We’re all pretending to be Michelle Branch.

We are happy, and in that happiness we are free to be rock stars as we jump around laughing, holding hands, and forgetting we’re not infinite.

ON MICHELLE BRANCH BY ERIC FARWELL 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 110

Growing up, Kip, my cousin, was my hero. My earliest memory is sleeping on his floor the night my mom broke her leg. I wasn’t old enough to understand how broken limbs work, and instead worried that she would die, or that I’d never see her again due to some complication I couldn’t identify, but felt existentially anxious about.

As time ticked by in the dark of winter, I took solace in the fact that Kip was there. A whole three years older than me, he seemed to know everything, and throughout our youth I’d look to him as the person who could help me interpret the world.

Perhaps more crucially, he was also the only other person I knew who understood what it was like to grow up in a mixed-race family.

Kip and I attended a glaringly white prep school, and floated through our days hearin…