Happy Birthday, Leonard!

[Puddingdale]

Dear Leonard,

a very happy birthday to you from all my heart. May you have the opportunity to spend enough time among loved ones and friends in spite of the ongoing tour – and also enjoy the concert in Barcelona!
Thank you for everything you have given us with your poetry and song and especially for touring again. It was incredible to finally be able to see you perform live – the concerts were very spiritual in a way and as others have stated before: I hope you have felt again and again how much you are loved and appreciated. Maybe that way we could at least give you something in return, something that lasts. (And in case you have not been told: your smile is irresistibly contagious )
Your poetry and songs have become part of my life – they make me laugh when I am sad and give me strength when I am puzzled. They even help me pray. Besides, they are simply beautiful…and true.

So, thank you. Again and again.

Love,
Stefanie

[Stamatina]

Dear Leonard,

I'll say a word, or two, or four
Or a lousy, short-lived poem
May my years be less and your days more
Happy Birthday, Leonard Cohen

A Deep THANKS From Me, Too.
Thanks for the company your music keeps me every day, thanks for the comfort during hard times, thanks for both the beautiful and the ugly thoughts you bring, thanks for the inspiration, thanks for the dance...
Thank you for the wondrous 14th year of my life with your music always playing in my ears, head and heart and thank you for the avalanche you sent in my way and made me take a prettier one. If only I had found you a year earlier, maybe I would have been at the concert in Athens. I was several months later. Please, come back one day and I promise I'll be there, no matter what.
Happy birthday from the bottom of my heart.

With Love and Care,
Stamatina from Greece.

[ascoli]

Dear Leonard
I write to you from Montreal where I live about 10 minutes away from Belmont Ave.
I drive by it many times on my way to here and there in the city.
Your music is always playing in the car.

On September 21.....I will walk to your childhood home.
I'll stand there where the Park and surroundings are so so green now.
A quiet, peaceful place .....as you may recall
I will thank your parents for you.

I thank you for the poetry.
I thank you for the music.
I thank you for the joy, the humor, the lessons.

Have a Happy Happy Birthday
In the words of B. Dylan...."May you stay forever young"
Love, Annie

[Mollydog]

Dearest Leonard,

Have a wonderful birthday in the beautiful city of Barcelona! You will be surrounded by so many people who love you.

Thank you from the very bottom of my heart for the many years that you have been part of my life. Your tour has been a dream come true and has filled me with such joy and contentment.

Much love always,

Mary

[Kanga]

Happy Birthday Leonard,

I have really enjoyed your concerts. I am so glad you have been touring again.

Last month I had a wonderful opportunity to stand on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London as part of Anthony Gormley's One and Other art installation. I wished you a Happy 75th Birthday and read a poem for the forum. It starts 51 minutes in.

http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Carol_C

With love
Carol

[tinderella]

Have a great 75th Birthday Leonard. Thanks for coming to Ireland twice It was a privilege to see you sing your songs.

See you in Barcelona.

Loadsa Love

Bernadine

[The Running Club]

Its been said by everyone else, and it just goes to show how the same heartfelt wishes can be expressed so many ways.

Even so - happy birthday Leonard, and thankyou for being there, for being creative, for sharing it with us, and for giving us your poems and music. I wish you peace and contentment, and happiness too!

[isolde]

Dear Leonard Cohen,

there is always someone out there for whom it is worthwhile to continue to live in health, contentment, strength and virtue.

best wishes

isolde / the real one

[friscogrl]

Dear Leonard, it is your birthday but you are the one who has given us all such a beautiful gift with your words and music.
Here's wishing you a Happy Birthday with many happy returns.

Marsha

[ladydi]

Dear Leonard,

Thank you for the heights and the depths. You have been with me when my soul has soared, and when it has crashed. And now, you have given me something indefinable....at this stage in my life, you have given me more than I could imagine....a passion.

What has amazed me (and I hope to catalogue each and every post) is how you have touched the souls of people throughout the world. Far beyond the lyrics, the music, the poetry....you have changed lives. I know YOU know the responsibility this carries with it, but has all been for good. You have, in the past year and a half, passed far beyond a musician/poet. Looking back over all your earlier tours, you must know how much you have been adored and idolized on this tour. There has been not one negative review....the fans are ecstatic. You touch us deeply. I truly feel this has been willed by G-d. I have really no other explanation for the phenomena.

