For years now, a select group of insiders (ok, a really select group of insiders) has been keeping a dark metaphysical secret from the rest of us you. It sounds like a party trick: Cue up the videos for Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” and Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” and hit play at the same time. One expects wacky Dark Side of the Rainbow coincidences; instead, every mirror, rose, motorcycle, lightning bolt, and diaphanous sheet–dress in one haunted manse finds a precisely timed counterpart in the other. A double-vision plot emerges that’s weirder and deeper and more coherent than either video’s alone. The revelation leaves the first-time viewer indifferent about breathing.And now the word is out. Vimeo user Lindsay Dobbin has produced terrific picture-in-picture versions of “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now Cause I Would Do Anything For Love.” I might as well add the final secret: Both power ballads in question were written by Jim Steinman, the world’s leading, and basically only, proponent of Wagnerian rock. To complete Steinman’s ring cycle, you must add Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Alone, “Eclipse” is a simple morality play — a schoolteacher-in-distress fantasizing about her students; in context, it’s revealed as something of a running liturgical commentary on the problems and passions Celine and ’Loaf are facing at any given instant, closer to earth.Check out Dobbin’s two Vimeo productions, below. Then play all three at once, if you dare:
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