Notes from the Editor's Desk -- 1/12/23

The basic imperative of soldering is that it should be done in a well-ventilated space. As I have discovered lately, a pleasant scene unfolds as the solder gets purposed, and a waft is released from the metallic portion the artificer makes use of, whereupon the soul of the burial mound in network with other mounds departs with a bow and gratitude for its place in the choir of nearby trees. This scene goes hand in hand with an acrid scent. When I soldered slot cars as a kid, it was done in the least ventilated corner of the basement. The windows in the old Victorian had long been sealed by repainting. Curls of smoke moved solemnly from the elements, only to be vacuumed up by the working of the nostrils, and were merely transferred from one prison to another. Moved about by the working of the blood and the change in dimensions, the various deposits likely reunited in my brain and remain there, ready as the coils on the racks in the electronics aisle at Home Depot for their next application. Why, if this weighs on my mind, go back to soldering, still certain, even in the open air that it works its way into my synapses and there weighs heavily? No ready answer presents itself. Soldering, and its associated fields of interest, were not intense enough for me to either develop significant curiosity or ingested to the degree that its pollutants would produce a significant injury. An injury, all the same, I suspect. It, like all else I can think of, was merely a passing influence in my life that, in summation with other such influences, leaves me to ponder the unimpressive remainder. For the project I presently enjoy, a commercial application of networked Raspberry Pi W boards, I employ a silver based solder with flux in the core. When I soldered in the 90s like a Dickens’s character, I used lead based solder. Ineptly, with my elements arrayed on a piece of marble, I glossed solder upon wires where the contacts of the electric engine required me to do so. Globs and globs were added, the wafts increasing with each application of the wire, until the connection was inartfully made. From these, I pieced together my slot cars, affixing a polymer form in the shape of a car body over the workings, indelicately forcing the pins that held the plastic top to the chassis, bringing them where convenient. My works on these constructions gave me a decided advantage in a realm of interest that no contemporary cared about. My cars, sporting decals, are still in a tackle box with various solutions and components. The decals were advertisements for real world oil or tires and were set on translucent backgrounds that were affixed to the body of the slot car with a clear solution of some kind, one that produced another distasteful scent, a sharp scent.

Still, this feeling of advantage, or a unique situation, was enough for a hypnotic interest to transpire. As I went about this process, I was diverted by the hypnotic phenomenon of metal melting, when placed in contact with heat, whose influence purpled the iron. Curls of smoke contained their own distraction as a matter of phenomenon, but the lead contained therein provided a basis for distraction of a more permanent basis.

My cognizance of these amorphous plumes runs deep. As time flattens out for me — that is to say as I age — a few features of memory stand out, for a time, as highly relevant, these curls, called to mind by these latter day silver based emissions, among them. I solder again, likely, because it seems a jumping off point from which to rework or project my failings. We require a jumping off point. With this, writing, itself an influence that causes pollution, promises to weld together the whole apparatus of disparate parts, memory both alive and dead, into a working whole of signal and processing. I solder again, and I write of solder, because the extension of that early pollutant may also contain a measure of origination. It may be no more than an analysis of lost opportunity. At the remove of a lifetime, the lead is the only material elements that connects now and then, organic matter having cycled through its original substance once or twice over, and the ritual dimension of liberated from its corporeal concerns for the spiritual to now become freely animate. When the old engine had been removed, its contacts melted, and the allen screws holding it into place loosed, the new engine was installed through the reverse of these steps. The completed car would be put into its box and thrown into a toolbox grimy with oil for the axles and the braids that made electrical contact with the tract.