Ember LotusA six-track EP

Becoming the Self

A six-song passage through collapse, self-confrontation, and the difficult work of becoming someone you can finally recognize.

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Written & created by
Paxin Tenebris
Created for
ElevenLabs
Becoming the Self artwork: six fractured glass layers resolving around a luminous center
FractureSix movementsReconstruction

The story begins when
the false narrative breaks.

Becoming the Self follows the collapse of a protected identity and the questions that surface in its absence. Each track moves further inward: through feedback, fear, inherited definitions, the layers that obscure love, and the shadow once mistaken for an enemy.

The six songs form one continuous reconstruction. They do not resolve every question. They mark the moment hiding becomes more painful than looking—and looking becomes the first act of return.

A self, heard in pieces.

Each song carries a chapter of the same personal passage. The complete essays and lyrics are preserved in the companion booklet.

  1. Collapse

    The Glass Castle Falls

    Story: The Glass Castle Falls

    A first fracture: the moment a carefully defended identity can no longer hold against a truth spoken by someone close enough to see through it.

    Do I want to be the ruler of a kingdom built on lies?
  2. Confrontation

    One. Two. Three.

    Story: 3 Strikes, Look Within

    A personal rule turns feedback into a mirror. Once may be opinion. Twice is a pattern. Three times asks for an honest choice about who to become.

    Tell me three and it’s more than likely me that has to change
  3. Question

    Who Am I?

    Story: The Only Question

    Roles, attributes, histories, and inherited definitions fall away until one unanswered question remains at the center of everything.

    When was the last time I let my Self be heard?
  4. Excavation

    Layers of Love

    Story: Secrets in the Attic

    The inward search becomes an act of removal: false narratives, old impressions, and protective layers stripped back one difficult choice at a time.

    Layer by layer, moments I’ve become
    Prisons of my past, I remove them one by one
  5. Love

    I Need to (Learn to) Love Me

    Story: I Can’t Love

    The journey reaches a painful paradox: love for others cannot feel fully true while the self receiving and giving it remains unknown.

    But I need to learn to love me
  6. Becoming

    What We’ve Always Been

    Story: Me, For the First Time

    The final movement makes peace with the darkness that was once locked away, gathers its scattered pieces, and begins again under a chosen name.

    In the dark, that’s where I found my peace in pieces.

Pax in Tenebris

Peace in darkness.

Not a new mask. A new permission.

The final chapter reaches the naming of Paxin Tenebris: an attempt to make peace with the darkness that had been feared, rejected, and left unexplored. The name becomes a clean threshold—not an ending, but permission to meet the self without the old script.

The true story. Every lyric. In the artist's own words.

Fifteen pages of personal track notes and complete lyrics for all six movements of Becoming the Self.

Open the booklet — PDF (opens in a new tab)