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Niko Stratis

Catching up to feeling alive

Catching up to feeling alive

Let me tell you that I had big plans this week. BIG plans. A Tuesday newsletter. a Friday newsletter. I was going to write thousands of words, each one of them perfectly placed, no mistakes, no slips of grammar. We all have big plans and intentions, and just like the

I took every secret that I'd ever known and headed for the wall

I took every secret that I'd ever known and headed for the wall

I am returned from a journey home, and if you have ever moved away from home and then gone back to visit you know exactly what I’m saying when I tell you my chest is still recovering from the journey. It was a good trip, kind of the perfect

Let a low, long signal

Let a low, long signal

I’ve got a lot of memory loss, which is a funny thing for someone who writes a lot in memoir and self-centred stories to admit. I am my own little unreliable narrator, coaxed on by shards of memory and questions texted to old friends and an older sister. A

Held like a penny I found

Held like a penny I found

I foolishly want milestones to mean something, less out of desperation and more from a desire for days and landmarks to mean more than they are capable of. Values I placed on monuments that live only as washed out images in the rearview, all half-remembered and fading out of view.

Everything dies, that's a fact

Everything dies, that's a fact

I’ve been thinking a lot about dads lately, which I’m sure is a by-product of moving through the rough draft and obsessive meandering of book writing (The Dad Rock That Made me a Woman, available….). Someone was asking me this weekend how I write, how I made it

Late to forever

Late to forever

I'm going to admit something to you, a personal failing or at the very least an admission to having arrived late: I'm listening to Wednesday, and I'm doing it for the first time. Rat Saw God, the North Carolina bands fifth record, is last

A love letter to the rain

A love letter to the rain

I need another week before I can write anything here. I tell myself this every morning. Just one more week. Just one more. Very recently, I lived up to the looming threat of my responsibilities and filed the first rough draft of my debut book, The Dad Rock That Made