Feeling Grateful - A Prayer

Dear Lord, 

Kurie Eleison. 

Jesus Christ have mercy upon me, a sinner. 

Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Panayia Trias Eleison Mas.

I thank you, Lord, for being there for me throughout my life. I cannot take anything for granted. All these blessings I have received are gifts from above. Blessed be the Lord. Please forgive us our sins, in word and deed, both known and unknown, voluntary and involuntary.

Lately, I have been feeling grateful for all the people in my life, directly and indirectly. It is humbling to know that so many people have been involved in my life and helped shape who I am. 

First of all, I want to thank my late husband and my son for giving me some of the best years of my life, filled with joy, love, and peace.

I want to thank all my family members (parents, siblings and their families, my husband's relatives, my cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and in-laws and spouses) for being there, supporting me, and loving me.

I am grateful for all my friends and acquaintances, from childhood school friends to adult colleagues, and group organizations. I have learned so much through my interactions with them. I maintain contact with many of them, but several friends have passed too swiftly in this life, and I pray that the good Lord receives them in heaven. 

I am grateful for all the medical professionals I have worked with, and for the nurses and physicians in hospital settings who have cared for me when needed, including pharmaceutical technicians and lab personnel.

I am grateful to all my work colleagues in my different job capacities. Each and every one of them was my friend in some way or another. We worked well together.

I am grateful to my neighbors in all the places we lived. They have always been good friends.

I am grateful to all the handymen, carpenters, roofers, lawn care people, painters, post office people, bakers, restaurants, contractors, Instacart drivers, and Uber drivers for all your services in making my life easier. You all have done an amazing job.

I am grateful for all the priests and their wives, monks, deacons, chanters, altar boys, choir directors, and Greek Orthodox womens' organizations and cultural organizations that I was involved with throughout the years. I am also grateful for the choirs that I sang in, as well as the nuns and gerontisas at the monasteries I visited. Your love for God spilled over into my life and inspired me in so many ways.

I am grateful for all my publishers, editors, my readers, the Hellenic Writers' Group members, booksigning groups, book reviewers, and everyone involved in my writing. You took the time to make my dreams come true, and your feedback helped shape my writing.

I am grateful for all the school and professional orchestras, their conductors, and fellow musicians, as well as chamber ensembles that I was involved in. Many times have I enjoyed playing music with them.

I am grateful for all the teachers, professors, and administrators in my educational journey. From grade school to graduate school, they were truly an inspiration, pushing me to strive for more. I am grateful for all my students, who taught me patience and flexibility.

I am grateful for all my college friends, with whom only a few still maintain contact. Some have already passed. It was a different time in my life when responsibilities were not so pressing. We enjoyed the friendships.

I am grateful to all the people on Lipsi Island who embraced me during my college years, when I visited the island several times during those summers. I enjoyed my trips there, and wrote "Lipsi's Daughter" as a result.

I am also grateful for the angels who entered my life when I needed them the most, making miracles happen.

I am grateful to new friends and old friends. You came into my life just at the right time.

Forgive me if I left anyone out. But each and every person on this list has helped me in my journey in this life. 

I pray that God continues to bless you all and keep you all safe. May His grace be upon you always. 

May He protect us all and shield us from evil, pestilence, catastrophes, wars, violence, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, fires, injury, harm, enemies, jealousy, and illness.

With deep appreciation and love,

Your humble servant,

Patty

Making Fictional Characters for a Video

 Recently, I mentioned here about my use of AI tools to make music videos. My latest creation is a sweet love story on a Greek island. I started the whole process with a piano piece I had written in the 1980s. I then played it on the piano, recorded it with my Canon camera, and uploaded it to my computer. From there, I cleaned up the edges with iMovie and from there, listened to it on QuickTime Player where I exported it as an audio file. The final music was produced in Suno Premier's studio, where I separated the tracks and carefully reviewed each instrument, deleting what I did not want. I think I tried at least 10 times to find the right instruments and sound before I accepted the music. 

The next step was to make a storyline. I imagined my characters and had AI design them with my characteristics. This process required careful attention to detail regarding color, hair, height, clothes, etc. Several tries gave me the characters I wanted, but sometimes they were not correct, so I kept trying. I took these images to openart.ai, which animated them. I chose how many seconds for the animation. The characters truly looked real! I needed to keep the story within the length of my music, which was a little over three minutes. So that required quite a bit of imagination and work.

