gold dust

Gold dust is a slang name for MDMA powder (ecstasy). MDMA is usualy in the form of tablets, and MDMA is almost never seen as a powder for several reasons;

• MDMA is almost as active orally as it is nasaly (unlike cocaine), so it is not wasteful to take it as tablets
• It is significantly easier to consume tablets than powder
• MDMA is rather unpleasent to snort (the prefered method of taking powdered drugs) or gum-rub.
• Low doages are more important for MDMA than for amphetamine and cocaine (two drugs that are often taken as powder), as it is active at lower levels, and the side effects of large doses are unpleasant.

However, some people consider taking MDMA to be a much more enjoyable experience when it is snorted as a powder, and to them MDMA powder is something of a holy grail. It is presumably called gold dust because of its rarity and desirability

It is my opinion that Tori Amos coats every melody she makes with golden dust. Appropriately, Gold dust is the eighteenth and last track of Scarlet's Walk, preceded by Virginia.

Everything is beautiful about Gold Dust. The music, the words, and the imagery. Opening with a battery of strings, it sounds like the ending credits of a film. In a way, it is. Gold Dust is the finale of Scarlet's Walk, the conclusion of Scarlet's quest. It's a song about endings, and about nostalgia. It seems to emanate a feeling of sad contentment.

Although it sounds and feels like an ending song, Gold Dust also deals with beginnings. Once more, Scarlet's life parallels Tori's own: They both have a daughter. While the last song on To Venus and Back was dedicated to her husband, this is a song for Tori's baby Natashya. The song basically tells us how precious life, and in particular childhood, is.

    How did it go so fast
 you'll say
    as we are looking 
 back
    and then we'll
             understand
    We held
          gold dust
                    in our
                          hands