To those whom I am making a first introduction.
In 2022–23, I conducted a monthly Record Club of the Month, which was a snail mail campaign that led receivers to an online publication. This was based on the old Columbia House racket, with OMNI lurking beneath the surface.
Having enjoyed this online-publication format, and bringing in outside contributors as regulars, I created this current project in 2024: a sort of Better Homes & Gardens morphing into a paranormal Whole Earth Catalog. The idea was that the online dispatches would quickly become a springboard for site-based events, but it felt more appealing to give this project time to ferment awhile.
The publications so far have been given the facade of a dual-45-single audio magazine with a lengthy gatefold/foldout.
To Atmospheric Music Alliance members
Hello there! I joined recently.
I have been keen to draw in more experimental recordings into this project — not necessarily in the Plantasia sense (although certainly I'm not opposed), but perhaps as tools for psychonautical botany or horticulture. Or any enignmatic relationship to the topic at hand.
I facilitate projects like these, rather than curate. I prefer to offer a light framework, and then see how it is pushed and pulled by colleagues. I have posited contributions to this project as a sort of magazine column. Maybe just an audio track, and maybe a cluster of varied materials.
For this spring, and eventually fall
This year there will again be two installments — to establish an annual cycle. I had initially anticipated organizing some sort of summer 2024 event in relationship to this project, but then decided I would prefer to cultivate this slowly, and allow it to build an archive, and establish a personality (however fragmented).
I'm not looking for any cohesion in how contributors treat this project — quite the opposite: I'd like for Botanical Readiness to be a college (in the old sense of the word) of correspondents, that can realign "gardening" and "botany" according to their own personal approach. Including matter-of-fact, unadulterated horticulture botanical documentation itself.
My initial inspiration:
Documentation and reflections upon gardening and plantlife excursions. Upcoming garden designs. Research artifacts. Advice and good reads. Things that could legitimately find a home in a genuine gardening magazine, or plant enthusiast publication.
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Cryptic and enigmatic artifacts. Pure abstractions, perhaps reframed as astral or occult influences upon gardening. Sci-fi, horror, psychedelia (genres that I tend to lean on, at least, or enjoy using as a lense for gardening matters).
My notions last fall:
A recent "garden plan" sketch:
