Ren wasn't due to meet Joe. It was the middle of the night. His house was the closest, of their friend's houses, to the bridge. Ren got a phone call, saying that Joe was on the bridge and threatening to jump. Ren threw on some clothes and was running as fast as he could, whilst calling Joe on his mobile. Then Joe's phone goes out of service, 2 minutes before Ren reaches the bridge... They spent about 10 days searching the coast, putting up posters etc. No body was ever found. Ren couldn't have made it there in time, unfortunately but survivor's guilt is powerful and he misses his best friend. Achingly so...
Post from Ren : Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write. Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday. I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again. This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary. Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe. Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then. On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left. Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late. Joe’s body was never found. Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe. As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since. My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew. Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release. You can turn on notifications by following the link in the comments below During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised. Turn on notifications for the video here: ua-cam.com/video/n3JNtfi4Vb0/v-deo.html Raising money for RNLI : www.justgiving.com/page/ren-gill-1685546882254?Link&/ren-gill-1685546882254& Freckled Angels album: renmakesmerch.com/products/freckled-angels-cd ��Presave Suic*de: found.ee/ren-suic-de
The first part of the song had been finished and mastered, but Ren said it always felt incomplete. It was only recently when he started talking again about his friend Joe and what happened that night in 2010 that inspired Ren to record the ending. A mutual friend called to say that Joe was on the bridge saying his goodbyes. Ren ran as fast as he could and was first to arrive, but was minutes too late 😿 Perhaps that pain and guilt all these years is why “it never felt like the right time” when Ren was dealing with the darkness from his health struggles. Ren raised funds as part of this release to support the RNLI who led the search and rescue efforts. And he will be giving half of the sales of his first album “Freckled Angels” that was dedicated to Joe to Joe’s family ❤ I think this song has helped him remove that plaster cast and begin to heal. Hopefully this will give them some closure and peace.
24:15 the distance keeps the wound from hurting as much, rather than being reminded of Joe so much. I hope the fact that so so many people know Joe and his story, that it has helped keep people on the right side of the bridge rail brings Ren some comfort.
That's what Ren posted about the song Ren: Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write. Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday. I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again. This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary. Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe. Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then. On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left. Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late. Joe’s body was never found. Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe. As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since. My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew. Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release. You can turn on notifications by following the link in the comments below During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised.
If you go to Rens community posts, a week or two before he released this he told the whole story of his friends jump. That last verse is the actual events of that. A horrible thing to deal with.
18:40 "what it felt like to look down and see tranquility" Seeing the calm surface of the waters and realizing his friend isn't still alive, isn't fighting to swim but is gone. No disturbance to the surface of the water and realizing he's too late.
Fibonacci sequences-highly structured, rational mind, matching emotions-and double dutch-British slang for gibberish, unstructured, irrational thoughts, chaotic emotions. We are that which lives through both those extremes. And all the other dualities. :)
Excellent breakdown, although in UK the term 'Double Dutch' is a common expression for language that can't be understood, nonsense/gibberish. His best friend jumped from a bridge many tears ago. RIP Joe.
Isn’t it funny how the exact same phrases can have completely different meanings? He did the same thing to me with the term “cubicle” in bittersweet symphony 😂!
Oh wow, didn’t even realize cubicle had a different meaning. Certainly makes a lot more sense with the uk version. I’ve only ever known it as a little partially walled office space.
And fwiw I only learned the gibberish meaning of Double Dutch the day this premiered from other commenters. I only knew it as a jumping rope style. Hatchet job was a phrase I’d heard before, but only from books. Not sure I’ve ever heard someone say it.
It's tragic what happened. Maybe all things happen for a reason and Ren is the one to make a difference in the way we censor really important topics that need to be talked about. He does such a great job of reaching people because he's not afraid to be vulnerable and folks connect with that.
Hey UA-cam, how are we as a people supposed to overcome this issue if we can’t even talk about it? It’s amazing how dumb our technological overlords are.
Love the reactions! I really appreciate your perspective and look forward to seeing lots more content. I’m a family man myself, I respect it and I’m here for it! Keep doing the dad thing and squeeze a ren video in here and there for us and I’ll be here for that too!
Dude. That was so cool. Your breaking everything down in such detail until you get to the second part - and then, you just let it play out..:.that was great. Gave you the full affect. Thanks for posting this.
