Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (English Version)

A Mystical Journey Between Celtic Swing and New Age

Released in March 1983, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart is Van Morrison’s fourteenth studio album and his last for Warner Bros. Recorded across London, California, and Dublin, the album marks a turning point in the Irish singer-songwriter’s career, both stylistically and spiritually. Unlike previous works, Morrison increasingly relies on instrumental music, using harmonies, wind instruments, and synths to express what words can no longer convey. Four of the eleven tracks are fully instrumental, while the rest alternate between spoken word, soul inflections, and jazz improvisations. The album title itself suggests that one can speak without articulation, communicate without enunciation, as if music could say the unsayable. One of the most curious and debated details is a cryptic credit thanking L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s founder and charismatic leader. While the reason for this dedication remains unclear, it reflects Morrison’s interest at the time in alternative philosophies, spiritual exploration, and a form of secular musical meditation.

At its release, the album did not achieve major commercial success but earned the attention of discerning critics. Over time, it has been reevaluated as a deep, experimental, and at times hypnotic work—arguably Morrison’s most mystical and introspective album of the 1980s. It has been described as “oceanic,” rich with emotional depth, largely free of pop compromises, and overflowing with emotional truth. The atmosphere is that of a sonic elegy. It opens with “Higher Than the World,” a contemplative ballad that seems to float above earthly rhythms. In “Irish Heartbeat,” Morrison returns to Ireland—not in a nostalgic way, but as a call to an ancestral connection with land, heart, and identity beyond words. The dialogue between traditional instruments and synthesizers creates a fertile, almost therapeutic sense of displacement.

“Rave On, John Donne” is one of the album’s most evocative tracks—an ecstatic mystical ode to the visionary power of poetic language. Van Morrison invokes three poetic masters—John Donne, Walt Whitman, and Omar Khayyām—transforming them into guiding spirits on an inner journey of intuition, music, and spirituality. “Rave on, John Donne / Rave on, through the writing of your soul” transcends mere verse; it’s an ecstatic exhortation and celebration of poetry as revelation. Morrison sings in a declamatory, trance-like tone over a soft yet pulsating musical fabric, allowing the voice to resonate and ideas to flow freely. Donne, the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poet who fused mysticism and sensuality, becomes a symbol of language uniting body, spirit, reason, and insight. Whitman and Khayyām complete this poetic pantheon, bringing their cosmic vitality and love of life’s beauty. Rave On, John Donne is more than a song—it’s a manifesto: Morrison asserts that authentic art does not entertain but awakens, and that poetry, like music, is a form of prayer spanning centuries—eternally alive and necessary. The song echoes the reading style of Jack Kerouac, Morrison’s hero and pioneer of the Beat movement in the 1950s.

Morrison introduces a new sonic poetics

The album title, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, stands as possibly the most intense metaphor Morrison has ever chosen. It crystallizes his contemplative direction and announces his intention: to offer a poetic expression that is both musical and spiritual. “Inarticulate” here is not deficiency, but fertile paradox: true substance—emotions, intuition, spiritual longing—cannot be spoken, only hinted at. The heart does not reason; it vibrates, expresses itself through sound, breath, pause, and tone. This is the album’s core: to articulate what escapes rationality and language, through music alone. That explains the abundance of instrumental pieces: sound as the only alphabet to translate the ineffable. Morrison’s approach is one of subtraction—removing words to reveal a more authentic, direct, and profound voice. The title invites careful, contemplative listening, encouraging a musical experience that is sensorial, emotional, and introspective rather than conceptual. The album is an attempt to give voice to what normally remains silent: the soul’s language expressed through music. The whole work is built around the concept of communication beyond spoken words—rooted in intuition, consciousness, and the whisper of the invisible. Including instrumental tracks is not stylistic choice, but structural: the music becomes a bridge to transcendence, a conduit for experiences beyond explanation, to be felt, not merely heard. Morrison’s spiritual, esoteric, and philosophical readings also shape this shift. The resulting ambiance is ethereal—less “New Age” in the commercial sense than deeply personal, balancing body and spirit, nature and metaphysics. The album doesn’t explain—it evokes. It doesn’t teach truths—it opens portals. It doesn’t comfort—it questions. The enigmatic acknowledgment of Ron Hubbard fits this logic—not as ideological endorsement, but as hint of open-mindedness toward alternative spiritual paths, free from dogma. Morrison never preaches—he seeks. In this work more than any before it, his inner journey merges with his musical one. It unfolds as a voyage of listening, silence, and vibration—where the truest voice needs no words.

Inarticulate Speech of the Heart is both transitional and revelatory. Less accessible than Moondance, less lyrical than Astral Weeks, but no less important. Here, Van Morrison silences chart-friendly songs to make room for an inner voice and a broader breath. It’s a work requiring patience, slow listening, and reflection. Forty years on, it remains one of his most fascinating, mysterious, and perhaps honest creations—best experienced alone, in silence, where music speaks like a caress, an intuition, a secular prayer. When words fail, Van Morrison’s music begins to say everything.

Dario Greco