The words on the page or screen are simply ink and pixels. The pattern itself 'means' nothing until it is decoded by a reader.
No text (literary, visual, audible) IS the thing it represents. It is only ever an analogue. It represents those qualities. It does not possess those qualities itself.
see On the Record: An Audio Professional’s Take on Vinyl
If we are to gain meaning from a text, then we must realise that the thoughts represented on the page are not the thoughts of the author, but a representation of the thoughts of the author. We must decode in order to understand. The reader becomes the active party in the decoding activity.
Therefore, the energy of thought does not happen on the page, but in the mind of the reader. Whatever thoughts are inspired in the mind of the reader by the representation of ideas on the page are created by the decoder/reader and not by the writer.
The quality of the resulting ideas in the mind of the reader are a combination of the latent intellectual tinder in the mind of the reader and the skill of the writer in creating the spark to light that latent intellectual tinder.
Reading is a conversation not with the writer (that's more of a speech). Reading is a conversation with ourselves.