Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Johnson.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
On the day after returning to LA from my first trip to Disney World, FL, I had a stroke on Dec 9, 2019 which left me initially paralyzed from the neck down. Emergency Department staff didnt believe me and spent the next 19 hours surviving everything from a near death experience after drowning in my own bile, to them injecting my IV with an antipsychosis called HalDol (which has shown to inhibit stroke recovery), the bouncer sized nurses throwing me onto the ground repeatedly after I had become paralyzed from the stroke, and eventually forging my signature on a discharge and attempting to dump me onto the street in Skid Row. I was only finally admitted bc a friend who had caught wind something was wrong and started asking questions.
A couple days before New Years Eve 2019/2020, I was transferred to a Nursing Home in Lincoln Heights which I woud eventually have to leave due to gross neglect and abuse. I moved back home to South Minneapolis on March 1, 2020, just before the World would shut down only a couple weeks later. Give it some more time, and George Floyd was murdered in front of a store I went to from the 90s. Between the hospital and pandemic shutdown, I would spend about a year and a half in various stages of isolation. During the year I spent alone in my apartment, I effectively retaught myself to walk using a cheap treadmill off Amazon, sometimes while listening to my neighborhood exploding in the background. During that time I had one thing on my mind: I re-learned to walk so I could march in the streets once I was out.
Once I was finally out, I completed my intial recovery marching in the streets using the rickety walker I got when I left the Nursing Home. After I left that place it got hit by the Pandemic, and became the hardest hit Nursing Home in the State of California, killing 118 people who I had just been living with. The neighborhood I had grown up in was now in ruins and it felt like we were at the center of the world! I began photographing and recording marches, street occupations (including George Floyd Square), and protests which eventually turned into including press conferences and interviews.
Having experienced housing instability on and off for about 17 years, I began to film the brutality of Unhoused Encampment evictions. That led to me knowing a lot of people in the unhoused communities and we have been able to build trust to a level I have been able to help share their views and experiences. It’s been my focus that everyone has a favorite color, or first crush, and I’d rather know what people’s real thoughts are, as opposed to hyperfocusing on trauma like most other people who document these sort of things.
After my posts started to build a small following on instagram, I was able to raise money to buy a real camera and now I am filming a feature length documentary about colonialism, homelessness, and recovery titled ‘They Sleep Among Us’
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Many of my biggest struggles are State induced. For example, it took me exactly 4 years to get my Disability Benefits amid major incompetencies within the Social Security system due to budget cuts and overstressed resources. Another example is that I have been approved for Housing Stability for 17 months now, and after going through 5 different housing coordinators I still have nothing. I would be homeless myself right now, if it were not for my landlord allowing me to stay here until the county figures out their stuff. It’s unfair to her, a hard working single mother, to whom I owe the fact I am still alive.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My background is actually moreso based in music! My dad was a musician, and one of my first memories was sitting on one of their friends lap and operating a spotlight for my dads band when I was about 3! this was before they had the giant headphones to protect kids hearing. Not to mention I probably second hand inhaled about a pack of smokes that day! I was lucky to grow up surrounded by instruments and also went to a public school that taught musical instruments in an attempt to save the children during the crack epidemic. I released some demo tapes with bands but my career really took off when I was about 16 and had a chance to spin records in the First Ave Mainroom at Sunday Night Dance Party in front of about 1500 people. That turned into my first residency, playing monthly throughout the rest of High School and at Raves and other clubs.
I eventually moved to NYC when I was 21 and became a model, and joined several successful bands as a touring musician. My favorite was a band called Hypernova, which I played synth in. They were from Tehran, where rock and roll was highly illegal and we became the first rock band from Iran to sign with a Western major label. We received death threats on their state tv, and our singers father was later ‘Suicided’ (murdered) in Evin Prison (similar to Rikers). Another incident happened involving a mass shooting which targeted us all and killed 3 of our very close friends/tourmates in The Yellow Dogs. Because of the combination of all these events, Rock n Roll is now effectively legal in Iran, as it became too popular to continue suppressing.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I am getting older so I hope to have a family! And hopefully I will still be alive! Right now, I am working on finishing filming this documentary, and would like to do a couple other very specific features I have in mind… But also I hope to explore a dream of mine to photograph and document wild life, and make it accessible for people from my community who dont often have access to this kind of thing. Ah crap, I guess now I’m the one trying to save the children!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @djaddmpls
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aaron666nyc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheySleepAmongUs
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/djaddmpls
