i am not what i am

Theresa Hawk (student): Alan Léonin is...beautiful.

He's a beautiful human being. I think if angels are real, Alan is what they would be like. He looks like a marble statue. He has the most intense eyes. (laugh) I feel like no one really speaks to what it means to be a teenager in the modern world the way he does. It's not all happiness and fun, you know! I'm really glad he's there for me, even if the band's broken up—I'm glad his words are there for me—and I feel like I really understand the meaning in all of the music.

James Lewis (student): Being gay my whole life, we had this ideal in the community of a man who was really fit, like physically fit, not like he's attractive fit, someone who went to the gym and lifted weights and looked really strong. Because he's trying to hide the vulnerability that people associate with the gay community, right? But Alan Léonin never tried to hide that, well, men are human beings too, and have a lot of the same insecurities that women do.

And you know, that's really important if you're a woman, too, for a society to think that not only women are vulnerable, and emotional, and that sort of thing. If we don't have role models like Alan, then even the gay community is contributing to that.

Peter Morris (photographer): I never knew I was bisexual until I saw Alan actually.

Natalie Leonard: For fuck's sake! He's just a person! His real name is Alan William Leonard, all right, and he was born in a teeny weeny little fishing town town in the south of England, where his dad—my uncle—was one of the first people from there ever to go to university. But Alan was more like my dad and he couldn't deal with being in such a small place, he had to have something bigger in life.

Lauren Leonard (student): My twin brother Alan and I are almost complete opposites. It's amazing to me that we were born within minutes of one another. It's black and white. He's very shy and reserved, I need to be physically dragged away from talking to every single person in a room. He likes to go on long nature walks, I need my creature comforts. He always had trouble making friends before he went to university, which is where he met that lovely girl Lane who sort of took care of him like she was his older sister. I always had a large group of friends that I spent time with. I like small town life; Alan likes the city. It's funny because we both study sociology, and yet we do it for such different reasons and in such different ways. Life is odd like that.

Francis Leonard (professor): Alan was always very bright. He used to lock himself in his room and write. Mrs. Leonard and I worried about him. Sometimes...well, sometimes we worried about him, that's all.

Elizabeth Leonard (baker): I can't—I can't look at you and tell you my family's secrets.

Alan Léonin: I have the honorable distinction of having been institutionalized at the age of ten, let me put it that way.

Lauren Leonard: Should I—should I tell that story? I should ask my brother. No? All right, then.

There's a wharf in our town, and Alan, ten years old, in the midst of a depressive episode, walked down the pier. I don't know what he was thinking at that time, but he walked down the pier, very slowly—we were all watching from the hill, I was sitting with my friends Jane and Georgina, and we were watching Alan walk down the pier. It was the fourth of November, nineteen ninety-eight. We were having a picnic on the hill.

I'm not being very clear. I'm trying to set the scene because people still asked why we didn't do anything. It wasn't a Kitty Genovese sort of situation, really. It was a lovely day, very warm for November, like the birds were singing, and so we all thought Alan was going for a walk. He did that sort of thing. He used to go for a walk with a long stick, and he would trace a path so he could follow his steps back home. We thought he was doing that. He walked along the pier and jumped off. And he disappeared under the water, and he didn't come back up. We thought he was having a swim, so we just turned around and talked and kicked around in the grass. And then it was ten minutes and

After that it was all a blur, and Jane jumped in after him after a few minutes, and Georgina ran screaming back toward the town. I stood there utterly frozen. I couldn't move. I could hardly breathe.

Do you think it's true that twins have some sort of psychic connection?

I think when our parents finally came round, and Henry from down the road came with them and jumped in and got Jane and Alan out, Jane was blue and shivering in her skivvies, and just going on about how she had to get some clothes on because my dad and Henry were going to see her. Both she and Alan had to go to regular hospital; in fact Alan was unconscious. Georgina thought he was dead and started crying. She was a bit in love with Alan for no particular reason.

When Alan came to, he just said he wanted to see what happened if he stopped breathing, and that he'd tried in his room but he couldn't hold his breath for long enough. After that they wanted to make him stay overnight, and our mum and dad said, okay, how about you make that a week?

Alan Léonin: That was actually why I started writing, you know. My first stay in hospital, they made me keep a journal.

Lauren Leonard: That's not what it was like, most of the time. He was usually either wandering around just observing the world, in the way that he does, or he was writing. I'm just amazed by the things he writes, then and now. He has a lot of clarity. It's funny because that's actually people's criticism of him, quite often, that his meanings aren't always clear, but I always thought he was very good at articulating himself.

That's another way we're different. I have to talk so much around my points to get to them. But this isn't about me is it.

