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Spoken word artist León De la Rosa and videojockey Gabriela Duran recorded Todo Esta Siempre Bien and then It Ain't on three occasions at three locations—The 2010 Humanities Education and Research Association Conference, The Rubin Center at the University of Texas in El Paso, and their home in Cuidad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. They then took the three recordings and mixed them together to produce this, the definitive published version of this videorant. Please note that Todo Esta Siempre Bien and then It Ain't is 23 minutes and 279 megabytes, and will require a high-speed connection. It's an Apple .mp4 file, so if you have difficulty playing it, try installing QuickTime.
Todo Esta Siempre Bien and then It Ain't is the first chapter of So Solo Palabras but Wish to Be a City, León De la Rosa's forthcoming longpoem from Unlikely Books. So Solo Palabras but Wish to Be a City is about the possibility of heroism in Juárez, and as such, is presented as a new genre: the graphic poem, illustrated in a comic style by Guiraga7 as a graphic novel might be, but formatted for the pecularities of verse, rather than text. Staffers Belinda Subraman and Jonathan Penton recently discussed the book with León:
And as long as you're here, check out León's work at The Gun Gallery, in Cuidad Juárez. Recently, he curated a multimedia show, Espokenwordando, starring Nancy Lachuga, Logan Phillips, and Jen Shugert, three U.S. poets. Belinda filmed it for us:
leon de la rosa is gaby's husband, laura & gustavo's son, alejo, paola & ardilla's brother; a videomaker and a espokenwordist; a researcher and faculty member at Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez and a Free Holé Slammer. You can check out his web site here: www.LeonDelaRosa.org.