“jobs” are “square.” The “square” person and situation are 
not “cool” because they manifest little of the habit of depth 
involvement of our faculties. The young now say, “Humor is 
not cool.” Their favorite jokes bear this out. They ask, “What is 
purple and hums?” Answer, “An electric grape.” “Why does it 
hum?” Answer, “Because it doesn’t know the words.” Humor is 
presumably not “cool” because it inclines us to laugh at 
something, instead of getting us emphatically involved in 
something. The story line is dropped from “cool” jokes and 
“cool” movies alike. The Bergman and Fellini movies demand far 
more involvement than do narrative shows. A story line 
encompasses a set of events much like a melodic line in music. 
Melody, the melos modos , “the road round,” is a continuous, 
connected, and repetitive structure that is not used in the 
“cool” art of the Orient. The art and poetry of Zen create 
involvement by means of the interval, not by the connection