A SHOUT OUT TO A HOME TOWN GIRL: CONNECTICUT MAGAZINE
GREENWICH FREE PRESS TELLS THE TIGER LILY’S TALE
GREENWICH FREE PRESS TELLS THE TIGER LILY’S TALE
Leslie Yager is the delightful energizer behind the Greenwich Free Press. The GFP takes the pulse of our community in celebration of the positivity. As Yager puts it, tell a good story and make people feel good about where they live…that is what is missing in mainstream media. That’s why we love Leslie and if you haven’t uncovered her secret local stories, check it out!
GREENWICH FREE PRESS
Many thanks to Leslie for visiting Tiger Lily’s Greenwich. It was a true honor to have a community spirit recognize our very own. If you would like to visit our website, http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com. You can also reach us at the store, Tiger Lily’s 154 Prospect Street, Greenwich CT. Watch us on House Hunters Reno!
SOUL ADVENTURE: THE SPARK BEHIND MY INTERIOR DESIGN
SOUL ADVENTURE: THE SPARK BEHIND MY INTERIOR DESIGN
RE: CHAIRISH.COM NEW BLOG POST
 In the very near future, April 24th to be exact, Chairish will debut a collection of my one-of-a-kind furnishings on its website. There will be blog corresponding. It yet another honor and accomplish in my career and purpose to instill a sense of legacy in home furnishings.
Below is a correspondence with the company’s web & social media producer. If you have been on the media side, you know there’s only 30-seconds in fame and everything gets paired-down. I share with you now the long version. ENJOY
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Sum up your aesthetic in 3 words.
balanced, unconventional, interpretive
What is your design philosophy?
It is all about balance in an unexpected way. I want to trick the eye into thinking that everything goes together as if it evolved over time. Rooms should have a sense of legacy, we should all value where we are from and respect heritage by proudly displaying it in a current setting.
“I am a creative thinker. To me mixture creates balance and that is my philosophy.”
What new color palate are you using now?
The truth is every color palette has existed and remained over time. There is a level of comfort in that everything can and will come back to life. In my own home I played off the traditional pairing of Red, White & Blue. It sounds Confederate but changed in tone, it becomes extremely contemporary. My advice is to choice a palette that you are comfortable with and expand on its limits. It is also important to note that the color wheel is a circle, there is no start and no ending so it makes sense that every color can match each other. It all depends on how you use it.
COLOR COMBINATIONS RED, WHITE & BLUE CONFEDERATE to CONTEMPORARY
What are some of your favorite materials?
I love natural wood. There are so many levels of grading which produces great texture. Natural products also have a distinctive level of absorption. That texture and bouyancy also manipulates colors, wood stains and light reflection. You can get that from laminate or pressed board. Neither the former materials can absorb an imperfection.
MADE FROM THE BEST STUFF ON EARTH WOOD ON SALE WWW.CHAIRISTA.COM
Wood is the oldest materials to work and if we don’t protect our environment we are going to loose it as a commodity. It is a higher priced value so it makes sense to re-invest in old wood furnishings. You can expect a reinvestment in a piece of furniture to be more expensive then buying big box new. You should also be able to appreciate that.
The question…preserving antiques or buying something new? Open up a chair you buy from Crate & Barrel or Ikea and you will know my answer to that.
I like organic, hides, metal, stone, feathers, silk, beads, bolts, textiles
MIX TEXTURE STATEMENT STUDDED LUMBAR PILLOW SAMANTHA KNAPP FOR TIGER LILY’S
Who is your favorite design icon of the past?
Sister Parish. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet her grand-daughter who actively keeps the textile brand alive. Sister, as she was called, decorated Jacki-O’s White House. That’s enough reason for me.
SISTER PARISH MAYFIELDS
What item of furniture should every home have?
Something with a story. Every home needs to have a piece of furniture that reminds them of where they are from. Our culture is built on rich history and legacy. I walk around my house and smile. I know what I have from my mom and what pieces I will give to my children.
