on, a kind of sitting and staying next to the book begins.

In another study, Michael Beale, an anthropologist, went to the houses of a residential area in Copenhagen in 2015 in Denmark and investigated how people create the mood of the house with light. He showed that light does not only enable seeing things; It can also create a sense of security, privacy, intimacy and togetherness (Bell, 2015).

When I read these researches, I think that the house with the same things and the same people can suddenly look like a different place just by changing the light. We usually have a light for ourselves and a light for the guest; Just like the carpet that we used to collect when a guest came.

Some things in the house are for our daily life and some things seem to be kept for when someone from outside is going to enter the house. When a guest comes, more lights are turned on, corners of the house that are usually in the dark are lit up, and the house shows itself a little more orderly and presentable. It's as if a house that is enough for us must find a different form for the guest. The light that is enough for us to sit may not be enough for the guest.

The light above the table, the light inside the buffet, the lampshade or the main chandelier may be turned off during normal nights, but turn on when the guest arrives. At this moment, home is not just a place to live; It is something to be seen. I think that the lamp, like the carpet, shows part of the distance between "home for ourselves" and "home for others". We don't just light up the house; Sometimes we prepare it for another look.

A few years later, Michael Beale returned to the same point again in a book about the house and lighting technologies in Denmark. In his ethnographic research, he shows that choosing and using light at home is not just a technical or aesthetic decision; Light is tied to our way of life and our perception of home (Beale, 2019). This look makes even choosing a simple lampshade seem a little more serious: why do we want this one and not that one? Why does one light make us feel at home and the other does not?

This change can be seen in what these days in interior design discussions is called "big lamp" or the central light. A light from the middle of the ceiling that illuminates everything at once is no longer the only possible choice. Standing, table and wall lights illuminate different corners of the house separately. It is as if the light, like life itself, has moved away from a single center and has spread to different places in the house. No longer is one lamp supposed to light up the whole room and all the members of the house sit or do something under the same light. These days, lights have become activity oriented. We have lights for parties, we have lights for reading, we have lights for sleeping, we even have lights for going to sleep.

The question is, isn't the interest in separate lights for activities a part of making the home space more personal? A light for everyone, then a light for each activity and then a light that can even belong to one person. A lamp just for my desk, just for my book, just for the corner where I sit.

These days, even lights are advertised that attach to the edge of the book and shine their light directly on the page. It is no longer necessary for the room light or even the reading light to illuminate the entire surrounding space. Light can accompany the book itself; So close and personal as if it was made for one person to read and only for those few pages. The lamp, like many household items, has gradually become more personal.

I also see the dimming of that "big light" along with other changes that have happened at home. Just as the big photo of the father of the family, which once showed his central position of authority on the wall of the house, has gradually moved away from the houses, the big lamp in the middle of the house is no longer there.

Maybe these two changes are not unrelated. In the old house, one lamp could bring light to everyone; A common light under which everyone sat. But today the lights belong to the people of the house more than they belong to every house. Every corner can have its own light; One's reading light, another's bedside lamp, another's light for watching TV or working. As if life at home has become more individualized, light has also become more individualized. Now every member of the house has the right to have his own light.

These days, if you walk down an alley in Iranian cities at night, you may see a violet, green, or yellow light from behind the window of an apartment, which is spread on the ceiling from an unknown place. There is no more news of a lamp that shows itself; The light comes from the edge of the ceiling, without us seeing the lamp. Kenaf ceiling and its hidden lighting have slowly become one of the familiar things in today's houses.

In old houses, the roof was not just a roof; It was a height that allowed the house to have something hanging from it and to have a "big lamp" so to speak. The chandelier could be lowered, have multiple branches and fit in the middle of the room without making the house smaller.

The high ceiling had a place for these things. Today's apartments, however, are often not like that. The ceiling is lower and the rooms are more compact. You can no longer hang anything from the ceiling; A large chandelier may not only be spacious, but also show off the low height of the house. In these houses, the lamp has to find another form.

But maybe what has changed in the meantime is not just the shape of the light; It is the shape of the lamp itself. A chandelier was one thing: an object that could be seen in a shop, liked, bought, hung on the ceiling, and one day opened and taken with it to another house. In Kenaf lighting, the light is no longer visible. The light source is hidden and what remains is the light itself. As if this time the ceiling has decided to be a light. This change is not a small change. The chandelier was once one of the devices that the house used to show itself; Something that could stand under it and tell the guest how new, how stylish or how luxurious this house is. Now maybe the same desire has found another form: instead of a big lamp, the ceiling itself is displayed.

