I was just upstairs reading, and had one of those satisfying moments. My iPod served up Oasis’s “Live Forever” (mp3) and I flipped to Auden’s “The More Loving One.”

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Both the Oasis and the Auden cover essentially the same topic, albeit in different terms and different media. Auden essentially acknowledges the impossibility that we matter in any reasonable cosmic scheme, but at the end of his poem, he outlives the stars and comes to appreciate the universe changed. Oasis rejects the natural order of things and achieves immortality for their daring.

Run these through the filter of my last few days, and you come up with one irresistible conclusion: being alive in the moment is the only immortality one needs. You can look at the world, littered with the walking dead, and conclude that you’ve bested it forever by enjoying it now.

***

Of course, the possibility exists that when Auden looked at the stars, knowing”That, for all they care, I can go to hell,” he was simply prophesying the inevitable existence of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton. Yes, devoid of them, we might all come to appreciate the world. But it would take a while. It would take a while indeed.