Something beautiful

and a favourite song, plus a recipe for a classic tarte tatin to usher in apple season

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

—Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays, 1931

It’s 1:37 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, a time when I would usually be at work: eating lunch, answering emails, in a meeting, debating an issue with a colleague, perhaps catching up on a podcast while I edit a document, wrestle with language.

In the space of my world, sound is a constant, the first clarion call of the clock radio, the burst of a fire engine tearing down the street, a neighbour’s dog barking, the soft bubble of the coffee brewing. Throughout that hum of activity, the underlying weight of silence is muted, a hardly discernible vibration, one that my internal tuning fork barely registers.

Yet here, at home on a Monday afternoon at 1:37 p.m., the cacophony of noise is stilled, the silence almost ringing in its presence. And so I reach for the comfort of music to accompany the click of the keyboard as I write.

“Words are for explanations; words are for argument; words are to tell stories. But music has no need of explanations; it is itself the explanation.”

——Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays, 1931

In his 1931 essay “The Rest Is Silence,” Aldous Huxley suggested that every act of communication is an approximation, a reaching toward something beyond words. What we most deeply feel often lives outside of language. Music, Huxley believed, is the bridge across that gap. Where words fail, sound speaks directly: not to the intellect, but to the inner life.

How well I can relate.

I’ve written about buying a CD player a few months ago. In the rediscovery of music loved and somehow forgotten, a part of my internal space has opened up, a connection to a deeper place of emotion.

And it is not only that the well-beloved music opens me up to another time and place; I am also brought back to the artist’s original intentions: their careful construction of a body of music meant to be played in a certain sequence, a structure as thoughtfully considered as an operatic work or symphony.

Listen to The Ninth Wave, the seven-track suite that makes up the second half of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love album if you don’t believe me.

In those moments, I’m reminded of the nature of creativity itself, the place beyond words that Huxley describes. And in contemplating that, my own well of creativity is replenished.

The space where silence waits

For Huxley, music is not the final word. Beyond the highest beauty of sound lies silence: a sacred stillness that contains more meaning than any form of speech or art. He sees this silence as a presence so complete that expression becomes unnecessary.

But still…

There is music waiting for me, always. A place beyond the here and now, a magical time machine that transports me back to a special place, a person held dear, a moment of, yes, silence.

Back to those CDs.

In the algorithmic tenor of the streaming world, I’d been served up a narrow universe of music, song-adjacent and somehow dull in their pleasing sameness. Rescuing those shiny plastic cases from boxes long stored also immediately broadened my world, reminded me of music once cherished.

It seems impossible now but there were artists I love that somehow slipped out of my consciousness, songs whose words I know by heart, lyrics that immediately move me to tears. Sondre Lerche, Rita Chiarelli, Justin Rutledge, Ida Sand. A JJ Cale/Eric Clapton collaboration. An anthology of modern Irish music, and another called Modern Rock 1986: Hang the DJ. Dozens of jewel boxes, filled with forgotten treasures.

Out of all those forgotten treasures, one in particular has been calling to me: Fall for Beauty, from Canadian artist Lynn Miles. Its opening track, Something Beautiful, has always undone me—and hearing it again, its eerily prescient words still do.

Find a space of silence and let Lynn’s beautiful voice wash over you.

Something Beautiful — Lynn Miles

There’s falling trees and world’s on fire
the forecasts are in, and they all look dire
There’s gasoline rainbows in the parking lot
We learned our lessons and then we forgot
And everything’s broken or about to break
the carion birds took what they could take
We’re blinded by the sun, we’re crawling up the hill
We’ve added it up and we can’t pay the bills

We want bells to ring we want doves to fly
We want banners waving in a clear blue sky
Wе’re so tired of the troublе tired of the push and the pull
We want something, give us something we want something 
beautiful

There is no such thing as a clean gateway
no free lunch you always got to pay
We can’t stand still, can’t be alone
can’t break free can’t find our home
And there’s no such thing as a victimless crime
no good reason for the killing time
There’s no use wondering what we should have done
the die is cast, the time has come

We want bells to ring we want doves to fly
We want banners waving in a clear blue sky
Wе’re so tired of the troublе tired of the push and the pull
We want something, give us something we want something 
beautiful

Music, as Huxley wrote, comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible — and then, when it has said all it can, the rest is silence. Listening to Something Beautiful again, I’m reminded that both are essential: the song that opens the heart, and the quiet that follows. In that stillness, what’s left is not absence but fullness — the echo of something true, something remembered.

Something beautiful.

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Julia’s tarte tatin

Julia Child, Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom

serves 6

Ah, apples. Do they ever really get their due? After all, apples seem to be perennially with us. Starting with the early September apples and stretching into April’s hoary damp and chill, it’s easy to take these seasonal stalwarts for granted.

That’s the best time to make a classic tarte tatin. A simple combination of apples, butter, sugar and the confidence to flip the finished tart onto a plate, this is delicious served warm with a vanilla bean ice cream on the side.

Note: Use your favourite pie dough recipe for the tarte crust. If you make a double crust recipe, this tarte will use half of it; freeze the other half to be ready to make this sweet treat at a moment’s notice.

Ingredients

6 Ginger Gold or Golden Delicious apples, cored, peeled, and halved
The juice and zest of 1 lemon
1½ cups sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
Chilled pie dough (see Note)
Heavy ovenproof 9-inch skillet for cooking and baking
Vanilla ice cream, as accompaniment

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F, with the rack in the lower middle position.

2. Slice the halved apples into 4 lengthwise wedges each, and toss in a large bowl with the lemon juice and zest and ½ cup of the sugar. Drain the apples after macerating 20 minutes.

3. In the skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Stir in the remaining 1 cup sugar and cook until the syrup bubbles and turns golden brown. Remove the pan from the heat and arrange a layer of apple slices in a circular pattern on the caramel in the skillet, then arrange the remaining apples neatly on top.

4. Return the pan to moderately high heat and cook for about 25 minutes, covering the pan after 10 minutes. Every few minutes press down on the apples and baste them with the juices. When the juices are thick and syrupy, remove the pan from the heat.

5. On a lightly floured surface, roll the chilled dough into a circle, ⅛-inch thick and 1-inch larger than the top of the pan. Drape the dough over the apples, pressing the edge of the dough between the apples and the inside of the pan. Cut 4 small steam holes on the top of the dough. Bake until the pastry has browned and crisped, about 20 minutes.

6. Let the tarte rest for a few minutes. Unmold the tart onto a serving dish so that the pastry is on the bottom. Serve warm or cold with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, as desired.

Sources:

Aldous Huxley, “The Rest Is Silence,” in Music at Night and Other Essays (Chatto & Windus, 1931).