ALL IN THE FAMILY DESIGN FOR THE GENERATIONS
What destination has inspired you the most creatively?
Life’s journey is my inspiration. It is never one thing and I take comfort in knowing that. It allows me to always be open for the next best thing. Creativity is created by good energy flow.
FOR MORE http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com
What is your design motto?
Design with a purpose in mind, it gives you the flexibility to arrive at the destination from multiple pathways. Be true to yourself. Use color, it makes you smile and makes you look warm. When you look warm your body is radiating good energy. You want your kids to grow up surrounded with positive energy so add a little color. Show your kids that your never too old to enjoy bright colors.
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST: REVEALING SAMANTHA KNAPP FROM GERMANY
“Everything we do should be the result of our gratitude for what God has done for us”–Lauryn Hill
- AD GERMANY
MARCH, 2014
There is nothing like it. The topic is recognition as it relates to the feeling you get when some one finally notices what you are doing with accolades. You could be defeating all odds and won’t mean a thing unless someone notices. That person has gratitude.
I am frankly humbled with gratitude that Architectural Digest Germany featured my home in its March, 2014 issue.
“the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.“–Gratitude as defined by Webster’s online dictionary.
- #INSTAGRAM
#GRATITUDE
Online and in the social media version, I also thank every one else that made it possible:
- My parents: Betsy & Bob
- My Sister’s especially Nicole for the space
- My friend Laura Bays
- Tiger Lily’s Greenwich
- The North Street Man
- Irene Edwards, Lonny Magazine
- Genevieve Garruppo, Lonny Magazine
- Wendy Scofield. Lonny Magazine
- Professional Photographer Melanie Acevedo
- Writer, Kathryn O-Shea-Evans
- Art of Jahmane
- Larry the Fabric Guy
- A Picker with an Eye for Antiques
- Fleurish Florals
- AD Germany
“Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.“-
Samuel Johnson
The cottage was a very deliberate choice when I decided to move out of the city, but at times the experience has inconsistencies. In those moments I have questioned, found peace, patience and gratitude. When I live in that space and time, affirmations from the most unique of places finds me there.
“To get you choice right, you have to believe in the outcome. I live and work by choices and I am happy with that.”–Samantha Knapp
I will say this, seeing my name published will never get old. 🙂
http://www.architecturaldigest.com
#ONELOVE
BEFORE & AFTER: I BRAKE FOR YARD SALES-SITTIN’ PRETTY
- I BRAKE FOR YARD SALES
AIRS @gactv
I Brake For Yard Sales is an amazing premise. It stands for value, saving and preserving what is good and old in american furniture today. Anything can be salvaged. Recycling is one strong way to save the earth. Lara Spencer my dear friend believes that. Samantha Knapp and Tiger Lily’s do too.
“A Society is defined not only by what it creates but by what it refuses to destroy”— John Sawhill, CEO of The Nature Conservancy and the 12th President of New York University
BEFORE:
This is how we found it at Irv & Alexis house. It was a classic hand-me-down. I like to think I know every piece of furniture’s story but memory only half the time serves me. I think this belonged to Irv’s aunt. There was a pair. The cushion Lara is testing out is all down and feather.
- LARA SPENCER
SITTIN’ PRETTY
- UPHOLSTERY CHANGES EVERYTHING
http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com
It really had to be kept. We brought to the Tiger Lily’s workroom. Tiger Lily’s is located at 154 Prospect Street and on line at http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com. We are only family run white glove upholstery studio of our kind. We are not cheap. Everything is done on site and under my eye.It was my call to upholster over the frame. The team together chose the gray paint wash. The fabric is by Robert Allen. All the fabrics we used on that episode were as well.
- AFTER:
REVEAL GREAT AMERICAN COUNTRY
AFTER:
We can talk cost here. After you take the car off the lot, it depreciates. It dramatically looses value after the next two-to-three operating years. It is why people heavily weigh the decision to buy or lease. You buy the furniture or someone in your family did. That is where your value starts. If someone had amazing taste or you now do, immediately what you own is better then Restoration Hardware. I am sorry to knock big box brands, I am the revitalization type.
