Tendon Levey, born April 21, 1989, is an American polymath best known for his prolific and genre-defying work as a musician, his contributions to the occult and essentially for just having lived a very unusual life.
Tendon was born to a household of "doom-obsessed eschatologists" in southern New Jersey where he lived out a cloistered religious upbringing deprived of access to media, education, and with limited opportunities to socialize. Having few rights to his name and no means to explore the world around him, his exploration was more or less confined to the fathoms of his own mind and his fascination for the occult took shape at an early age. He was deeply drawn to sleep-related phenomena, in particular, due to frequent episodes of sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming and devoted his adolescence to exploring these states to the point of mastery.
After coming of age and becoming socially independent he formed relations with members of a local underground occult fraternity who took a special interest in his background and helped bring his ideas before a wider audience. Convinced of his own understanding, Tendon continued without caution into a lifestyle which others found reckless and dangerous and quickly rose to notoriety within his local community for an association with numerous bizarre and inexplicable occurrences.
After twelve long and unforgettable months in their company, Tendon abandoned the fraternity and sought to dissociate from the occult lifestyle altogether, leaving many feeling surprised and betrayed by a lack of explanation. The transition proved difficult on him, as well. The events of 2007 had dealt noticeable damage to his sense of identity and he now struggled against seeing himself as a monster. Fearing that his experiences would prevent him from ever returning to a normal way of life, Tendon suffered a dramatic breakdown while attending a public Valentine's Day event and vanished from society without a trail. His sudden disappearance left many to assume the worst and rumors of his death diffused rapidly throughout the Mid-Atlantic.
Six years later, in the spring of 2014, Tendon re-emerged from an underground cellar in Lynchburg, Virginia, severely emaciated and coated from head to toe in a thick film of dirt, blood and dead cells resulting from prolonged self-neglect. His hair had grown long and disorderly; his yellow fingernails measured nearly three inches in length; his body was riddled with ailments and injuries numbering in the dozens and he would require months of light therapy to rehabilitate his eyes after years of living in the dark.
Tendon has since gone on to establish himself as a capable psychologist and counselor, among other things—albeit under the guise of an all-new name, identity and appearance.
His vast musical discography of 70 albums was released to the public in January 2017 to commemorate the project's ten-year anniversary. The music was recorded over a period of four years (2007-2011) and provides a stark and harrowing look at the real reasons behind his disappearance and the details of what transpired afterwards.
Discography
- Organolepticas (2007)
- The Perfect Swarm (2007)
- Star Cravat (2007
- Gowns and Crowns (2007)
- Have a Door (2007)
- Sororal Satans (2008)
- Floor of a Flood (2008)
- Ear to the Oven (2008)
- Stock Bird Stork (2008)
- The Gredients (2008)
- Uhh Usst (2008)
- The Evening Song Sol Trio (2008)
- Overeating Tombs (2008)
- Flesh Start (2008)
- Pallo With Thee (2009)
- Dragging (2009)
- Quicksand Part Person (2009)
- Extremophiles (2009)
- Nightly Market (2009)
- Votcofifxa (2009)
- Conclude Us Power (2009)
- Rice Water (2009)
- Shrinking Zeal (2009)
- Kidnapper Captor (2009)
- Plague of Rats (2009)
- There's a Fog With Me (2009)
- Alkahest (2009)
- Horn of the Town (2009)
- Evil Guest List (2009)
- Heart Is Debt (2009)
- Less Beating (2009)
- Candlelike (2009)
- Man Made Clavos (2009)
- I Recant (2009)
- Awake Eating the Drill (2009)
- If I'm Extinguished Through World (2009)
- Bot of Big God, Bomb of His Whirs (2009)
- Tip of a Tiny Bell (2010)
- Benbenet (2010)
- Sexless Carcass (2010)
- Five-Dose Days (2010)
- The Knot That Joins Two Ropes (2010)
- Hounds Surround Her (2010)
- Lord Testing (2010)
- Present and a Gift (2010)
- Slime Powder Dimension (2010)
- Traps of Fact (2010)
- Empty Antechoirs (2010)
- The Legs That Made Me (2010)
- All Pepper Blown Away (2010)
- Fire-Breathing Bulbs (2010)
- The Room of Burglaryable Spirit (2010)
- Cry But Why (2010)
- Winter Owner (2010)
- Actress Your Master (2010)
- Carnage Near and Far (2010)
- The Cloud on the Altar (2011)
- Reaper Physical Place (2011)
- The Stomachic Chariot (2011)
- Countertorch (2011)
- Are You Late Night, Are You Sugar (2011)
- Comprachicos (2011)
- Northern Thorns (2011)
- The Rifles in Mind Recoil (2011)
- Chameleon Silks (2011)
- Vulgar Gold (2011)
- Abracadammit (2011)
- Myrrh is Mine (2011)
- Baby's First Bible (2007) note
- A Throat By Any Other Name (2011) note
- Mythologem (2005-2007)
- Silly Boy (2008)
- Sleepstonegun Dusk (2009)
- Demon Daycare (2009)
- Fountain of Euth (2009)
- The Moon Rises in Lust (2010)
- Foulbrood (2010)
- Trial of the Magician (2010)
- Cadaverine (2011)
Tendon and his works provide examples of the following tropes:
- The Adjectival Man: "Pilcrow Man"
- Ambiguous Gender / Ambiguous Gender Identity
- Arc Number: The number 58.