Then color comes into play. White light is more for seeing, but purple, green and yellow light seems to have another job; It's not supposed to just illuminate something, it's supposed to create a mood. For many of us, these colors remind us of wedding halls, cafes, parties and special nights. Now a part of that night atmosphere can be brought home; With a remote control or pressing the switch in the socket, it changed the color of the room and for a few hours the house was out of its usual state.

That's why the simple sentence "light the candles and lamps, we have a wedding tonight" fits so well with these lights. As if the house sometimes needs to distance itself from being a home and become like a place where something is going to happen. Someone may consider these lights harsh, artificial or even vulgar. But what looks like bad taste from the outside may be a sign of freshness, happiness or aliveness for the home owner.

The taste of light, like the taste of sofas, curtains and carpets, is not just a choice between several beautiful and ugly options; It is a part of the image that a person has in mind of the house he likes to live in. With that said, the more interesting question is not whether these lights are beautiful or not. The question is why sometimes we like our house, for a few hours, to not look like home anymore; Why do we want the roof of the house to become a bit like a wedding hall for one night?

In rented houses, the lamp has its own story. Sometimes we receive a house with a simple lamp from the ceiling, because the previous owner took his chandelier with him. Unlike the wall and ceiling, the chandelier is not a part of the house; It is a part of the home owner's life that he can open, box up and take with him to the next house. Something like a carpet and curtain that goes with a person from one house to another.

Some tenants never install a special chandelier. When you ask why, the answer is simple: "The house is not mine." As if the chandelier is not just a lighting device for them; It is a sign of staying. You hang something from the ceiling that you imagine is going to stay above you for a long time, just like you are going to stay. Therefore, the chandelier belongs more to the house where one intends to take root.

In a rented house, one might change the curtains, put a temporary light and not manipulate the wall much; But to hang a good chandelier, it's as if he has to believe in staying in that house.

One of the most difficult choices when buying home furnishings is choosing a chandelier. The issue is not only the price. We have to see if it fits our house or not, if it makes the house look bigger or smaller, older or more modern, if the light is too much or too little, and if it is what we really like or what we think we should like.

Once, my wife and I were passing by chandelier shops. Huge chandeliers hung from the ceiling of the shops and we looked at them in amazement and said, "Who really buys this?" Interestingly, as we moved forward, by watching them, we started talking to the descendants of Qajar; If they are alive, what kind of furniture, chandeliers and curtains do they have now, how are their parties at all. Seeing a chandelier in the window of a shop suddenly made us think of a house we didn't know.

The style and style of house lights can also take us to the past or the future. As if some lights have age; Some are young, some are middle-aged, and some are so old that they remind us of houses from long ago. A friend said that when he wants to buy a lamp, he says to himself: "No, this lamp is not suitable for our age." This belongs to those who just got married." Then he looks at some other chandeliers and says: "These are also telling a lot about the future. I want something that shows middle age."

It sounds funny at first, but if we think about it a little, we see that we don't just choose lights; Sometimes we choose an age for our house. Some lights seem to announce the youth of the house, some of the old years and some of them take us to the past. That's why when we choose a lamp, we don't just ask ourselves "Is it beautiful or not?" Rather, sometimes, without realizing it, we ask: "Does this light come to us?"

Sometimes we judge the age of the house by the light. Once my wife and I looked at a chandelier. "It's good for our house," said my wife. "It's old and it makes our house look old," I said. Crystal chandeliers and SMD chandeliers were not just two types of lights for us; Each one created an image of a house with a different age and mood.

The fact that an object can make the house look old or young, modern or old, means that the lamp is not a neutral device. Even after the purchase, we usually don't just say whether it turns on or not. We say: "The light is too bright", "The light is too low", "It makes the house look bad", "It doesn't show the furniture in the house as it is", "It looks like this is a hospital", "The house has been turned into a real estate agency" or "It is eye-catching". I mean, we are talking about something that doesn't just light up the room; It changes the quality of seeing the house and even the quality of being at home.