- MORE TO COME
WATCH @gactv
More happens on this episode, including a barely make it moment with the reveal drapes trimmed out under all velvet silk. Watch, listen and learn I say. That was the experience I had on I Brake For Yard Sales. I happily share it with you!
WATCH
03-23-2014 Great American Country Television/ http://www.gactv.com
@gactv @samanthabknapp
LIVING IN POWDER: A CRITIQUE OF THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
LIVING IN POWDER: A CRITIQUE OF THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
I am living knee deep in powder with my eyes on beautiful nature shots. It is not the same white dust that attracted The Wolf Of Wall Street’s telescopic lens. As wildly separated as Jordan Belfort and I are over the powder, we share commonalities such as beauty comes with a price. Belfort bamboozled his way from a sub-city childhood to successful suburban banker in less time then the experience of ivy-league college to a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. Not that formal education matters all that much. It is what you learn on the job. Here, a lack of respect for what little regulatory rules govern the market got him caught.
Belfort is like my real father that way. His story unfolds in the New York Times Best Selling autobiography, Wolf of Wall Street and the Oscar Nominated movie starring Hollywood’s king lion, Leonard DiCaprio.
Day by day.
Here’s that same backyard shot one day later. More snow with a twist of blue skies and bright sun. Snow costs money and money is generally in a uncommitted relationship with love. You either have it or you don’t haveboth or neither and between the two parts, four outcomes exist. The odds are one in four. They are always changing.
“No matter what happened to you in your past, you are not your past, you are the resources and the capabilities you glean from it. And that is the basis for all change.”― Jordan Belfort
Back to the powder, it is a cost of doing business. Martin Scorsese sets that up early in the Wolf Of Wall Street. Jordan Belfort is to Wall Street what a Wise Guy is to the City Street and that’s the attraction as Scorsese sees it. He gives you a lead character that despite the crookery your subconscious wants to emulate. I should know. I had a dad like this. Innately as a wolf knows to hunt, Belfort perfectly executes prays on middle class wage earners. His wolf pack herded under the cash cow investment firm, Stratton Oakmont. For the record, the rich identify Stratton as Vermont’s most pleasurable and exclusive ski resort. In powder, he lives a dream. Hookers in three classes ranging from Blue Chip to Pink Slip, fast cars, big houses and staffed yacht originally fashioned for Coco Chanel.
Snow’s a crazy thing. It looks pure when it starts. When the temperature is just right, it drops in flakes and is light to the touch. When it mixes with weather that is too heavy, it absorbs too much moisture and starts to weight a ton. It is that defining moment that can also dictate sales. When it is cold, people spend less. It is a fact. Consumer’s have less motivation to arrive at a destination to shop. Online sales increase, retail destinations see less traffic. It is all about getting business in the door.
I
If you have read my blog, you know by now that at some point I have to sell my business. I am in the business of high-end luxury one-of-a-kind goods. We transform legacy furniture and give everything individualized attention. If it has gone through Tiger Lily’s, it has my seal of approval. It means that in part of my day, I took the time to especially think of your needs, wants and lifestyle choices and am contributing my own personal part. When you buy from Tiger Lily’s, you buy the experience of a designer who thinks specifically of you. Shop Tigerlilys at http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com.
For what it is worth and at the time it was worth a lot, Jordan Belfort ran a lucrative and highly successful business. He lead by example.
“Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny , they’re not creatures of circumstance, they create circumstance, if the circumstances around them suck they change them.”–Jordan Belfort
Leonardo DiCaprio, while not celebrated by the Oscars, dazzled with a performance fit for a king. It is no wonder that Belfort piped a piper of a pack of wolves. DiCaprio shows with a touch of his famous charism, knowledge of the punch line and chameleon capabilities that there is always a demand for people to be bought and sold. Belfort was taken down by the FBI, again much like my dad. I think that is why I gravitated to the story line. It is the type of movie where I saw myself. I loved my dad and Coleman, the officer who took down Belfort said it probably is the same for them to us.