The issues that came up were that if I wanted to do more than a few seconds of video, I had to return and upload the original image again. It did not remember the original design. Mistakes did happen, like an arm not appearing completely in the picture. Or the buildings or flowers changing from scene to scene. It does take quite a focus and attention to detail. 

After much editing, revising, and copy-pasting, I finally settled on this cut. I am sharing it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6639KZRXMpI

The Use of AI in Writing - I do not condone it

Recently, I noticed publishers are being specific about authors not using AI-generated works. I understand the reason why. I find that if I allow it, AI will take over my writing, and I lose my unique voice, and I am very vigilant about not doing that. I want to make it clear that I do not use AI in my own writing, whether it is poetry, novels, or essays. I do use Grammarly to catch spelling or grammar errors, however. 

I allow my college students to use Grammarly for editing only. However, I discourage them from submitting AI-generated essays. They must submit original work. With that in mind, I also do the same for my writing. All my novels and poems have been originals. Given that, I do see a more polished work when AI writes papers. However, there are plenty of mistakes, such as shallow or superficial writing, redundancies, and even mistakes in MLA-formatted research papers.

I tend to keep an open mind when using technology. I have enjoyed working with my computer all these years, and recently I have been taking my poems and music and making movies with iMovie, capturing images on my cell phone, and now using music technology like Suno and animated film technology like openart to produce a finished work. These are creative endeavors and tools, and should not be discouraged. My music videos on YouTube have the AI logo on top, which shows the listener that I used AI tools, and that is fine with me. But I do make it a point in the description to state the originality of my poem or music and its copyright. I always use original work to upload to these AI sites. 

I have found a new passion with my poetry and music, and I am creating music videos with these programs. I had neither the time nor the money in the past to go to recording studios and produce such polished music. It was always more of a hobby than a career.

Again, writing is a different medium, and it requires vigilance when using AI like Grammarly for editing. It changes your writing before you know it, wiping out your identity, and I don't want that.

The Joy of Playing Piano

 I've always enjoyed playing piano, although I was not trained classically. I taught myself from age 16, and later took a few private lessons while in college. I have played music for hours, just letting it flow, but I never really recorded it until recently.

Today, I took my Canon camera and recorded myself playing this piece. I then uploaded the music to iMovie, made it into an audio version, and converted it to this Suno production. Suno has a studio, and I was able to fine-tune the piece there. Then I uploaded the music to iMovie, added several variations of the piece, bringing it to 28 minutes, and added paintings by the French Impressionists Claude Monet and Édouard Manet. I wanted the ambiance to mimic a dreamlike state where one loses oneself and can write, reflect, or write poetry. 

Here is the piece: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB5Y7QzL4nM

Pumpkin Watercolor Painting

 I recently attended a watercolor= art class by Patricia Boyst and Barbara Weiss at the Mansion House in City Park, Hagerstown. This painting was the result of one of their sessions. I learned how to paint wet-on-wet for hazy images and wet-on-dry for more defined images. I used 300-lb Arches paper and watercolor paints by Schmincke and Renesans Polska. I completed the project at home, touching it up in several places. The light on the top left of the pumpkin (or gourd) was actually white paper with a wash of dirty water. The background was wet-on-wet paint. You wet the paper first, then dab wet paint on it.

Production of Music - Suno Pro/Premium and Lawsuit

     

     As I mentioned in previous posts, I have composed and played music (viola/violin/piano) throughout my life. However, once I played it, it was soon forgotten, either saved as a computer file or placed in a drawer somewhere as composed music. I became busy with life, raising a family, homeschooling, and after my husband passed away, returning to university and getting my MFA and Ph.D. Time was not on my side with my music. Other creative projects took center stage, such as writing novels and poetry, and performing in orchestras. This essay will address how the creativity of an independent musician like me can be harnessed to create polished music with the right tools, such as Suno.com, an online platform that helps musicians produce complete songs.

