Dylan on Barack

On the eve of the release of his new album, I Feel a Change a Comin’ On, Bob Dylan is waxing poetic to The Times of London about (what else?) the liquid times in which we live and our president. Dylan—as only Dylan can—mythologizes Obama’s life, lending a folksy allure to the stories in the president’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father. “He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real,” Dylan says. “First off, his mother was a Kansas girl... And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage—cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.”