From deep within my heart, I wish you the happiest of birthdays! And, of course, I wish you many many more birthdays...a new album...and perhaps, maybe, a little new tour in 2010.

With love,
Diana

[Womanfromaroom]

You once wrote that there were ‘no diamonds in the mine,’ but then the journey continued into a future no one could have foreseen - most of us were reconciled to a reality that we would never again have the opportunity to see and hear you live on stage.

Then the crack appeared – well, the accountant absconded – but the light shone in and you hit the road with one of the tightest bands the music world has witnessed and some of the greatest lyrics ever written, matched with melodies that will live long after all of us have travelled on.

Custom has it that diamonds and white represent a 75th anniversary, how could we argue? Here you are, three score and fifteen, still mining gems under the dazzling glow of spotlights and showering us all with the gift of word and song. And, not least of all, impressing us with your immense wisdom, kindness and personal integrity.

The concerts are unexpectedly spiritually comforting, your voice impossibly better than ever. Somehow, you’re gathering together people of all ages, races and creeds, a genuine treasured troubadour straddling two centuries, uniting people around the world. Indeed, we are posting this tribute as a couple, (one from Germany, one from Australia), unexpectedly brought together by a mutual love of your words and music.

We wish you well, we wish you love, we wish you time to play with the diamonds.
All Good Things
Ann (Ann-Kristin Aschenbrenner) and Greg (Greg Ross)

[gilly-rjd]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR LEONARD
" I've loved you for a long, long time
I know this love is real...."
It's impossible to find adequate words to describe the affect your songs have had on me for the past 40 years. Other singers, other songs, have come and gone, and have been forgotten. Your voice, your songs, have remained constant and have haunted me through the years. I never tire of listening to your voice; you are my daily fix!
But the highlight was to see you on stage. I could not take my eyes off your face as your words, your voice completely took me over. I was transported somewhere else. I was transfixed, obsessed, lost, unaware of the many others around me. Inside I hurt; inside I wept. I sat alone in the darkened arena with you.
Thank you so, so much my dearest, constant companion.
Take very good care of yourself, and enjoy a Very Very Happy Birthday.
With Love,
Gilly, xxx

[milada]

Dear Master,
Your songs, your poetry, your personality, your opinions, your religion .. all that makes the deepest impression on me for years, enriches my soul and makes me to try to live my life in a more genuine and humble way. It helps me when I’m up and it helps me when I’m down .. it helps me anytime.
Thank you truly for who you are, Master.
Thank you for your work and your modesty, Mr. Cohen.
I wish you a Happy Birthday from all my heart. Wishing you wellbeing, sound health, peace and all the best for the future, Leonard.
With my pure sincerity
Milada, Czech Rep.

[TheSpice-BoxOfEarth]

Dear Leonard, My fervent and false artistic words aren’t strong enough to describe how much you mean to me and how grateful I am for you. Because Leonard, you saved my life.
Before than you and your music stepped my life, I had suffered almost a year in my lonesome darkness where I had judged myself after my youth has blinded me. I was bitter and the hatred threatened to eat my heart. Just when I was forgetting how the light looks the very first rays of sunlight pierced my darkness, your music had found me. Your wonderful words brought comfort to my desperate nights and your voice raised me above the darkness. And when I found you behind your music - your wisdom and your humbleness, the last scales of youth’s pride and defiance fell off from my eyes and I saw myself again. I realized I was bare and empty so I shaped you into a plaster around my helplessness and I slipped my lifeline into your pocket.
Dear Leonard, happy birthday and thank you! Thank you for being a crutch for a crippled, a life belt for a drowned, a guard for a lost, a god for a religious and a grandfather for a child. It is a great honour to share the planet Earth with you.

With love,
Viivi,
Your 16-year-old admirer from Finland

Ps. I`m begging on my knees; please come back to Finland.

[redstudio]

Dear Leonard,
Thank you-
for the haunting melodies and perfect words
for a spirituality that includes everyone
for touring and letting us see you!
Your 75 years have been a lesson to us all in life and art and love. Happy Birthday.
Love,
Pamela Redick