"Don't talk of dust and roses
Or should we powder our noses?"
This is advice to avoid the waste of time that contemplating the inevitable of death("dust and roses") or wasting too much time on ever decaying appearances of ourselves or things("or should we powder our noses?"). In essense: "Get to the root of things!", which would be "pulsars/pulses unreal" with the objective certainty of them, solidity, being "steel" that is demanded.
The next phrase is more along the lines of telling of how one would remove themselves to seek such a state of mind to contemplate/experience such "steel pulses". You have to take these lyrics of Bowie's as monologues, conversations of the self with the Self. This whole album, 1984(and alot of his other work), may be a favorite book of his, but in the lyrics you can see him and his views woven in the manner he phrases these stories....they've become completely his own to describe completely a different thing (not society at large so much as one's individual, internal dealings with the very nature of being human).
"Don't talk of dust and roses Or should we powder our noses?" This is advice to avoid the waste of time that contemplating the inevitable of death("dust and roses") or wasting too much time on ever decaying appearances of ourselves or things("or should we powder our noses?"). In essense: "Get to the root of things!", which would be "pulsars/pulses unreal" with the objective certainty of them, solidity, being "steel" that is demanded.
The next phrase is more along the lines of telling of how one would remove themselves to seek such a state of mind to contemplate/experience such "steel pulses". You have to take these lyrics of Bowie's as monologues, conversations of the self with the Self. This whole album, 1984(and alot of his other work), may be a favorite book of his, but in the lyrics you can see him and his views woven in the manner he phrases these stories....they've become completely his own to describe completely a different thing (not society at large so much as one's individual, internal dealings with the very nature of being human).