Thank you…. Typically when the subject matter turns into something as serious as that, I always let it play out as a respect to the artist and subject matter… so as soon as I realized he was talking about someone he knew, I had to just let it go!
You can't stop re-thinking what could have been done differently.. And it`s not a choice.. Its just there all the time.. What if.. Great reaction.. Shit i love Rens brain...
Double Dutch means like gibberish ie you are looking at a legal document written in English but it doesn't make sense so might as well have been written in double dutch.
you need to do the second part of this video he released as a live tribute, to Joe his friend... the video is called For Joe .. very touching and beautiful
Fibonacci sequence is also prevalent everywhere in nature.. showing the beauty.. also known as the golden ratio.. thus it shows the beauty and Double Dutch is slang for gibberish or un-understandable.. thus he sees the beauty, but struggle to understand
Great reaction , it's refreshing to hear it from someone who isn't musically influenced and you hit on all of the real world issues , a totally different perspective and much respected
Freckled Angels...you need tonreact to that A.S.A.P...all reactors should really watch that video before this one to learn about Rens friend who committed suic!de...
You have good insight into this song, this is a paean to self-reliance, self-respect, and self-survival. Ren’s music is about observing reality and making sure that you apply its lessons to yourself. Life is worth living. Pain will take you but pain is survivable. Love those who couldn’t stay but don’t follow them. There’s plenty of time for that. It’s inevitable. Cry your eyes out, they deserve it. Don’t follow suit and drag others behind you.
Yeah and Knox Hill got the idea from Tool and their song Lateralus. Not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I just want to give credit to Tool as the originals.
I appreciate the information, tools heyday was during my younger days but I never really got into them at the time because I was essentially exclusively listening to hip hop.
You need to go to his page and read the history of Joe and his suicide. How he tried to get there in time to save his friend and was just a few minutes too late to save him.
Chinchilla live version of Fingers. The hungertv one. Has to be that one. It’s a vocal masterpiece. Ren even said she is the female version of him as a artist.
It's ridiculous replacing the word suicide with more words that are far more explicit as though that is going to make any difference. The subject of suicide should not be taboo it's taken years for the shame of the feeling to be removed all this nonsense is turning the clock back that's what is dangerous.
Why do you think people need for you to explain what we all are listening to ? Music is the most effective form of communication and Ren exelent known for his story telling . also he doesn't have restrictions so why do you feel the needs to pause instead of hearing the song as artist intended
I don't normally bitch about pausing, but you might want to wait to analyze things after he finishes a complete thought or sentence, instead of every three words. You start prattling on about unrelated gibberish before you even know what the entire stanza means!
@@MAWGReacts That's the thing is I usually don't mind analysis, in fact I usually seek them out. it's just in this case it felt... excessive. That's all I'm trying to say. When you pause in the middle of a verse, and then start analyzing half a thought? I mean, keep it up. Just... be mindful of whether you've even got the complete picture before you start drawing conclusions.
Ren wasn't due to meet Joe. It was the middle of the night. His house was the closest, of their friend's houses, to the bridge. Ren got a phone call, saying that Joe was on the bridge and threatening to jump. Ren threw on some clothes and was running as fast as he could, whilst calling Joe on his mobile. Then Joe's phone goes out of service, 2 minutes before Ren reaches the bridge... They spent about 10 days searching the coast, putting up posters etc. No body was ever found. Ren couldn't have made it there in time, unfortunately but survivor's guilt is powerful and he misses his best friend. Achingly so...
Post from Ren :
Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write.
Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday.
I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again.
This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary.
Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe.
Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then.
On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left.
Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late.
Joe’s body was never found.
Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe.
As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew.
Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release. You can turn on notifications by following the link in the comments below
During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised.
Turn on notifications for the video here: ua-cam.com/video/n3JNtfi4Vb0/v-deo.html
Raising money for RNLI :
www.justgiving.com/page/ren-gill-1685546882254?Link&/ren-gill-1685546882254&
Freckled Angels album: renmakesmerch.com/products/freckled-angels-cd
��Presave Suic*de: found.ee/ren-suic-de
Thank you for posting this 🙏
@@MAWGReacts , from the horse’s mouth so they say.