     Suno AI is a generative AI platform that generates music and was formed in 2023. It is located in Cambridge, MA. However, in 2024, Suno was sued by several record labels for copyright infringement. According to Owen Parker, "The labels’ position was essentially this: our recordings are products. We own them. Training a commercial AI on those products without a license is theft, full stop. They leaned hard on the economic harm argument, pointing to projections showing that AI-generated music could cannibalize the streaming royalty market by displacing listens of licensed original content" (https://lawfold.com/suno-lawsuit/). This was a legitimate concern. However, Suno’s counterargument was, "training an AI model is no different from a human musician listening to thousands of songs and developing a style. They framed their work as a new kind of creative tool, not a copy machine. The “transformative use” argument was central to everything" (https://lawfold.com/suno-lawsuit/). This is an ongoing situation.

     They settled out of court. One of the reasons that Suno used was the following: "Suno’s engineering team reportedly argued that training does not store or reproduce individual songs. Instead, it extracts statistical patterns. The model learns “music” as a set of relationships, not as a library of files" (https://lawfold.com/suno-lawsuit/).  The future of Suno is uncertain, but it has made some changes since the lawsuit. 

     Meanwhile, I happened across the Suno platform in September 2026, oblivious to the lawsuit. I was pleasantly surprised at how it took my music and produced completely polished works, so I signed up for Suno Pro. Then there was a limit to the downloads. So I upgraded to Suno Premium. This allows me to create and download more music per month. This change in downloads happened from the Warner Music Group deal in November 2026. According to Golam Rabiul Alam, "Under the deal, Suno committed to launching new licensed AI models in 2026 that will deprecate current versions, and to requiring a paid account for downloading generated audio, with free-tier songs playable and shareable but not downloadable, and paid tiers subject to monthly download caps" (https://patentailab.com/riaa-vs-suno-lawsuit-update-2026/). This is where Suno stands at the moment.

     I have had the great pleasure of producing my music using this platform. To me, it is a tool, just like iMovie allows me to make movies. It is important to me that I use only my original music and poems to create these works. I do not believe in asking Suno to create my music or lyrics for me, because then it is no longer my creation. 

     What I like about the Suno program is that it is easy to use. I capture my song either by recording it first on my Yamaha synthesizer, then capturing that recording on a Canon camera, uploading the file to my iMovie, and making an audio file from it. I also copy and paste my poem, and state the details, like which instruments I want and the type of singer, dynamics, rhythm, etc. Once I hit the Create button, the program plays two songs for me to listen to. If I do not like them, I can tweak the instructions and listen to the next two songs, and so on. As I download and share the songs with family and friends, they ask me if I wrote the songs or if I wrote the lyrics. I have had to explain my decision and tell them, "Yes, I have composed the song and written the lyrics. However, the song itself has instruments that I did not originally include (unless I wrote it on Noteflight, where several instruments were included)." Some of my songs had already been uploaded to Youtube several years ago using Noteflight, another platform where I could write my music and have it performed. I have included them in the narrative for my newer versions, just for comparison.

     The reason I wrote this essay was to share how Suno's product is a suitable AI platform for creating music from original works like mine, so they don't sit in a drawer, unheard. The satisfaction of hearing them as complete songs is unparalleled. This is particularly true when I capture the essence of Greek folk music that I grew up listening to and dancing to all my life. I can share those songs with family and friends. As long as I enjoy listening to my music and can share it with family and friends, I will continue using Suno Premium.

                                                                  Works Cited

Alam, Golam Rabiul. "RIAA vs Suno Lawsuit Update (2026): Is the Platform Shutting Down?"August      2026.  (https://patentailab.com/riaa-vs-suno-lawsuit-update-2026/).A vs. Suno

Parker, Owen. "Suno Lawsuit 2026: Full Update, Ruling & Settlement." May 2026.

     (https://lawfold.com/suno-lawsuit/)

A Waltz for Helena's Choice

Helena's Choice is a historical romance that I wrote for my MFA Creative Writing thesis back in 2015 and later revised and published in 2017. It is a sweet love story set in both England and Greece during the 1830s.

Here is the narrative on Amazon's page: 

Oxford, 1837.
Helena Cadfield expected a quiet return from boarding school, perhaps a cup of tea and a mildly awkward family dinner. Instead, she got a funeral notice and a mystery: her father had died in Greece while digging up ancient ruins on land that once belonged to her mother.

With her inheritance reduced to academic curiosity and a pair of sturdy boots, Helena takes a job as a governess to fund a daring journey to war-torn Greece. Before leaving, she promises to return to her charming, safe, and very English suitor, Allan Murphy.

