Behind the songs.
Between the lines.

The Life Between the Lines, with a Little Tea ♡ My first album, Still Becoming, came out on September 25. Before I start sharing the stories behind the songs, I should probably introduce the person responsible for all these feelings. My writing began underneath a staircase in a Borders bookstore. I was a teenager with a plain composition notebook, listening to Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes and hiding from the crowds. There were things I couldn’t say out loud. Being different felt dangerous, and I didn’t have a community where I could comfortably explain who I was. So I wrote it down. I’m Leander Winters. I write songs, poems, and things that begin as one and wander off to become something else. I love books, gardening, tea, mountains, waterfalls, and interesting stones that apparently cannot be left where I found them. I’m usually happiest in a hoodie, somewhere with plants and a reasonable distance from a crowd. People sometimes mistake me for an extrovert. I understand the confusion. I’m Spanish, I can be loud, and occasionally caffeine or wine is involved. Being talkative for an hour and needing three business days to recover can coexist. That teenager’s notebook never really left me. Writing still gives me somewhere to put a thought when carrying it around becomes exhausting. Putting something on paper doesn’t necessarily solve it, but it gives me a little distance. Sometimes I understand it better afterward. Sometimes I discover I’ve written three pages when one honest sentence would have done. I love a line that can change meaning depending on who hears it. A locked door can protect someone or keep them trapped. A garden can be something you tend while trying to remember how to tend yourself. Gardening has helped me through difficult periods with PTSD. There are days when caring for something growing comes more easily than finding words. Those connections find their way into my songs. I hope your experiences find room there too. I write and revise the lyrics, shape the production, work with sounds and instrument samples, and edit the audio. Yes, I use generative AI as part of that process. I also use accessibility features for tasks I find difficult. Making the music involves time, costs, revisions, and more decisions than I expected when I started. I care about whether you can hear the words, whether a melody gives them enough room, and whether the feeling survives all that editing. Sometimes a line I love has to go because it gets in the song’s way. I would like to register a complaint about this, but unfortunately it keeps being true. Still Becoming gathers heartbreak, loneliness, mental health, growing older, wanting change, and learning where to draw a boundary. Kindness runs through it too. Being hurt hasn’t stopped me from wanting to care about people, although I’m still learning how to do that without neglecting myself. I wanted the music to move while the words had somewhere to land. There is room to dance, sway, sing, or sit with a feeling for a while. Here’s a little of what each song holds. Still Becoming This is for the people carrying more than anyone can see. Grief, bills, caregiving, exhaustion, and the pressure of being needed when you’re already running on empty. Getting through a day can take enormous effort and look completely ordinary from the outside. I wanted that effort to be recognized, including the need to put something down and ask for help. I Still Hold the Pen Therapy, medication, mistakes, and uncertainty share space in this song. It asks what happens when you take responsibility for your life without treating every difficulty as a personal failure. You can be somewhere between breaking and okay and still have another page to write. Maybe Okay Is Beautiful Have you ever had a calm day and immediately become suspicious? Nothing has gone wrong, so naturally you wonder what you missed. This song is about allowing an ordinary day to count. A meal, some rest, a little room to breathe. After enough chaos, boring can feel unfamiliar. It can also be lovely. Let Someone Find You We become so practiced at presenting an acceptable version of ourselves that meeting someone can feel like delivering a PowerPoint. Here are my strengths. Here is a tasteful anecdote. Please disregard the emotional storage cupboard. This song makes room for one honest sentence and the possibility of being cared for before you have everything neatly arranged. Love’s Still on the Way Disappointment can make us suspicious of the very thing we still want. This song imagines love that is attentive and consistent, with enough space for both people to remain themselves. There is hope in it, but also discernment. Knowing what you can no longer accept is part of learning what you want. Wandering Home Mountains, rivers, gardens, autumn, and snow carry this song’s longing. It imagines a place that feels familiar to something inside you before you’ve lived there. I can be grateful for the life I have and still dream about another view from the window. Wanting change doesn’t erase what has been good. Send It Out The world can make kindness feel embarrassingly small. A wish won’t pay someone’s rent, and a gentle word won’t end a war. Still, we have choices about what we contribute. This song is about giving hope somewhere to go through the things we can actually do for one another. Let Them Whisper I tend to assume that if we laughed and had a good time together, we’ll pick up there next time. Occasionally, I discover there has been an entire subplot happening without me. Gossip hurts, especially when it comes from people you trusted. This song turns some of that hurt into movement. There is a life to return to beyond defending yourself to every room you’ve left. Everything But You A relationship can contain promises, explanations, waiting, and almost everything except someone’s actual presence. The glass fills gradually, just as feelings accumulate when they have nowhere to go. This song draws on painful experiences. It follows the moment when holding everything in becomes impossible and the truth finally starts moving. Forced Silence Being hidden, controlled, or made to feel that speaking will ruin everything takes something from you. This song begins inside that pressure and moves toward the word “No.” There is more behind it than I want to squeeze into an introduction. I’ll give it its own post. For now, it matters to me that the person in the song gets to speak. Storm in the Making When I’m overwhelmed, I often reach for fantasy. Books, imagined places, little worlds where I can rearrange things that refuse to cooperate in real life. This song takes that impulse into gardens, planets, lightning, and rebuilding. Beneath all that scenery is a personal boundary. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean they get to come back. Looking across these songs, I keep returning to the title. Still Becoming gives me room to be unfinished. To care about someone and close a door. To need help and still have something to offer. To have a difficult day without making it my entire identity. There are injuries people cannot see. There are also friendships, jokes, beautiful places, and small things worth noticing. I don’t want the painful parts of my life to erase all the smiles. This notebook will hold poems, stories behind the songs, personal reflections, and writings that never made it into a finished track. Some entries will be thoughtful. Others may reveal that I should have finished my tea before pressing publish. I hope it becomes somewhere we can talk honestly. You may hear something in a song that I never intended. I’d love to know what it was. Thank you for listening, and for meeting me here. Which song stayed with you, and what did you hear in it? ♡ Leander