“In a single word, it’s attention, a craving for attention,” Coleman says.
##ONELOVE
BEFORE & AFTER: A SIT BACK ON MATCH.COM
BEFORE & AFTER: A SIT BACK ON MATCH.COM
- BEFORE:
LIFELESS ROLLING OTTOMANS
THRIFT-SHOP PICK
BEFORE:
Here’s how I found them at the Salvation Army. Having all the money in the world should not prevent you from entering a donation center or second hand retail store. Age has beauty and frankly people tend to trash their greatest treasures. Under stand that key to life and if you haven’t yet, change an old habit and shop someplace new.
“The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.” ― Marcel Proust
Here’s what I like about the Ottomans:
1. On Wheels
2. Vintage Brss drop handles with back plates
3. Use of Textured Vinyl
4. Button-cinched square
5. Price: 3 for $25.00
I went to the Salvation Army to shop for my clients for HGTV. I ended up with a few things, including these ottomans. The budget for the show is tight but the design is free if you open your mind and the end result looks expansive. More on that later #tease.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. That’s why it is always later on the West Coast. It’s to gain the advantage of sunlight. Midday the sun shines its brightest onto the paddock outside my windows and blasts amazing natural light into my bedroom. I couldn’t get this in the city that never sleeps, though for the record I tried. I lived in a second floor walk up for three-straight years.
New York ate me up. I moved to the suburbs in August, 2013. I am single, attached is the link to my spinster home in lonny.com.
- SEE MORE:
LONNY MAGAZINE
http://www.lonny.com/magazine/November+2013/PKNA7_-nAsm/1#59
Single is frightening in an geography, that is why I really didn’t worry about the move. Love where you live is what I say, love your environment and it will feed you. Attraction is a state of mind and that means it can happen anywhere. You have to focus on it. I have always wanted to be in-love but haven’t put the focus on it. There’s always been my career. It is a safe place that is guaranteed to love me back. Before Tiger Lily’s, I was a lucky a news journalist and most of that time I wanted to make it to Network TV so I never took my personal relationships seriously. My apologies to anyone who took “us” to be.
This morning, I woke up and watched a coyote cross my paddock. It looked nothing like the road-runner. Animals in nature have a spring in their step. Even my domestic dogs do.
- HOME BOYS
SMEAGIE & CHARLIE
“It is might just be a trick of the mind that life is better on the inside, wild animals have it right.”–Samantha Knapp, author
Native American Indians worship Coyotes. “Coyote appears as the Creator himself; but he may at the same time be the messenger, the culture hero, the trickster, the fool. He has also the ability of the transformer: in some stories he is a handsome young man; in others he is an animal; yet others present him as just a power, a sacred one.”
Call it a mythical sign, I had do something radical. I relaunched match.com
- HERE I AM
ON MATCH.COMGO EASY ON ME
Match.com almost worked for me once. Following that experience I swore on my life I wouldn’t return here. But here I am, go easy on me. It had a heart wrenching effect. I told “Mr. Bunny” that to his face. Never in my life until then, I really thought the man I would marry.
When you go bacl to something that you think didn’t work, the reason is because you still have the desired right outcome. You have to try for you want. The Dallas Buyers Club got turned down over 150-times before a company bought the screen-play. In doing so, it legitimized playboy Matthew McConaughey as an Oscar worthy actor. I saw the movie, I give three thumbs-up.
It’s been a year-and-half since I have been on this site. This signifies moving on from a very true love match. For now it is the same old profile, I am not sure yet if I am embracing the idea. Afterall living in the suburbs, surrounded by trees and one person you love, I had always thought it would happen more organically. Life is all just an experience.
