A couple of months ago I went to an event where dance and performance art works-in-progress were shown. Afterward, a discussion was held to give the artists feedback. There was an interesting movement piece for four dancers set to the music of Scott Walker. It used three or four different Walker pieces from across his career, some conventional, some more experimental (one of these was “The Electrician” from the Walker Brothers album Nite Flights).

During the discussion, I shared with the choreographer, a woman I had not known before this evening, my thoughts on the piece and the music. I tried to explain my relationship to the music of Scott Walker, how his work strikes me as both deeply emotional and expressionist but also theatrical to the point of abstraction, which, in my opinion, was a combination that served her piece very well. I also find Walker’s music to be vaguely menacing, sometimes even scary— there is a strangeness at its core that somehow suggests danger.

My wife Julie, who was there with me that night, also likes Scott Walker but has a very different take on him. To her, the theatrically goes so far over the top that it takes on a dark humor, and she read this dance piece as funny, like the music was offering a slightly ironic commentary on the absurdity of performance itself. Neither of us was wrong, and we learned some things about each other that night.