Somewhere Over the Sun

Hello, dear readers!

Last week, I coyly announced on Twitter (@AdiAlsaid) that a giveaway for Let’s Get Lost was coming soon. And guess what? Soon is now! 

First of all, I apologize for how amateurish this digital postcard is. Can you even read it? I hope so.

In case you can’t, here’s the gist. I have an extra ARC of Let’s Get Lost laying around, and I want to give it to you. All you have to do is create a postcard kind of like I did here. I’m sure it’ll be much better looking. But it doesn’t have to be. All it really needs to include is an image of some sort, and a few words about your favorite place to get lost. Or a place you’ve been dreaming of getting lost in. 

As soon as you submit it, either via e-mail (adi(dot)alsaid(at)gmail) or through the link on the header of this page, you will be entered into a random drawing to win an autographed copy of Let’s Get Lost, months before its release in August.

I’ll be sharing some of my favorite submissions (with the author’s permission, of course) until the deadline, which will be February 28 at 11:59 PM, Eastern Standard Time. Tell your friends, too! If they win you can borrow the book from them.

I can’t wait to see what your favorite places to get lost are, and what kind of great postcards you’ll submit.  

I have a Uruguayan friend who says Mexicans don’t speak Spanish, we sing it.

This was back in college, when what it was like to live in Mexico was already slipping away, the amnesia of the teenaged. I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about, then proceeded to make fun of her for using “vos” and pronouncing double L’s like J’s. 

It’s been a little over three years since I moved back to my hometown of Mexico City, and now I can hardly get the sing-songy cadence out of my head. You hear it most of all in people hawking their products on public transportation, in pop-up flea markets where vendors compete to lure people in, in the ubiquitous taped recording that tamale sellers play in every corner of the city. 

It’s almost unsettling how common it is for people to try to make their living by singing what they’re selling. Maybe they’re just savvy marketers that understand the allure of the jingle. Maybe the ingredients and purposes of chewing gum are a drag to say over and over again, so they sing it to make their jobs easier. Maybe centuries ago, when Spanish mixed with Nahuatl and other indigenous languages of the area, the tongues fell in love and, like in any musical, no one could get them to shut up about it.

The most interesting thing about the musicality of this particular brand of Spanish is how similar the cadence is, like it’s choreographed, or voted on, or simply discovered to be the most effective. I don’t know enough about music to say what the tempo or beat or syncopation is (I barely know the musical definition to any of those words), or how to explain it in writing. I wonder if there’s some sort of explanation to why everyone sings the same way. Is it a matter of social proliferation, where everyone does it because everyone does it? Is there a more poetic explanation? The rhythm of the heart? The rhythm of salesmanship?