and math were the two things that I liked most as a child. It is fascinating how the pursuit of artistic domains such as music or poetry, and also of scientific domains like geometry and science, is motivated not so much by the desire to achieve some external goal—a poem or a proof—but by the feeling of freedom from the threats and stresses of everyday life one experiences when completely immersed in the domain. Paradoxically, it is the abstract rules we invent to limit and focus our attention that give us the experience of untrammeled freedom.
