A beautifully-written personal journey which prompts an epiphany that will reawaken your genuine self.

Jason Murk is without a doubt extremely bright, perhaps even of genius quality. It is a great sadness to see the gift warped. He smoked one too many funny cigarettes (at least) and stared at far too many "whorling whorlding" vortices (yes, he actually wrote that).

I know, I know.... most of his art is in smug satire - the intentional, post-modern, anti-literary literary deconstructionalist ," take nothing I say seriously though I am intending it very seriously" writing style. His book is intended for "insiders", those that "get-it". He wishes to attain the summit like peak of guru-ism dispensing his truths in conflated phrases that are seemingly nonsense unless you penetrate and prosper.

He describes his journey to a "nervous breakdown" when the activities of his imagination brought him close to losing the distinctions between his imagination and the real world of fast-moving cars that pay no attention to the world of dreams and metaphysical imagining. This "death" became his new birth and he awakened to a sober analysis of the life he was living. Like any good existentialist he decided that life was not authentic and therefore like any good zealot he undertook to find his own leather belt and locust-eating role of a prophet. He did what every creative person (in his thinking) ought to do. He told his corporate boss to shove it and he went off in the desert to live an unwashed (literally), convenience rejecting existence, staring at the blue sky and reveling in his creative juices. It was the supreme triumph of "it's all about me", the mantra of many and the death knell of civilization. All this is conveyed to us in the wrappings of smugly inscrutable, tongue-in-cheek (I suppose) "parables" and "treatises".

If you want to hear a drugged out, pseudo-intellectual who was born out of synch with the hippie generation, then buy the book. But the bottom line is it doesn't take a genius to tell us that corporate America generates pressures on those who pursue its goals. Those pressures can dominate and crush you like a grape. You can be molded by the forces and culture to the point where you discover that something precious is being stifled or has already been killed. There are many ways to deal with this and not all of them include rejecting the whole scene.

Murk is intoxicated with his own drama and is way too quick to project the patterns of his own life into the form of wisdom universally applicable to other souls, sensitive or not. I have heard better philosophy from a gushing drunk leaning on a bar in one of the many establishments I have visited. I have even contributed to the genre myself. But when I sobered up I knew that it was just the liquor talking. Murk may have overcome his drug habit, perhaps not, but I am not sure that the recovery is complete.

As we individuate from our nuclear family, we find that all that is told us is not always true; or often, even apply to us at all! Jason, on his journey, though well qualified for the business world, finds he is stifled in the environment as he goes into the accepted medium for earning your living and using your college preparations. From needing 'help' (with artificial substances), to ability to see his
inner/spiritual being without 'assistance' is a reflection of his growth and understanding. Some find it in music, environment, religion - and others in the intrepid details of Splendor Solis. I am reminded of my own journey as I read this.

Great stuff and inspirational to it's readers.

Delve into this delightful book for a wonderful trip of discovery with the author- in search of his natural and untrammeled self-while, at the same time trying to throw off the bonds of a stultifying corporate career.
Vivid imagery, scintillating prose, plus, insights into the wellsprings of creativity.

When we (all) were very young, the written word was a sort of magic.
Words could ripple, pounce, tickle our ears or make our hearts race and our breathing stall.
All in the space of a single page. Or a single poem. Or a single tale told with an ear and an eye for a young reader's boundless imagination and innate sense of rhythm.
But then we (all) grew up and we (all) grew dull.
[C'mon. You know it's true.]
We lost all patience with - or interest in - language that couldn't be hammered into dry memos, bloodless e-mails or (worst of all) jargony bulletpoints for soul-numbing Powerpoint presentations.
We became groanups: cubicle moles or corporate climbers, looking past life with thousand-yard stares, measuring out our lives with coffeespoons (as TS Eliot put it.)
Take a break.
Let Jason Murk revive your imagination and restore your capacity to delight in words, ideas and notions that will not earn you a single extra dime or move you even one small step closer to $ucce$$.
"Necktie for a Two-headed Tadpole" is not the kind of "business book" they stock at Staples and Office Depot. Sure, it's "about" business and work and corporate life, but it's not about how to triumph, cope or survive in that all-too-familiar lockup of the soul.
It's "about" the missing piece in every employee, manager and boss - including you.
It's about ... creativity. And how to find where you left it when you were very young.
Murk is a wonderful talent.
The English language dances and glides for him.
Words are his impish monkey, and he is one hell of a literary organgrinder.
Part autobiography, part essay, part fantasy, part zen fable, "Necktie for a Two-headed Tadpole" is unlike anything you have ever read.
It is, by turns, clever, funny, thoughtful, lyrical, funny, clever, thoughtful ...
You get the idea.
Get the book.
And be young again.