The first part of the song had been finished and mastered, but Ren said it always felt incomplete. It was only recently when he started talking again about his friend Joe and what happened that night in 2010 that inspired Ren to record the ending.
A mutual friend called to say that Joe was on the bridge saying his goodbyes. Ren ran as fast as he could and was first to arrive, but was minutes too late 😿 Perhaps that pain and guilt all these years is why “it never felt like the right time” when Ren was dealing with the darkness from his health struggles.
Ren raised funds as part of this release to support the RNLI who led the search and rescue efforts. And he will be giving half of the sales of his first album “Freckled Angels” that was dedicated to Joe to Joe’s family ❤ I think this song has helped him remove that plaster cast and begin to heal. Hopefully this will give them some closure and peace.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
24:15 the distance keeps the wound from hurting as much, rather than being reminded of Joe so much.
I hope the fact that so so many people know Joe and his story, that it has helped keep people on the right side of the bridge rail brings Ren some comfort.
That's what Ren posted about the song
Ren:
Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write.
Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday.
I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again.
This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary.
Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe.
Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then.
On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left.
Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late.
Joe’s body was never found.
Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe.
As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew.
Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release. You can turn on notifications by following the link in the comments below
During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised.
If you go to Rens community posts, a week or two before he released this he told the whole story of his friends jump. That last verse is the actual events of that. A horrible thing to deal with.
18:40 "what it felt like to look down and see tranquility" Seeing the calm surface of the waters and realizing his friend isn't still alive, isn't fighting to swim but is gone. No disturbance to the surface of the water and realizing he's too late.
To me that final "Fuck" maybe one of the most powerful single words ever said.......
Fibonacci sequences-highly structured, rational mind, matching emotions-and double dutch-British slang for gibberish, unstructured, irrational thoughts, chaotic emotions. We are that which lives through both those extremes. And all the other dualities. :)
Excellent breakdown, although in UK the term 'Double Dutch' is a common expression for language that can't be understood, nonsense/gibberish. His best friend jumped from a bridge many tears ago. RIP Joe.
Isn’t it funny how the exact same phrases can have completely different meanings? He did the same thing to me with the term “cubicle” in bittersweet symphony 😂!
@@MAWGReacts Not sure what the meaning of cubicle is in the US here it can be shower or toilet
Lol, an office workspace typically just a 3 sided half wall, many are stuck together to form individual little offices.
Oh wow, didn’t even realize cubicle had a different meaning. Certainly makes a lot more sense with the uk version. I’ve only ever known it as a little partially walled office space.
And fwiw I only learned the gibberish meaning of Double Dutch the day this premiered from other commenters. I only knew it as a jumping rope style.
Hatchet job was a phrase I’d heard before, but only from books. Not sure I’ve ever heard someone say it.
Yes, apparently he was on his way to the bridge, few minutes too late 😢
26:35 Thank you for saying what we all think when hearing that "I was late like a jerk."
I'm a goth/industrial 49 yr old and Ren has become my new favorite artist
also Knox Hill gave him the inspiration to do this last part after his interview
It's tragic what happened. Maybe all things happen for a reason and Ren is the one to make a difference in the way we censor really important topics that need to be talked about. He does such a great job of reaching people because he's not afraid to be vulnerable and folks connect with that.
The distance is his armor 😢💔
Thanks for your reaction ❤ cried so much. Someone I know past away not long ago from suicide
R.I.P. Joe Hughes, gone but never forgotten.
Hey UA-cam, how are we as a people supposed to overcome this issue if we can’t even talk about it?
It’s amazing how dumb our technological overlords are.
Your breakdown of the Fibonacci sequence line was truly eye opening
Double dutch has another meaning related to things not making sense. It stems from a phrase related to the Dutch language.
Love the reactions! I really appreciate your perspective and look forward to seeing lots more content. I’m a family man myself, I respect it and I’m here for it! Keep doing the dad thing and squeeze a ren video in here and there for us and I’ll be here for that too!
Thankyou for thé breakdown and thé intelligence
He highlights both sides of the story and what comes through of the pain of the one left behind hopefully will give pause for thought
Dude. That was so cool. Your breaking everything down in such detail until you get to the second part - and then, you just let it play out..:.that was great. Gave you the full affect. Thanks for posting this.
Thank you…. Typically when the subject matter turns into something as serious as that, I always let it play out as a respect to the artist and subject matter… so as soon as I realized he was talking about someone he knew, I had to just let it go!
