I'll try to remember what I was thinking when I wrote "Blodder," but that was kind of a long time ago. (I started writing the texts in 1988 and finished the arrangement in 1993.)

I do remember that in the structuring of the monologues I was heavily influenced by the structure of the Bach Violin Partitas. In particular, the way he is able to keep two independent monophonic melodic lines running at the same time. And so I thought, I wonder if you can do that with text?
More and more I discover that for any new ideas I think I have in dealing with text, Bach was there first.

From a more general point of view, I'm using this term "ambient fiction" lately to describe my work, work that can be possibly viewed as literature just as easily as music.

I've never felt very inspired by the term "spoken word." Many people aren't familiar with the terms like "hoerspiel" or "soundtext" although those are probably my traditions. Therefore, I have begun to use the term "Ambient Fiction" to describe my work for three reasons:

1. I like ambient music. . . Everything from Tony Conrad to Alvin Lucier to Eno to Glenn Branca. Also, there's an open-mindedness in the ambient music/electronica crowd that I find very refreshing, an aesthetic that can easily accept Public Enemy one minute and Stockhausen the next.

2. I like fiction that is ambient. . . literature you can wander into and out of without losing a sense of design or purpose -- like Stein and Beckett on the one hand, and Cage and Henri Chopin on the other hand.

3. I like ambience that is fictional. . . I've always been amazed at the way the sound of a quiet AM radio can change the ambience of a room. It almost imposes evening or darkness on an otherwise well-lit situation. Then there's the ambient sound of a group of adults all talking at the same time.
We've all heard that as kids when parents have friends over. Or the sound of a person talking in the next room. In this sense, the ambience my work creates is the fiction.

(Erik Belgum om "Blodder" and Ambient Fiction October 2000)