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A six-song passage through collapse, self-confrontation, and the difficult work of becoming someone you can finally recognize.
Becoming the Self is now available as a complete six-movement EP.
Written and creatively directed by Paxin Tenebris; AI-generated vocal and instrumental performance created with Eleven Music.
The journey inward
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 cinematic threshold
A 77-second passage into the collapse that opens Becoming the Self—and the question waiting beneath it.
Movement I · Collapse · 1:17The six movements
Each song carries a chapter of the same personal passage. The complete essays and lyrics are preserved in the companion booklet.
Collapse
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?”
Confrontation
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”
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?”
Excavation
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”
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”
Becoming
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.The name at the threshold
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 companion booklet
Sixteen pages of personal track notes, complete lyrics, and process credits for all six movements of Becoming the Self.