Greece is in transition, the treasure hunt is tougher than expected, and then there’s Aristotle, a handsome archaeologist with opinions and a talent for making Helena forget everything she thought she wanted. Together, they dig up more than artifacts; they unearth chemistry, conflict, and possibly, love.

Helena does return to England, as promised, but finds that life at home has been busy in her absence.

With one foot in ancient Greece and the other in the drawing rooms of England, she must decide:
Does she choose the predictable future she pledged to, or the wild, uncertain one her heart won’t stop chasing?

Helena’s about to discover that the greatest treasure might not be buried after all.

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A little back story on my music: Over the years, I stored several of my songs either as music movies (made from Yamaha or piano recordings) or as musical notes in a notebook or on Noteflight, but many were never published. The waltz comes from a 1981 composition I did after taking a music composition course in university. I recently discovered the music composition notebook and found this song. Since then, I have started making music videos with Suno's help (Suno Pro). 

The waltz is inspired by Helena's Choice. I hope it inspires you, too!

Waltz for Helena's Choice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4gia-o_PqY

Besides YouTube, the waltz is available on Amazon, Apple, Instagram, and other sites via 

Distrokid.

Here is the Amazon link to Helena's Choice: t.ly/qXxfN

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Official Booktrailer of Helena's Choice on YouTube: t.ly/36PlL

The book trailer for Helena's Choice was made using a combination of AI platforms: First, I composed the music and lyrics, then produced the music video on Suno Pro. Then I used openart.AI (Pro version) to create images from Claude Sonnet and combined everything in iMovie. It was a labor of love and creativity. I enjoyed it very much. I hope you enjoy this short film also. If you've read the book, I would love to hear from you!

My New Music Videos

 I am pleased to share that I have set several of my poems to music I composed years ago, turning them into songs. 

Let me give you the historical context. I started composing music when I was sixteen, aided by the fact that my family had received a piano from my older sister after she moved into a house that had one, and they did not have a use for it. That is when I began learning to play it. I literally taught myself to play the notes. Every day after school, I would sit at the piano and learn the notes. Then I started composing my own music. During that time, I was also writing poetry, but did not compose songs. 

Later, in college, when I minored in music, I took a composition class and some piano lessons. I still have my composition notebook with the music I wrote for my class. I also played viola in orchestras throughout my adult life, as well as chamber ensemble groups, taught music, and later, switched to violin playing.

When I was older, I wanted to store my music, and I did so using Noteflight (about a decade ago), as well as on my Yamaha synthesizer. Then I had uploaded a few of them on Youtube.  Noteflight gave me the opportunity to write my music, print it out, and download it.

More recently, actually almost a week ago, with the help of Suno, an AI platform, I was able to upload my audios and lyrics and produce the music. Suno gave me options to choose from. It has really pushed my creativity to a level I have not experienced before. It is quite inspiring.

The result is that I have produced high-quality videos that have taken my music and lyrics to another level. I hope that my songs have found a home. I hope people will enjoy them as much as I do!

Lately, I have been digging up more of my old songs and producing more. When those are done, I plan to compose even more. I have more than 60 poems that could easily be added to new music.

---------------------------------

Here are some of my "new" converted songs, produced with assistance from Suno on YouTube. They are also available on my own Youtube channel, on Amazon and Apple, as well as on Instagram and other sites. I used Distrokid to distribute them.

1) Wishing You Were Here on Christmas Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VHCqPbwzA4

This was a song I wrote after my husband passed away. It was my first Christmas without him.

The original 2013 video is on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAP6W-rqTm8&list=RDIAP6W-rqTm8&start_radio=1

2) The Life of a Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vvecu5hQ04

   ---This was a song I composed and played on the piano, and joined the poem to it. Its older version is on my Youtube channel.

3) Flowing River: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK3XXeJddkE

   ----This is another poem I wrote after my husband passed.

4) The Silence of a Beating Heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjdbEfwsAnk

   ---This is a new composition, where I took an older poem that I had written after watching war footage. It is a stark reminder of what war means to the soldiers and to their families. It has a devastating price to humanity.

5) Peace: I Searched Deep Within: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3ab0iiZT7A

 --- I tend to write inspirational poems and add them to soft, relaxing, and soothing music. This one is about our relationship with God inside of us.

I'd be happy to hear from you if you do go and listen to them. Feel free to share them with others if they resonate with you. 

Have a blessed day! - Patty Apostolides