You can't stop re-thinking what could have been done differently.. And it`s not a choice.. Its just there all the time.. What if.. Great reaction.. Shit i love Rens brain...
👍👍👍...thanks
Also double dutch in the UK is jibberish that can't be understood
13:22 - In trading with charts the indicator is called Fibonacci Retracement Levels
Good to see you! Have fun with your fam!
Double Dutch means like gibberish ie you are looking at a legal document written in English but it doesn't make sense so might as well have been written in double dutch.
you need to do the second part of this video he released as a live tribute, to Joe his friend... the video is called For Joe .. very touching and beautiful
Fibonacci sequence is also prevalent everywhere in nature.. showing the beauty.. also known as the golden ratio.. thus it shows the beauty and Double Dutch is slang for gibberish or un-understandable.. thus he sees the beauty, but struggle to understand
Double dutch refers to language that cannot be understood
Great reaction , it's refreshing to hear it from someone who isn't musically influenced and you hit on all of the real world issues , a totally different perspective and much respected
The most wrong thing on the internet I reactors say "I think I know where he is going with this..." while reacting to a Ren joint.
Freckled Angels...you need tonreact to that A.S.A.P...all reactors should really watch that video before this one to learn about Rens friend who committed suic!de...
Fibernichea sequence also in nature.
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Respect fellas. A 10 from me. Keep em coming. 🍻🔥✌️
You have good insight into this song, this is a paean to self-reliance, self-respect, and self-survival. Ren’s music is about observing reality and making sure that you apply its lessons to yourself. Life is worth living. Pain will take you but pain is survivable. Love those who couldn’t stay but don’t follow them. There’s plenty of time for that. It’s inevitable. Cry your eyes out, they deserve it. Don’t follow suit and drag others behind you.
Yeah and Knox Hill got the idea from Tool and their song Lateralus. Not saying that there's anything wrong with that, I just want to give credit to Tool as the originals.
I appreciate the information, tools heyday was during my younger days but I never really got into them at the time because I was essentially exclusively listening to hip hop.
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The Fibonacci reference is quite simple. He wants to see the world with childlike eyes… double Dutch (jump roping) and Fibonacci (sea shells).
You need to go to his page and read the history of Joe and his suicide. How he tried to get there in time to save his friend and was just a few minutes too late to save him.
Chinchilla live version of Fingers. The hungertv one. Has to be that one. It’s a vocal masterpiece. Ren even said she is the female version of him as a artist.
I hope you plan on doing some of his older stuff with his band "The Big Push"
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R.I.P Joe Hughes ❤❤
Tough subject indeed 😔
It for joe
It's ridiculous replacing the word suicide with more words that are far more explicit as though that is going to make any difference. The subject of suicide should not be taboo it's taken years for the shame of the feeling to be removed all this nonsense is turning the clock back that's what is dangerous.
Rip Joe Hughes. Double Dutch in the UK basically means you are chatting rubbish 🖤
Popular buzzword these days is Unaliving 😛
Yeah, how ridiculous
Why do you think people need for you to explain what we all are listening to ? Music is the most effective form of communication and Ren exelent known for his story telling . also he doesn't have restrictions so why do you feel the needs to pause instead of hearing the song as artist intended
I don't normally bitch about pausing, but you might want to wait to analyze things after he finishes a complete thought or sentence, instead of every three words. You start prattling on about unrelated gibberish before you even know what the entire stanza means!
Plenty of head bobbing reactions out there in the 6-8 minute range. This channel isn’t for everybody.
@@MAWGReacts That's the thing is I usually don't mind analysis, in fact I usually seek them out.
it's just in this case it felt... excessive. That's all I'm trying to say. When you pause in the middle of a verse, and then start analyzing half a thought?
I mean, keep it up. Just... be mindful of whether you've even got the complete picture before you start drawing conclusions.
Was anything grossly misinterpreted outside of some terms that mean something different in the UK than it does in the states?
@@MAWGReactsDo you! We are here for how you already do it. Only change what and when you desire it.
Double Dutch in this regard would mean complete nonsense. ie, 'It's double Dutch to me' I don't understand what you're saying.
Dude, chill with all that pausing, it’s incredibly frustrating & excessive!