Sometimes songs can save us — just ask Niko Stratis

It's a well-known cliché that music has the power to heal. But perhaps what's less talked about is the artform's power to reveal truths about yourself before you even recognize them.

That's one aspect of culture writer Niko Stratis' debut book, The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman. Through a collection of essays each titled after a song, Stratis unpacks her story from journeyman glazier to music writer, with a gender transition along the way.

Today on Commotion, she joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about how songs can help you find a different story about yourself.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: You said that you chose every song that you wrote about in the book because it saved you in some kind of way. This is a book about how songs can help you maybe find a different story for yourself, and about yourself. I'm curious about how you see music and identity maybe intertwined in your life.

Niko: I was a really isolated, introverted and very insular young person, from a very young age probably until I was in my 20s.

Elamin: And now you're cool and you have tattoos and you write about music.

Niko: At least one of those things is true…. But music was a thing I could withdraw and escape into. I grew up in the Yukon, which is a very removed place from the rest of the world. I couldn't get in a car for a weekend drive and go to a city. It just wasn't an option.

Elamin: You couldn't just go see R.E.M.

Niko: Exactly. To this day, I've never seen R.E.M. in concert. But I could listen to these songs and these artists, and I could imagine worlds that maybe I could be real in. I knew a lot of secrets about myself, and I was very scared of them from a very young age. And music allowed me a space where I could explore a lot of complicated ideas that I didn't fully have words for. I could ask answers for questions I didn't fully know how to vocalize. It was these little spaces I could explore in. And that's, I think, why they've lingered with me for so long. It's being able to look back with grace at my younger self and be like, "OK, well, you were searching. Now here we are. I'm in my 40s now. We made it."

Elamin: "I'm in my 40s now and we made it," it's not a light sentence. You're not saying that lightly.

Niko: No, not at all…. I never thought I would be in my 40s. Honestly, I think that is a really easy thing to talk about. I never thought I would be here.

Elamin: Tell me about that — the idea of listening to these songs and saying, "If there's a future, these songs will get me to that place."

Niko: I think when I had them then, I was just trying to live in the world that I could imagine for the time that I thought I would have. And I never really saw a future for myself. Like I never saw myself being in my 40s and being a writer, because I never imagined a future for myself at all, because I just didn't think it was possible. So I was living in these songs because I thought, "Maybe this is enough."... And now I'm an adult in a world I never imagined.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Niko Stratis produced by Jean Kim.