- Avant-Garde Music
- Bee-Bee Gun: Type II, supposedly.
- A Boy and His X: "A Boy and His Bomb"
- Broken Record: He likes this one quite a lot.
- Career-Ending Injury: His career as a vocalist was ended prematurely in the summer of 2011 due to a combination of vocal overuse and an unspecified disease affecting his throat.
- The Cover Changes the Meaning: "A Whole New World" and "We Three Kings"
- Enigmatic Empowering Entity: The Thummim
- Epunymous Title: "When a Tendon Snaps" and "The Powers of Ten"
- Freakier Than Fiction
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: While suicidal undertones are common of his work, albums such as I Recant, Bot of Big God, Bomb of His Whirs and The Rifles in Mind Recoil are far more blatant, resembling actual suicide notes.
- Hated Hometown: He has expressed a strong hatred for Lynchburg, Virginia.
- The Hermit: Lived for nearly an entire decade in total isolation from society without ever leaving his house or communicating with the outside world.
- Homage:
- "Two Young Men" by Crispin van den Broeck (Extremophiles)
- "Nebuchadnezzar" by William Blake (The Rifles in Mind Recoil)
- Hymn to Music: He really loves to sing about his love for singing.
- Indecipherable Lyrics: Notoriously so.
- I Will Find You: One of the main themes of his work. It makes sense that the majority of his love songs would also fall under this trope.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind : The Stomachic Chariot
- Light Is Not Good: The "sun" that commonly crops up in his music and art is in most cases an allusion to a certain occult fraternity which played a significant role in his collapse and subsequent withdrawal from society back in 2008.
- Lyrical Tic: "Hell!" and "Heh!"
- Madness Mantra:
- "How dare we starve, how dare we stay hard. How dare we starve, how dare we stay hard. How dare we starve, how dare we stay hard."
- "Why did you freeze!? Why did you freeze!? Why did you freeze!? Why did you freeze!?"
- Miniscule Rocking: Many of his songs are on the shorter side.
- The Muse: Variously portrayed as the Cloud Cuckoolander and The Ingenue, Anita is a central figure in Tendon's work. Their first and only known encounter dates back to February 2008, not long after suffering his infamous public collapse. “Anita” is the name of the passerby who discovered him after he had apparently overdosed in the shade of a wispy tree, bringing him to safety. Throw in a surprise kiss and top it off with I Will Find You and you've got what looked to be the start of a quirky storybook romance. Well, except that he had forgotten her name and failed to locate her afterwards. Where most people would have given it up, Tendon took a Vow of Celibacy and has since lived out more than a third of his life abstaining from romantic relationships while continuing to seek her out.
- Ode to Intoxication: According to
Word of God, this trope is central to The Gredients, Dragging and Slime Powder Dimension which each reflect on his relationship with opium and kratom.- The white bowl depicted in his art is pretty much the visual counterpart of this.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: "Aonuuzm", "Kllssl Qvan Kllssl Upse" and "Anointing of the Sick".
- Outsider Music
- Portmantitle: Abracadammit
- Pun-Based Title: "Kingdom Coma", "Romeo and Oubliette", "Vespal Virgin", "A Sucker is Gored Every Minute", "Carpe Demon", "The Perfect Swarm", "Glitch Doctor", "Hard of Healing", "Life After Daath", and many others.
- Renaissance Man
- Self-Backing Vocalist: It is nearly unheard of for his songs to feature a lone vocal track.
- Self-Made Man
- Shonen Hair: Essentially a shonen afro.
- Singing Voice Dissonance: He speaks with a deep, throaty baritone not even remotely resembling his singing voice.
- Soprano and Gravel: Him and him.
- Survival Mantra:
- "I will sing and never sink."
- Tarot Motifs:
- "Indolence of Cups" (Eight of Cups)
- "Improvement" (Knight of Cups)
- "Ten Swords in My Back" (Ten of Swords)
- "Is This Your Card?" (Two of Cups)
- "The Fool" is depicted in the artwork of Organolepticas
- "The Magus" on the cover of Candlelike
- Textless Album Cover: All of his albums fall under this trope.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Visible in most photographs taken between 2009 and 2014.
- His noted habit of bulging his eyes has been explained as a self-conscious attempt to disguise his weary stare.
- His noted habit of bulging his eyes has been
- Total Eclipse of the Plot:
- The first ceremonial evocation of the Thummim coincided with the total lunar eclipse of March 3, 2007—a blood moon.
- On the evening of August 28, 2007, Tendon suffered a near-fatal drug overdose leading to an infamous near-death/afterlife experience. This, too, occurred during a total lunar eclipse.
- He first met Anita on the date of February 20, 2008 (yet another total lunar eclipse).
- Trademark Favorite Food: Oatmeal. In a comment from May 2017 he claimed to have eaten "an estimated 11,000+ bowls of oatmeal since 2009". note
- The Trickster
- We Used to Be Friends: Florentin
- The song "Idol of Oils" (Countertorch) deals with this.