“Everything that happens once can never happen again.But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”–Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
- AFTER:
BUY ME: $2,495.00
http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com
AFTER:
There is nothing like a good re-introduction to the world. I brought the ottomans back to the custom workroom. That’s where the magic happens, they were striped down to the naked bone. I upholstered more simply this time with genuine bone colored supple-to -the-hand, leathe and dded more hardware with brass nailheads. More is always more, that one of my tips you’ll see at http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com. That’s my store, log-on and buy-me. The ottomans now are $2,495.00. Always remember you are buying a well executed idea. It comes at different prices at different times. My website is retail pricing, luxury product and is not cheap.
I have written to date 289 blogs and the majority of which I like to end in quote. I think Carrie Bradshaw would be proud.Wish me luck on Match. To make something a habit, you have to be at approximately 90-straight days. In 3-months, if you don’t love someone, you never will. It is probably more accurate to say if you don’t love someone immediately, he’s not it. The number is three. I have been on Match twice before, once with outstanding results. I am nearing in on 300-blogs. It goes without saying that strikes come in threes. Three, your-out! Or clear three diamond bases and you’ll make a home run. The average is one in every-three. I like the odds of that.
“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there”–Yogi Berra
#ONELOVE
FROM THE OLIVE GARDEN: COOK’S IN BLOOM ROSEMARY RAVIOLI IN TOMATOE PESTO SAUCE
FROM THE OLIVE GARDEN: COOK’S IN BLOOM ROSEMARY RAVIOLI IN TOMATOE PESTO SAUCE
There are far different costs associated with cooking in and eatting out. There’s price and quality to consider. There’s the convenience and the occasion to consider. It boils down, as the Italian’s say, to, “Di stagione – in season.”
The chain Olive Garden does fast food Italian. There are over 800 restuarants, one in every major city in the United States and it trickles down from there. There are 12, in a 45-mile radius from my house. If you have been to one, you have been to them all. They are programmed by corporate to taste the same.
There’s no guarantee that what I cook once will taste the same twice. That’s my guarantee and this is my recipe.
BEFORE:
YOU WILL NEED:
1. Mediterranean Pine Nuts 2. Rana Ravioli Chicken Rosemary 3. Canned Tomatoes 4. Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese 5. Olive Oil 6. Garlic 7. Chicken Breast 8. Jar Pesto Sauce 9. Onion 10. Cherry Tomatoes 11. Chardonnay, Went Vineyards
Currently at Olive Garden, there is an existing special where two people can eat for $25.00. About the only other places $12.50 gets you a meal is at a chain like McDonalds or in a third-world nation. The special includes unlimited bread sticks and appetizer followed by a choice between nine entrees. If you skip the appetizer, you can sample one of five desserts.
I’m not food-expert. I earn a living as an interior designer in my family business http://www.tigerlilysgreenwich.com. Home-cooking is a hobby but I think anyone is with-in their right t question the profitability of a meal served for $12.50 a person. What possibly can be the quality of that food source?
- FLAVOR BASE OIL: ONIONS & GARLIC
ADD CHERRY TOMATOES
When you cook from home, you cook from scratch. With that comes the unique knowledge that from here on out you know the layers of ingredients that went into the food you eat. That’s the benefit. To create a base, I start by flavoring the olive oil with onions, garlic and fresh cherry tomatoes. The seasoned olive oil will be the frying component for the chicken and later the stewed tomatoes, so make it count. Take liberty here with the flavoring.
- DON’T BE AFRAID
ADD TO THE MIX
To the existing base, I added pesto and white wine. Let it sweat then add the chicken. A this point the kitchen should smell deliciously like good food is cooking. Hopefully it smells like your mom or grandmother’s house. By watching my mother, I learned how to cook. You are born knowing how to eat. You have to learn how to cook and the only way to learn is to try.
If your mom was a good cook, you are too. It is that simple of an equation. When given the choice to eat out, carry-in or cook for a husband and kids. I would cook.
