All my life I dreamed of making something vast, vast like Gothic cathedrals or the Sistine Ceiling (or most of Michelangelo’s endeavors) or King Lear or Wagner’s Ring or Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary or Bach’s Passions (or most of Bach) or any of Dickens’ doorstops or Proust’s last-minute magnum opus or… you get the idea: so vast it would consume its audience’s time while inviting adulation – vast enough to silence skeptics and spark the question commencing “How on earth -- ?!”

It takes no Freud to locate the source of such a dream. Puniness dreams of size, insecurity seeks recognition it will never receive (because there’s never enough). I wrote for all the worthy reasons – to discover, disseminate, delight – but also for the humiliating one – to disprove detractors who’d declared I’d “never amount to much.” Let me slash my zeal like Zorro’s Z on the tunics of swaggerers! I’m not talking talent here – that would be as it would: we cannot grow taller by trying – but ambition: proof that, whatever our outcome, we’ve given this game of life our all.

I’d dream my giant dreams, then proffer my excuses for delay. I was busy elsewhere, I’d get around to it. In retirement I had time – it’s been seven years now – and, as the famous ad sniggered, “Where’s the beef?” Plenty of words, sure, a mountain, but that big defining work? A smattering of starts, a day or two of feverish scribbling until – who knows? – something else came up. Even my (slender) books are mosaics of shards, polished agates strung on a string. Why this gaping gap between desire and deed?

I didn’t have it in me: an explanation that explains nothing. Why didn’t I? Why this mini-life of miniature manufactures?

It wasn’t will. I write a lot, always have, can’t stop, like a jimmied hydrant. Yes, I lack stick-to-it-iveness, always have, my attention flitting from this to that – A.D.D., perhaps, before the syndrome gained a name. But it’s not just my makeup that explains my letdown. Any maker makes what their moment seems to require. Art responds to needs that are sensed if not expressed. Vast works are invisibly coauthored by their intended recipients.

Ours has not been a moment for vastness. Vastness demands time and dedication from its audience. You can feel Bach’s parishioners sitting through six-hour services or Proust’s readers yawning through languid afternoons. Wagner asked his listeners to wrest days from their calendar – days! – to inhabit his vision. Nowadays who has time? We may fill our schedules with fluff, but they feel full. Few have days to surrender to a stranger’s voice. Minutes, if you’re lucky.

Vastness depends on shared belief, a community of the faithful who crave such buttressing. Vast works are encouraged and consumed by “everybody”, their makers heroes of their hour. Movies, I suppose, come closest to a universal art-form today – and they are growing vaster, for sure – but do they pack the spiritual punch of defining masterpieces? Videogames and emojis feel more the voice of our age.

Ours is a whirring, rat-a-tat, untranquil, perplexed epoch. I write into that. I admire aphorists who pierced their hectic moments with the honed arrows of wit. I snag you for five minutes max till you scoot to your next appointment. My books are written to be read as I read, in snatches, before bedtime. My insecurity is spooked by your flickering attention. I share the dread of Scheherazade – one off night and it’s off with his head.

Political anxiety exacerbates our distraction. Who tells long stories with languorous elocution when all hell’s breaking loose?