Who are you and why are you doing this?

My name is Dale Lyles.  I am a retired educator who has spent his life Making The Thing That Is Not: creating.  I have been the artistic director of a theatre company, a choir director, a website designer, a composer, a painter, a writer, an actor, a dancer, and above all, a teacher.

This website is to promote what I have found to be effective ways to allow yourself to be the creative human that you want to be.  I've written a book — Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy — which is an incredibly handy source of inspiration.  You should buy it. (There’s also a A Young Person’s Guide to Lichtenbergianism!)

NOW

January 2026: working on video lessons for CREATE•U; getting serious about learning Dorico; shepherding Ten Little Waltzes to its performance in March; The Beethoven Blueprint (Hire me.)

Next: an extremely vague request from a friend for two “Moulin Rouge type” dance numbers for a play he’s writing… in Beijing… what is my life even?

Reading: Tristram Shandy, by Lawrence Sterne; The Work of Art, by Adam Moss; Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: how two men revolutionized physics, by Nancy Forbes & Basil Mahon

Watching: A Man on the Inside (Netflix); Rookie Historian (Netflix)

Listening: random stuff