- COOK CHICKEN
IN FLAVORED OLIVE OILs
The actual tomatoe sauce is an entirely different thought. Up until now in the recipe, I have not cooked with any dairy. Jews by religion do not mix meat & dairy. I observe it if possible, but I don’t live by that rule. Rules are meant to be broken especially for those who aren’t strict practicing Jews. Don’t tell that to my maternal ancestors who lived by the Book of Exodus, which forbids “boiling a (kid) goat in its mother’s milk.”
God said that. He goes on to say a lot more about how we should live as humans, which I will leave up to scholarly debate. My point here is to say that cooking comes from tradition and religion as much as anything else.
For the purpose of this recipe, I separated the meat & dairy until the bitter end.
- STARTING THE SAUCE
ADD TOMATOES TO HOT OIL
In a seperate pan reheat the olive oil-pesto base over high heat. Who ever peeled, stewed and canned tomatoes was genius.
Stewed vegetables is an old idea when you think about it. It pre-dates metal cans to glass jars and seasonal preserves. The greatest thing about time is if you live long enough the simpliest of ideas comes back again. The canning provides a distinguished taste and the tomatoes also differ in texture. Once upon a time, families only ate at home. Once upon time there was no Olive Garden. Once upon a time to eat a vegetable in the winter, it came out of jar sealed during harvest months.
“In the winter I use canned vegatables. It is the closest thing to what our ancestors got.”–Samantha Knapp
Fry the tomatoes in the heated oil. This process is messy, stand back to avoid being burned by the heat. There is so much water in the canning process that it is absolutely neccessary to keep the heat high to cook off the juice.
- CHEESE MEETS TOMATOES
BLEND TOGETHER FOR SAUCE
Here’s where we throw religion right out the door. At this point the tomatoes should have cooked down and become stocky in its own liquid. To this add the Ricotta. There are two types of italian cooking and they split on the dairy. Here’s where both meet. Use a hand blender to mix the sauce.When complete, let the sauce come together for at least ten more minutes under high heat.
- COOK OVER HIGH HEAT
TASTE & FLAVOR
I am not sure how the Olive Garden makes their sauce. I do know that evey menu item is handed down by corporate. The idea is that everything is measured out exactly so that all you have to do is follow the recipe. You don’t have to taste it.
AFTER:
I like the restaurant quality that comes with this finished meal. Serve the sauce over Ravoili and layer the chicken on top. If it hasn’t been made clear yet, I am proponent when possible of cooking your own food. The benefits are plentiful. You knowthe orgins and you know who’s hands made it. It comes from the heart, not corporate.
LAURYN HILL: MY OPINION…EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING
LAURYN HILL: MY OPINION…EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING
“Be honest, brutally honest. That is what’s going to maintain relationships”–Lauryn Hill
I wrote an honest opinion about the restuarant La Cremaillere on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s just my opinion. A lot of people red it. I have to say I have graditude for that support base. Opinions matter. I always have one. You should have one, too. It should come from a good place. It should be brutally honest. I ask guys that I date, “Do you want to get married, yes or no?” There is a very simple answer to this question. My answer for the record is yes.
Lauryn Hill says, “Everything is everything, Everything is everything, After winter, must come spring, Everything is everything”.
This is just one of her philosophies that has paid off over time and lead to multi-million dollar record sales. I recently went to her concert and formed an very positive opionion. Lauryn Hill, like me, is also not married. I don’t know if her answer would be yes or no, but I do know she had five of her six children with one Marley man. Hill is a working mother, nearing 40 and very clearly taking care of herself and her kids.
Her maternal energy on stage is strong making it hard to imagine that like all of us said mortals her path went through high school. Lauryn’s resume as I understand strickly through the record of Wikipedia, reads deep. It is clear she is the decision maker behind what relationships she does and doesn’t keep. An over-achiever in high school, she juggled academics, the student body, sports and music with a budding acting career that brought her small rolls along like the one beside Whoopi Goldberg in the Sister Act. She was worked hard to get here and continues.
