Mao Fujita: The Olive Oil Conversation

Berlin in winter doesn't just chill you, it makes decisions for you. That morning, it made one for us. Mao Fujita 藤田真央 was weeks away from his recital debut at the Philharmonie Berlin, and between his packed rehearsal schedule and the sharp air outside, neither his management nor I wanted to gamble on an outdoor shoot. We moved everything inside.

I swung by Potsdamer Platz first to pick up Joel Arias, my video producer. Joel and I go back to our days at Universal Music Germany/Deutsche Grammophon. The kind of working relationship where you've long stopped explaining your instincts to each other and just get on with it.

Mao arrived fresh from another rehearsal. He was also preparing for his orchestral debut in Berlin, which meant his schedule that week existed somewhere most people never have to visit. He showed none of it.

There's a moment in every video shoot where everyone in the room has to just exist together without anything to do. Some people dread it.

I've always found it to be the best part. That's when artists stop being artists and start being people.

Mao started talking about Tonkatsu.

Specifically, about how much he loves frying it at home. And then the conversation turned, with the natural logic of someone who actually cooks, to olive oil.

The price of olive oil.

At some point we both arrived at the same word, expensive, at roughly the same volume and with roughly the same indignation. Two people from completely different corners of the world, briefly united by the absurdity of what a bottle of olive oil costs now (then – a 500ml-bottle easily costs 20 EUR).

I kept this to myself at the time, but I was quietly stunned. Not because of the price. Because even when olive oil was affordable, frying Tonkatsu in it wouldn't have been my first move.

I found it completely endearing.

It's the kind of detail that tells you something real about a person. That he's actually in the kitchen, actually cooking, caring about the small things in daily life between concert halls and rehearsal rooms.

The interview moved fast. Mao came prepared.

Then came the b-rolls. We needed the same passage from three different angles, which meant Mao had to play the same fragment three times in a row while Joel repositioned the camera each time. He did it without a word of complaint, without any trace of the mild tedium that it objectively was. I doubt anyone watching the final footage will notice, which is exactly the point.

Berlin stayed cold outside. We packed up, said our goodbyes, and Mao went back to wherever you go when you have an orchestral debut and a recital debut at the Berliner Philharmoniker sitting just weeks apart.

I thought about olive oil the whole way back.