The ‘Sticky’ Gremlin
Work that leaves emotional residue
What does it mean when something or someone is described as sticky? No, you naughty Gremlin, get your head out of the gutter. Not that kind of sticky. I mean sticky in the memorability sense. A sticky person stays in your thoughts, and a sticky product is something you come back to.
I was listening to a conversation recently where a woman asked her entrepreneur husband what mattered more when launching a business or product: a large following or a Goldman Sachs-level career and credibility. He said that if he absolutely had to choose, perhaps the following mattered more, but neither was the real differentiator. The thing that mattered most was stickiness. And so I thought about it - seeing if I could apply it to my life.
Stickiness is the thing that makes you remember someone. Because even though there are plenty of beautiful, intelligent, talented people, who do you actually remember? Usually the person who is interesting and usually they are interesting because they posses some level of contradiction.
Likewise, there is plenty of great art, but which work do you return to? The sticky kind that leaves emotional residue. Sticky work has emotional specificity. It’s the film scene that comes back to you every time you see a New York sky line or a certain colour grade. Stickiness is the reason certain artists and artworks stay culturally alive while technically “better” versions disappear.
I remember the first time I saw Romeo + Juliet and how the neon halo around everything burned itself into my brain. Or the grain of City of God, where the heat seemed to drip from the kid’s foreheads. I remember hearing the opening keys on the soundtrack of Arrival for the first time. And I remember where I was when I found Mike Skinner on Original Pirate Material…feeling like he was reading me poetry rather than lyrics.
Sticky. And stickiness is often in the smallest of details.
I don’t know if stickiness can really be contrived or manufactured. I think Mike Skinner was probably just absorbing poets and song writers and it came out in his own way. I think Baz Luhrmann was trying to create a euphoric atmosphere with Catholic neon mythology. Yet, the fact that it would permanently etch itself into the mind of some ten-year-old girl decades later could never have been planned.
That’s the strange thing about sticky things. You have no idea who will become caught on them.
I remember the first time I watched Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz together and felt the tension between them. Sticky. Fuck, it’s cringe, but even Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was sticky. Sticky doesn’t have to mean niche arthouse cinema. It can be an action thriller, a sitcom, sarcasm, a tone of voice, a passing expression. Friends was sticky. Seinfeld was sticky because entire generations still speak in their phrases.
The quote that comes to mind is from Maya Angelou: “people won’t always remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.”
And maybe that’s what the entrepreneur husband really meant when he said sticky. Perhaps stickiness is simply another word for presence.
From The Factory >
Al-Amin Mosque, Beirut
2026, Acrylic on Canvas
Prompts >
JOURNAL:
What makes my work memorable?
ASK SOMEONE:
What’s your favourite film and why?
CREATIVE ACT:
Make a moodboard of your favourite films, docs, style icons and music, and see if there is a common sticky thread.
Musings >
“I’m not trying to create something new. I’m just collecting things I love and rearranging them in my own way.”
- NIGO“With Romeo + Juliet what I wanted to do was to look at the way in which Shakespeare might make a movie of one of his plays if he was a director.”
- Baz Luhrmann“The camera is never in the perfect position, and I think this is what keeps the feeling of reality.
- Fernando Meirelles“I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet”
- Joni Mitchell