- BUILDING RETURN TOUR
Ms. Hill came live to The Capitol Theater in Port Chester on Friday night, January 31st. This is a very initimate venue reserved strickly for independent artists that operate on the highest of playing fields but appreciate the most basic levels. The theater is unique like that. The floor is general addmission, no seats. The upper balcony is better seating, a different vantage point but no better acoustics. You can’t buy the perfect seat in this theater and that is what makes it special. You can also park free on the street and walk to the venue.
- LAURYN HILL
LIVE, CAPITOL THEATRE JAN 31
I image that for preformers who have repeatedly sold out MSG, the small venue is a humbling place of graditude. Not everyone fits here. Lauryn Hill is one of those exceptions. A little after 9PM, she took the stage with Killing Me Softly in a version of the song that came from years of studying her step-father (loose term) Bob Marley and his Rasta culture. Native to New Jersey, her energy transends into an ethnically delivered style that provides a rhythmic sense of roots and celebrated culture in songs.
Her choice of songs drew on her childhood influeced by Stevie Wonder, her years as a Fugee, her celebrated Mis-Education and Bob Marley. The Fugees cover of Marley’s No Woman No Cry was a part of the masterfully woven multi-platium album, The Score. It was perhaps kismet that she went on to build a relationship with his son, Rohan and have an instrumental part in continued legacy baring his grand-children. Marley’s grandsons played in the dim lit corners of the stage more or less dancing to their mother’s beat. Musicians born. They appeared as a squad of support.
Toss the rumors that Hill is angry for her life or somehow irrevocably scorned. The mother of six does not come across that way. Nurturing and in control of her band, she let them shine independently on more then one occasion. Her guitarist jammed solo as did her back up singers. Her eye-contact with her band was sharp and not overly rehearsed.
Hill entertained and reminded us all that the Mis-Education was among the smartest decisions of her life. Songs like X-Factor, Doo-Whop, Everything is Everything, now 7-years their prime sounded fresh and current. Completmentary versions of the original compiled on an album that won five times at the 41st Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Best New Artist.
“Tell me, who I have to be
To get some reciprocity
No one loves you more than me
And no one ever will”
Work she does. Lauryn Hill is waging a comeback from a prison sentence that could have been avoided had she paid her back-taxes in a manner that showed the judge she took her penalty seriously. Returning to court with just a slim percentage paid, she was asked to serve out her remaining sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury. She served three-months. At that hearing, she is quoted to have indentified herself as a child of former slaves, ...”who has a system imposed on them”.
What ever her relationship is with our government is, it seemed not to have impacted on this paritcular preformance. In a poodle-like skirt and expensive high-heel snow-booties, she appeared to enjoy working the inner core of the capital system, generating revenue from a live show just five months since her prison release. Her live appearances are limited in geography during her probation.
Lauryn Hill lives an open book which only adds freedom to her performance. Search google and her life story ebbs and flows like any great achiever in history. There are moments of extreme success in High School, the Fugees, success as a independent artist along side her lowest moments that include her willingness to be lead in council by a religious man critics say orchestrated a cult, to her failed philathropy The Refugee Project to the highly disfunctional sexual relationships she had for years with bandmate Wyclef.
Perhaps in the past Hill has shown an entitlement to walk away from the public and its demands. She has changed since then, humbled in a way that the old and the wise carry when they realize the secret to life is happiness. She is also a preformer. The audience is her blood, she seemed to feed off of it and transend.
As she closed and on more than one occasion she thanked the audience. It is as-if to say she loves the people that have brought her much success, a success so grand it allowed her to identfy with roots beyond New Jersey and gave her the courage or furstrated humor to say to a judge first and foremost despite ambition and privilege she is the daughter of slaves that will not pay taxes.
Her energy was magnetic. So, thank you Lauryn Hill for sticking around and showing that reinvention is possible everyday when you live from truth. ##ONE LOVE
talkingtigerlilys.wordpress.com 
