New Mexico and the Vietnam War: Portrait of a Generation; Interview with Michael Naranjo, Disc 3 of 3

Let's be um you're up on the scaffolding and you told me once what it was like to look at his eyes can you tell me again his eyes his eyes his eyelids are just absolutely beautiful thin i don't know and then there were tear ducts in the corners of the eyes no one would ever see them and you know but there they were um and the the veins in his neck his full lips and the adrenaline running through him you could feel it the tension uh there's something's ready to happen and he was he was there um ready to take on that moment perfect what's that noise zero that purpose speak hope is your reaction to

seeing the david it can be a short means we usually looking at the david feeling him a dream it comes true okay for part of me do you know where you looking at the david looking at the david that from the top the eyes and everything no no just from the tail your reaction to seeing oh my goodness uh looking at the david something i dreamt about thought about um of course not thinking that it would ever happen um totally exhausted after three hours of looking at him and now knowing what an incredible sculptor michael angelo was and if he only had pneumatic tools what could have he done

how did you feel after seeing him what was your you know something said you were exhausted you were delighted you were happy what was it i was totally exhausted i was excited but the adrenaline adrenaline was still there and it just it just make the fire stronger inside wanting to carve stone wanting to be a sculptor and um knowing sure why not i can do it just on some level not as good as him but you know i could have fun doing it great well i want you to save that again and then i'm going to get rid of the tail and looking at that thing you feel like sure i can do it why not okay okay looking at him after

all those hours um sure i felt like i could do it and you with time i could get it done perfect thank you all right um i think we're ready to go to 50 years later yeah yeah what what's important to say about the award say by your experience to say about having that kind of perspective now what what comes to mind and i'm throwing this door wide open for you as i said here thinking about where i am now i think i have an incredible wonderful life uh sure i have a disability i am blind i've been the use of my right hand but that doesn't matter i have an incredible life two

daughters and uh i have my work um and life couldn't be better one thing that is so so much there that people don't know is how much Laurie is connected to this whole story uh from the time i met her and the part she plays and and my getting where i got and and going to see things uh she made so many of these things possible with her correspondence and her and her hard work um um i i couldn't have done it without her it would have been different

what do you make it work for you and Laurie? i think we both believed in if you don't try you don't succeed this will always tell our girls and if you don't ask you won't know but i guess the main thing is um nourishing something and loving it and if you love something strong enough the only thing that can come out of it is good and i think that's what happened here we made it happen together switch the gears a little bit what do you think what do you think of war? what do i think of the war? this war any war?

after after having gone through that war in Vietnam we didn't belong there we had no business whatsoever there those people wanted their little rice field that's all they wanted we had no business there and even now today when when i hear lepio a lepo when i hear a lepo and all these are the wars or like it's sad we don't learn and i don't think we'll ever learn so what happens is i think what little we can do here now what little difference we can make is what it's all about and making this moment the best that it can be okay one thing i want to pick up on that was galore that was terrific thank you

um tell me about before you went off to um the service into Vietnam just a short piece about i think it was you and tito used to go hunting and running in the woods yeah maybe that would be a nice little story just to say i you know i grew up said i clarify it low and my brother and i were always up in the woods running and hunting and doing whatever for something like that yeah i'd love to play brother i had the best brother in the world he's seven he was he's seven years older we'd never had an argument and the majority of our teenage years uh and even further on damaline i would need an enormous amount of hunting fishing camping we

ran uh distance races um i loved him dearly and he for many years there he was essentially my mother and my father i had seven sisters but he was my big brother and what he did uh i wanted to do as well and hunt fish running let's try this one because i think i'm trying to stand up while when you're you were out there and you know the kid as a kid like a lot of us just out there and was running and really enjoying that experience so if you started off by saying you know from Santa Clara Pueblo and my brother and i okay i'm from Santa Clara Pueblo about 30 miles north of Santa Fe and as a little boy i remember being with my brother

