50. An Author After All

From between the pages of a book, an anonymous text slips out and falls to the ground.

Words that come from nowhere exist in empty space. They have no meaning, as they are only symbols. Meanings are human — words on their own do not have them. Isolated words are independent of any human being and of humanity itself. Here, there is no me and there is no you. There are only words.

A text that has no humanity has no author, no context. It is only an object. Context would usually come from the author, and the world of meanings they carry, but there is no such person. There are no persons at all, only this collection of symbols, arranged into a text.

It is when you arrive that everything changes. You see the text on the ground in its state of total loneliness and you do something with it — you read it. Now the text is attached to a person, a context, a set of meanings. These are not the intended meanings of the author, for there is no author. There is only you and whatever you have supplied to the text, whatever meanings you have given it. You have imbued the text with your own humanity.

You have transformed this orphan text into something more than a simple object. While it was only symbols before, it is now rich with semantic content. The text has come alive, and you are the source of its life. It lives as an extension of your own subjective consciousness. It means what you allow it to mean and nothing more than this. It is your beliefs and values that grant it any truth or falsehood.

This text that you found homeless now has a home in you. It is only because of you that it has a context and a shape. By reading, you have crafted it into something real and vital. You have given it power and meaning. It seems this authorless text does have an author after all. Its author is you.