Cool down

Lee Siegel, in a piece supposedly on the new Turner Classic Movies documentary "Steve McQueen: The Essence of Cool," sums up cool as succinctly and precisely as I've ever seen it done. Siegel's review is less about the documentary than it is about how one defines cool and what our cool-obsessed culture has developed. In one short paragraph, he defines the word, an act which is in and of itself unassailably cool.

As the descriptive term for an existential condition, "cool" has been around for a long time, and it seems to be permanently fixed in American speech. Its various essences seem to be walking slowly; speaking in a measured, unexcited manner, and usually in a deep voice; treating people who have greater power or authority somewhat haughtily, not to say insolently, while treating people with less power or authority as equals; refusing to act the way other people tell you to act; living unaffected by external forces or circumstances; preferring to be solitary rather than joining the chorus of other people; and speaking in your own original idiom, to the point of even seeming to have your very own vocabulary.