Ragtime - Back to Before Lyrics

Broadway production 1998
Ragtime the Musical - Back to Before Lyrics

"Back to Before" is a song from musical Ragtime performed by Marin Mazzie (Mother).

mother:
there was a time
our happiness seemed neverending.
i was so sure
that where we were heading was right.
life was a road
so certain and straight and unbending.
our little road
with never a crossroad in sight.
back in the days
when we spoke in civilized voices-
women in white
and sturdy young men at the oar.
back in the days
when i let you make all my choices.
we can never go back to before.
there was a time
my feet were so solidly planted.
you'd sail away
while i turned my back to the sea.
i was content,
a princess asleep and enchanted.
if i had dreams,
then i let you dream them for me.
back in the days
when everything seemed so much clearer.
women in white
who knew what their lives held in store.
where are they now,
those women who stared from the mirror?
we can never go back to before.
there are people out there
unafraid of revealing
that they might have a feeling,
or they might have been wrong.
there are people out there
unafraid to feel sorrow,
unafraid of tomorrow,
unafraid to be weak,
unafraid to be strong...
there was a time
when you were the person in motion.
i was your wife.
it never occurred to want more.
you were my sky,
my moon and my stars and my ocean.
we can never go back to before.
we can never go back to before!

Ragtime the Musical Lyrics

SYNOPSIS
Prologue
Goodbye My Love
Journey On
The Crime of the Century
What Kind of Woman
A Shtetl Iz Amereke
Success
His Name Is Coalhouse Walker
Getting' Ready Rag
Henry Ford
Nothing Like the City
Your Daddy's Son
The Courtship
New Music
Wheels of a Dream
The Night That Goldman Spoke at Union Square
Gliding
The Trashing of the Car
Justice
President
Till We Reach That Day
Harry Houdini Master Escapist
Coalhouse's Soliloquy
Coalhouse Demands
What a Game
Fire in the City
Atlantic City
Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc.
Our Children
Harlem Nightclub
Sarah Brown Eyes
He Wanted to Say
Back to Before
Look What You've Done
Make Them Hear You
Wheels of a Dream (reprise)