He's got an interesting background. He's like a fictional character, but he's real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas, though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. 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. Bob Dylan in an interview with Bill Flanagan
2 comments:
this particular quotation from that dylan interview has been posted on like 90% of the internet recently. well, or so it seems. anyway, i love this quote.
as has been pointed out elsewhere, dylan's recount of obama's ancestral history isn't completely accurate. but that accuracy or inaccuracy is beside the point. the awesomeness of this quotation doesn't come from what it says about obama, but from what it says about how bob dylan thinks and sees the world.
I had no idea this was all over the internet. I was wondering why I hadn't heard more about it.
But Yes!!! That was my thought, Meghan. Ms Arndt and I immediately started talking about what this says about the way a real artist and poet assembles the world -- especially one with mythopoeic sensibilities.
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