in the foothills and along the Rio Grande hunting fishing and up in the mountains fishing and and we would run many distances uh to get to places um carrying our fishing rods or rifles or whatever and um it was it was i followed him and um because he was my big brother and i wanted to be like him and so um i had to word him uh we'd never had an argument and it would be nice if the world was like that but it's not sounds like you'd really love to being out in the woods and being in that area the the woods is when i think of the woods i guess i think of uh fawn if enormous number of fawn memories of wandering around through the woods in the snow and

mountains we had never been and and fishing in lakes and streams and and just wandering around watching the clouds come rolling over the peaks above termed the line as we lay there uh slowly vanishing, stringing out and reappearing again as they went over the top of the mountains and and just just magical moments that um that we keep inside of us and we look at when we want to have a peaceful moment sometimes thinking about something okay i'm going to give you one more thing and about being out walking and hunting going through the mountains just keep it super self okay i just loved walking through the mountains and and just getting lost out there and the beauty of of

nature is there's nothing else like it cool thank you um all right are you okay sir are you okay i'm okay are you okay i'm okay i'm okay are my eyes closing yes they are okay i'll open well you don't have to try too hard we've had you here for a while but i don't want to work too hard yeah okay you know i think is that it? yeah that's what i thought i think just this one we're yeah now we'll be done so we're good so the piece is uh is it helping my brother he's been he's my brother all right so tell me just start off by saying he's my brother he's my brother it's a sculpture of uh

one soldier carrying another soldier over his uh shoulder and this scene i'm sure it took place many times in many wars and and it's just when you're out there um you never know what's going to happen and the soldier your friend all your all all your all the men in this quad they're your brothers uh you have to look at them that way you can't leave them out there alone uh when they're wounded you you bring them back with you i'm sorry you said you can you don't want you don't want to leave any of your friends out on the open field or wounded dead or whatever because it's such a tragic kind of

emotional um intense feelings that you go through and and to leave someone there just doesn't work so he's my brother he's carrying his friend back to where he can get him to a safe place cool is there anything you want to say or do i oh god leather for day i'm not saying the right thing yeah he said a lot of right things uh i don't know i don't know i don't i don't want to talk about the idea of you know being native american is a warrior society did you take part in that no i never did any of that yeah um but also we what do we talk to talk to in the past about um just you know what the idea of being patient that's been a recurring team with you i don't know i mean whatever you

think is important that you want to say um okay there's one thing there's one thing that i'm really at when i think about it i really get excited um interestingly enough i'm reading the book of uh Michelangelo at the moment the agony in the ecstasy uh probably for the third time and um oh my goodness i lost my train of thought and the ecstasy um i forgot where i was going to say it's been a long after oh okay i got it okay so i'm reading this book about the agony and the ecstasy about Michelangelo by Irving Stone and um i get so excited and it's making me feel like i'm a sculpt again um and and

when i touched the david um it was magical the very first piece of his that i touched was the Moses i crawled around on the Moses uh touched dusk dawn the bogus um what other piece of his have i touched and when i think of all these pieces the david the pieta all these pieces that he created um his hands went over these sculptures feeling for any any areas that needed fixing your hand just naturally runs over the the smooth areas of the stone and when he had created these pieces he must have had different people helping him over the years so when i stop and think that Michelangelo and i

have touched all these pieces from head to toe who else has done that and it kind of it makes me excited and it's a scary thought but it makes me um feel like i did something that perhaps no one else ever did touch his pieces to that degree it's pretty amazing it's not like a wonderful trip when you were there did you touch the Pope did you hold his hand yeah soft hands cool and is that is that too seeing that it's kind of your your time to spout off so well it's you know it's it's i yeah i feel like i don't can't imagine someone else did that to all

those pieces because there's so many different places in museums and created in different places there's apprentices weren't always following in the same ones the very first piece the relief he did of uh of the battle scene hi really all those pieces it makes me and i think we should wrap it up let's just roll some on a roomtown this is 30 seconds room town actually can we pause michael you put that water bottle back on the ground because i can hear it in your hands okay so this is 30 seconds room town

that's a cut okay we're done