Maksymilian

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a ship's horn, a hall of voices, a clerk's pen)
Maksymilian Faktorowicz.
Write that down. Now say it to a clerk who's in a hurry.

[Verse 1]
He was a wig-maker in Łódź and then a cosmetician
to the Russian imperial court, which is a sentence
that sounds invented and is entirely documented,
and he got out, and he came over, and he stood in the line.
And somewhere in that line his name was taken from him
and handed back to him shortened. And that was that.

[Chorus]
Maksymilian. Faktorowicz. That is the man's name.
Max Factor is a clerk's abbreviation of a person!
It's not a brand somebody built — it's a mishearing
that got printed on a compact and sold to the whole world!
Maksymilian Faktorowicz. Nineteen fourteen.
The most famous shortened name in the history of a face.

[Verse 2]
And he invented the word "make-up," or near enough —
the term as we use it, for the film industry, for the light,
because the old stage paint cracked and shone and looked like paint
and he made something for the camera that looked like skin instead.
That's a real invention. That's a genuine contribution.
Under a name that a tired man wrote down wrong.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Now the family kept the shortened one, and why on earth wouldn't they,
it was easier, it sold, it was already on the tins —
and there's no villain in this story, only a queue,
and a clerk, and a country that could not be bothered with the whole of it.
That's how most names go. Not stolen. Just trimmed
by a thousand people none of whom meant anything by it.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the hall of voices fading)
Maksymilian Faktorowicz.
There. Said properly. Once.