You may find me narcissistic, that’s your right. But for me, Millie’s Spotify playlists were about me. And one thing is certain, they weren’t talking about you.
Before Millie’s Spotify playlists, there was Millie alone, this trombonist with whom I matched on Tinder when I had just arrived in Oxford, for a year of study abroad which coincided well wrong. It was September 2020, seven months into the pandemic, and most study abroad programs had been cancelled. In the eyes of my friends who remained constrained and forced in the United States, deprived of tapas in Barcelona, of techno in Berlin and of cannabis in Amsterdam, I was already very lucky to have been able to leave.
Sure, I was lucky, but I felt really alone. Between the distance courses and the restrictions on social life in Oxford, I realized that I was going to have a hard time meeting real British students – when I was just there for that! So I had traveled almost 5,000 kilometers to see people on Zoom.
A pool of knowledge
When I was in the United States, Tinder had never been my thing. As an expatriate, I thought that a dating app might be able to offer me what my exchange program was denying me: a pool of potential acquaintances in the United Kingdom.
In my bio, which I left in public mode, I put “Looking for friends to make music with”. After several days of swiping left and right, my chances of encountering a Hugh Grant lookalike hadn’t increased one iota when Millie’s profile appeared like a life raft.
For any bio, she had simply written “Bridget Jones’s Diary” [Le Journal de Bridget Jones]. In her photos, she could be seen all smiles with her all-girl funk band in front of a swooning crowd. Joyful, musical, appreciating the talents of Renée Zellweger, Millie was precisely the kind of person I wanted to have as a friend.
Gathering my courage in both hands, I sent him a message: “Hi ! You look super cool!”
We chatted a little, and then we agreed to meet for a drink.
The previous days, I submit Millie to an electronic and slightly neurotic examination: I scrutinize all her profiles on the networks to find out more about her. I learn on Instagram that she is not only a funk trombonist, but also a singer in a choir. On Facebook, I discover that she is active in movements for social justice. Spotify finally comforts me in the idea that we are going to get on well: it has playlists entitled “Feminism in electronic music”, or “Joni Mitchell: ode to the greatest woman in the world”.
More, if affinities
In person, Millie turns out to be everything I expected of her: charismatic, hip, generous – and British. Driven by a common passion for gin and tonic, our conversation swings. We both love Harry Potter, country singer Patsy Cline, doing mood boards. A few years earlier, she went to New York, and she lived for a month on the street where I was born and raised – in a city so big, it’s unbelievable.