Elizabeth Leonard: Explain him? I don't need to explain anything. The boy is my son.

Alan Léonin: There is a difference between self-confidence and self-worth, you know. I don't believe I will ever be particularly important—

Emma Marx-Hall: Ooh, that's so much bullshit Alan!

Alan Léonin: ...in the grand scheme of things but—

Emma Marx-Hall: Still bullshit, but go on.

Alan Léonin: ...I don't think it diminishes from my ability to like myself. Most of the time. When I feel upset with myself it's the depression talking.

Am I healthy? Is Stephen Hawking healthy? Er, that's a bit extreme (laugh), but you know what I mean. It's all very relative, how I'd define whether I'm healthy. Like, right now, sure I'm feeling well, but in the back of my mind there's a danger that's always going to be there and might lash out at any time.

Emma Marx-Hall (reading from the lyrics to "The Omen" by Knave of Hearts): There's a snake coiled up at the base of my spine/ An arrow that's drawn on a curséd bow/ There is no helping this portion of mine/ It springs from a seed buried down far below.

Alan Léonin: What did happen was that I found looking inward to be very frustrating. There were more mysteries, I think, in my own head than in the world around me. And there was that spectre of death, like a dark light you couldn't quite look into. Instead I looked outward and explored the world and history. Maybe I wanted to know why people seemed to have some up with answers before.

Elizabeth Leonard: Alan started being interested in other cultures from when he was very small. He got a subscription to National Geographic and would always be telling us the stories he read at supper. Was it a form of escapism, I don't know; I don't know if he'd been born in London if he'd still have cared about Islamic pilgrimages and ancient Egyptian kings.

Alan Léonin: The Greek gods with their arrogance and their decadence, the East Asian mysticism that put everything in its rightful place, the shape-shifters of India on their karmic wheel...

Elizabeth Leonard: I think our town always meant something to Alan. Like a lot of young adults, he went to university in a big city to escape his childhood, but you can't escape your childhood fully. The way people are raised is a big part of who they are.

Francis Leonard: I'm proud that my son did his A-Levels and went to university. I always wanted him to have a choice of what to do with his life, and if he had decided from the very beginning to be a rock'n'roll musician he could do that, so long as he put his heart into it.

And with both my son and my daughter, I thankfully never had any question that they would put their heart and soul into whatever they did.

Alan Léonin: Four A's, yes.

Emma Marx-Hall: I know! It's amazing! Alan got four A's! Four! I didn't even take four A-Levels. And actually I believe they were all A* as well. Possibly.

Alan Léonin: French, Sociology, Ancient History, and English Literature. French was my one weak point.

Tom Thorogood: When he says 'weak point', he means 'didn't get an A*'.

Alan Léonin: To be quite honest, I find this more embarrassing than anything else.

Lauren Leonard: It wasn't pretty. I think he stopped eating. He just spent all day in his room revising. Our Mum would bring him soup and he wouldn't touch it. He wasn't sleeping well either.

Alan Léonin: I didn't sleep for ten days.

Lauren Leonard: They always say that when you sit exams, you're meant to sleep as much as possible and eat a big breakfast, that sort of thing. Whereas you have Alan, who walks in there like a zombie each time, turns in his papers early, comes home and goes back to revising all the way to the very last exam. As I said, it wasn't pretty.

Alan Léonin: Without exaggeration it was the worst period of my life, I wanted nothing but to die when I was finished, and as I've said I find it unpleasant to talk about.

Theresa Hawk: Alan was in hospital three times total for depression. The second time was when he was fifteen and he's said that was the only time he ever physically harmed himself. I can tell you where his scars are. Here, here, here, there's one here that goes up to here, and then some small ones here.

Alice Hughes: The thing that frightens me most is the way people fetishize self-harm, in the fandom. I've heard about girls copying his scars. Why would you even do that? Natalie's told he he only even hurt himself once, and ever since he's only talked about it to deter people from trying to do it and to make them understand that they should get help.

Theresa Hawk: The third time he checked himself in, because he said he couldn't get out of bed one morning and he knew that meant it was time to get help. That was when he was eighteen. The time that I had to go to hospital it was—no, I don't think I'll tell you that actually. But I think Alan's really brave for having to go through that three times.

Alice Hughes: I don't know, it might have been an exaggeration. I thought they copied it, anyway.

Theresa Hawk: I probably seem like one of those really mad fans, don't I?

Natalie Leonard: The thing that I think it's most important to know about Alan is that he's really full of contradictions, but if you read the lyrics, it's all there. He's best at expressing himself at writing. And he's my cousin, and he's been nothing but wonderful to me.